Brazilian Steyr 1912 rifle

[mnmkeller]

Military police marked and painted with an effective but ugly black paint.

Pics will come later when I'm at a computer.

[Patrick Chadwick]

painted with an effective but ugly black paint.

... which sounds ghastly, but may actually have preserved the wood very well underneath!

- Search for "treacle rifle" for examples of the before and after states of painted rifles.

Eagerly awaiting pics!

[mnmkeller]

Ah I should have stated the wood was spared the paint. The paint did protect the metal as it may be ugly but the painted parts are not rusted. I may strip the receiver parts clean to look for crest remnants.

[mnmkeller]

Behold!!!!

The butt stock wording translates to Battalion School and the initials are likely Police Militarie something something...I cant find anything on PMMC so far.

I included some pics of the bayonet lug as that shows the wear.

[mnmkeller]

Left this pic off. This is the blown up pic of the buttstock and disc markings.

[Patrick Chadwick]

Look very carefully at the C of MMMC. I cannot find anything Brazilian with PMMC

BUT

Could it be a "G"? The bottom right corner seems somewhat more squared off than the corresponding corner on the C of Escola (btw, could that be Escolar)

If so, then it's Policia Militar Minas Gerais (a Brazilian state)

Military Police of Minas Gerais State - Wikipedia

and the list of police units confirms that there is no M..C..

[mnmkeller]

If you compare that last letter to the other C in "school" I believe you nailed it.

Sir...your Google fu reigns supreme.

[mnmkeller]

Close ups of the receiver area after I cleaned some of the paint off. I also forgot to show the rack number on the opposite side of the butt.

I can look at all those swirls on the receiver and imaging a crest outline there but I think those speak more to how many times this rifle was painted then stripped then painted etc etc.

[mnmkeller]

I did a basic scraping to remove some of the paint and found some more markings and uncovered the receiver as much as i can until I get the rifle apart.

Nothing more was hidden on the receiver itself so no evidence for a crest or the original Steyr serial number. The bolt does have a 4 digit number but we will have to do a separate thread to see if it belongs to this rifle or a different model. The one other person who has one of these on a different forum has a 1908 bolt in his.

On the bottom you can see the Austrian "K" behind the trigger screw and there is another K on the screw itself I found under that bit of black paint in the pic.

The magazine floorplate has an 83 and also has the best finish so whether it is original or a replacement we do not know. Those screws have substantial paint and crud in them and I will have to work on them properly to loosen them up. You can see someone buggered the screw already long ago before one of the layers of paint.

I dont have a pic but the import mark says "German 8mm" and the import white strip says Brazilian 1908. The serial they have listed is the one you can see in the pics so I am convinced that was created by Century when it was imported. Im not sure why that was done as there was the Brazilian Military Police serial on the opposite side but likely it was something the ATF required where the serial has to be in a certain place or something else silly.

[mnmkeller]

Located the Steyr serial with prefix A on the barrel after I was able to remove the upper wood.

As you would expect from Brazil there is rust and dirt everywhere. More pic will come after I get the mag assembly out and remove the rest of the wood.