Picked up a decent RC Czech VZ24

[Claven2]

I believe the consensus is that these came out of Romania and are a mix of Mausers in service with Romanian forces at the end of the war, plus some captured Czech VZ24's the Russians gave the Romanians post-war. Romania evidently used these in various capacities until fairly recently and all of them were refurbed in the communist era.

Mine is A-typical in that the crest and markings aren't ground off - it seems the majority of these have the markings at least partially removed, especially those with Romanian crests. This one is a Czech-crested rifle and was likely an RC from the Eastern Front given to Romania post-war.

It was imported by Tradex from Europe directly to Canada, so luckily it has escaped US importation marking.





Here you see the 1937 manufacturing date:






This was the only rusty spot on the rifle, it came well slathered in cosmolene and unlike many of these, it was black-paint free (thank goodness). The rust came off after 10 seconds with fine wool.





Like all these guns out of Romania, it has a basic cleaning rod made of round stock with a circular jag hole. the other end is threaded to fit the retained nut. I believe the original rods were swamped and turfed by the Russians, these rods are, I suspect, later Romanian replacements.



This rifle was put together with all VZ24 parts except for the bolt stop which is un-marked, but looks to have actually been from a late-war K98k or a late-production G24(t):





Although in excellent shape, this is the third rile the bolt body has been mated to. The original number is ground off, it was electro-penciled once, blued-over, then electro-penciled to this rifle. This lends evidence to how long Romania kept re-building an re-using their stocks of VZ24 rifles. The stocks on all these are too nice given all the re-building - I suspect Romania re-stocked them in new walnut at some point. they have not been heavily sanded from what I can tell.





Handguard repair. The hand guards are generally in worse shape than the stocks on these, I imagine Romania tended to re-use them more than the buttstocks. Many (most?) have some level of repair. This one has a dove-tail re-infocement to deal with a hairline crack that I had to clean up as the original repair was poorly done (first pic is before, second is after):





These were imported without capture screws, like a Russian-capture K98k. I had a spare set or original Mauser capture screws from a WW1-era contract Mauser that I installed. You can also see that at some point, this bottom metal was serialized - probably to another rifle - then scrubbed. I don't think any of these VZs from Romania are now serialized apart from the action, bolt and stock.





Mine came with a 1938-produced Czech bayonet that has been re-blued over a lot of fine pitting.





The scabbard is a bit rarer and seems to have come from a serbian-contract VZ24 bayonet, likely also captured in WW2.



All in all, I'm happy with this rifle. They are selling in the $400 range here in Canada, probably cheaper stateside, but for a real eastern-front WW2 Mauser rifle in decent shape, this isn't too bad.

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[Anzac15]

Beautiful rifle. I've had many VZ24s, and they are without a doubt some of the finest Mausers I've ever shouldered. The crest is fantastic, as are most crests on other nations Mausers. Well done!

---------- Post added at 01:03 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:01 PM ----------

And oh yeah, us here in the States are really tired of the horrible imports marks that are billboarded all over these remarkable pieces of history!

[Calif-Steve]

A 1937 Czech Army-issue rifle. The Germans shipped thousands of Czech rilfles to Romania in return for oil. They then had Brno build many thousand more in 1939/40. All shipped to Romania. That is a nice find, for sure.