Not a Mosin or Mauser, But Better Than the Mauser and Almost...

[Josh Smith]

Thanks Steve!

[Josh Smith]

Phil,

Looks like http://www.gew88.com/ is down. Not sure if/when it will come back up.

If you've not already, you might check out Turk Mauser - Gew. 88. There's a lot of valuable info there.

Regards,

Josh

[AZPhil]

My barrel is the original tapered type. I look forward to hearing what you find.
This is the site I to go to. The Gent who runs it said that his service provider was going to change, but he is still up and running. The title to the thread about these numbers I believe is " Amberg Gew 88/05 serial numbers"
Commission Rifle
It has some great info. Enjoy the pic's also!!
Semper Fi
Phil

[gew98]

That is a sweet Deal on a Turked Commission 88. I Have not shot my 1891 AMBERG 88. It is matching except for the Turked bolt and rear site.I was told to use only commercial 8mm because it is loaded very light . I have a question for you. My Amberg has a set of # that are next to the serial # in the barrel channel of the stock. Those #'s are also on parts of the trigger, the follower, the barrel and other internal parts.They will be near your serial #. Did You find this Number??????? I thought maybe they were inspector marks at first but . I asked this question on the Commission rifle website and the owner of the site did some research and got a hold of Dr. Dieter Storz, Oberkonservator of the Bavarian Armee museum and he was told that these #'s were beleived to be Production numbers assigned by AMBERG arsenal when the 05 conversion was done. There was a list of the numbers on the Commission rifle site. My # is 42. The 42nd 05 conversion done!!!
Welcome to the wonderful world of AMBERG 88'S

Phil when you see secondary sets of numbers like you describe it is simply in house/depot numbering to assure same parts went to same rifle for reassembly. Nothing to do with such and such number of any given rifle by whom or whatever depot/arsenal rework to mauser charger mod. As far as research has shown Amberg did not do any 88/05 conversions at the arsenal. These were done at lower level depots where stored when funding was made available for such.

[AZPhil]

Thanks gew98. When I first saw these numbers I thought maybe inspector #42 worked at Amberg. I just have to ask. Why would they use a secondary # when the rifle had it's serial number to keep track of what part went to what rifle?
I did not know that Amberg Arsenal didn't do any 05 conversions. Thanks for that info.

I tried to link the post on commission 88 site, but you have to be a member to see the blog.
This is cut and paste of reply by Dieter Storz. If it matter's
“we disassembled two Amberg made and Amberg converted rifles 88/05 of our collection and found the same numbers. I have no explanation for them. In the stamping regulations for rifles 88/05 they don't appear. It seems to have been a particular practise in Amberg. These stamps only were applied on parts which underwent modification during conversion (not on parts of new make). So I suppose that they played a role in the organisation of the manufacturing process. But this is only an assumption.

In Amberg the numbers on the parts to be modified were, I suppose, applied to avoid a mismatch, as some of the rifles arriving in Amberg had the same end numbers of their serial numbers. Perhaps that the rifles were reworked in batches of several hundred, and if those parts were marked they could be separated from the rifle, thrown into a box, modified, and afterwards they all would find their way back to the original rifle."


Here are some pic's of the #42 and my serial number appears on every part along with this #42.


Semper Fi
Phil

[gew98]

Phil ; You can find depot salvaged gew98's occassionally with a subset of in house numbers...all depended on the depot/artillery park workshop doing the work. The only Amberg specific 88/05 conversion I have noted is the 88/14 - a very rare bird. In place of the pinned to the receiver charger guides they had welded metal in sufficient quantity to the receiver then machined them for chargers. This was also certainly done at a depot and not Amberg arsenal as well. The ramping up of gew98 production and the epair of salvaged gew98's kept Amberg quite busy indeed. Amberg was forced by the prussians in 1914 into early 1915 to pull tens of thousands of unissued Amberg made gew98's from storage at it's subsidiary artillery depots and issue them to needy prussian regiments. Hence for example my 1913 Amberg being regimentally marked to a prussian Infantry Regiment.