Some rifles from my collection

[m3bobby]

I love the way the Russians called it a "Vintovka Vinchestya", Its just how I'd imagine a Russian saying Winchester.

[lithgow]

A rare rifle in decent condition-are the sights marked in 'arshins' or metres? As you mentioned the Russians suffered immense attrition in weapons, some of the Winchesters were lost by capture to Austro Hungarian or German forces-this may account for the lack of later property marks-apparently a few survived to be captured in WW2 as well by Germany-by then the sights had been altered to metres from the old arshins.

[Nyles]

I would suspect arshins, there's no indication that the rear sight has been altered, the font definately doesn't match any of my Soviet rifles, nor are there any of the common Soviet arsenal marks.

This is a Belgian Mauser M1889/16 carbine in 7.65mm Mauser (often, and incorrectly, called 7.65mm Argentine in North America - Argentina was the 3rd country to adopt it, after Belgium in 1889 and the Ottoman Empire in 1890). Belgium was the first country to adopt the smallbore repeating Mauser rifle, which at this point wasn't much like the familiar German Mauser 98.

The Belgian 1889 had a sheet metal barrel jacket similar to the German Gewehr 88, a detachable single-column magazine, a small fixed extrator, cocked on closing the bolt and lacked the gas deflecting ring of later models. In short, the only really recognizably Mauser features are the dual front locking lugs and the bolt retaining catch!

My rifle is also interesting in that it relects the huge losses of Belgium in WW1. The Belgians bled themselves white delaying the German advance in 1914, losing 90% of the country and huge amounts of arms. The 1916 model carbine was an attempt to standardize production instead of the 4 or 5 different carbine models produced before the war. Even more interesting, it was actually manufactured in England, by an arms factory started in Birmingham by patriotic Belgian refuges. Belgian 1889s can also be found made my WW Greener, also in Birmingham, and Hopkins & Allen in the USA, in addition to the familiar Belgian FN and MAE production.

[ObKrieger]

This is the newest addition to my collection, a Winchester 1895 Russian Contract Musket, known to the Russians as the Vintovka Vinchestya Obr.1915G. During WW1 the Russian production of the Mosin-Nagant M1891 couldn't keep up with battlefield attrition, so a mission was sent to the US to contract there for liscensed production of the Mosin, which was done with Remington and New England Westinghouse. When the Russians went to Winchester, however, they became interested in their Modle 1895 lever action rifle, which had already been made in a militarised form for the US Army.

The Russian model differed from the standard Musket (or military model) in the addition to two charger guides to allow for the use of stripper clips. 300,000 were produced and used in WW1, after which they were popular during the Russian Civil War and espescially in Finland during their war of independence. Following this they were exported to Republican Spain during the Spanish Civil War, and most seen in North America have either Spanish or Finn proof marks. Interestingly, this has neither.

It's a very neat rifle, with a surprisingly smooth action, considering how complicated it is, and probably no heavier than an M1891 Mosin. The lever isn't the easiest to use in the prone position, which probably accounts for some of the lack of success of lever actions in military service after the 1870s. It has a very nice bore and I plan to shoot it at least once!

Amazing rifles, Nyles. Any chance of getting a shot of the bore on this one? I have never seen these before.

[don_kihotis7]

Excellent stuff