Vehicle Maintenance

A swedish military car gets repaired sometime in the 1940s. An m/94 carbine is leaned against the front bumper.

I scanned the photo from motor magazine "Vi Bilägare". Hope they can forgive me. But, they asked for it since they committed the unforgivable sin of publishing without mentioning the Mauser at all! The car is cool, but it isn´t the main attraction of the image.

I think this carbine never got the bayonet lug. It looks as if it is cocked(?).

Range Report Again

Another trip to the range, and I took both my m/96 rifles with me. I discovered that the frozen sandbag from my range trip back on March was in fact stuffed with sawdust! It had a leak.

The above group was shot with the 1944 with a diopter sight. I used a more suitable sight insert for the Elit Kornring, as well as a smaller diameter aperture ring for it - but it didn´t get much better. Next time I will install the smallest ring I have (same diameter as the tube itself) and an even smaller diameter ring insert. I need more light around the kornring + an insert that matches the target better. You diopter shooters know what I mean. Not that I shot bad, but it didn´t feel comfortable at all when aiming.

I also took a few shots with the 1918, and got surprised as usual with the difference in results using a diopter vs. the issue iron sights. Groups were bigger. If you haven´t shot one of these with a peep sight, you should! Big improvement!

I just wish I had more time to spent at the range. I want to experiment with diopter and front sight inserts as well as aperture rings to get the maximum results at 100 meters. I also would like to bring some stuff to get a decent shooting position, that sawdust thing should be used as a target instead.

Higher Front Sight Blade for My 1918 m/96

My 1918 Carl Gustaf shoots way too high at 100 meters. All swedish mausers were originally sighted in for 300 meters with a quite low front sight blade. My rifle had a "0" stamped on the front sight base, indicating that it originally had a blade marked that way.

Today, 90 years later, an +0,5 blade was there. Installed a little bit to the right to shoot where intended. The original blade had a small line in it, showing the exact sideways position in relation to the line on the base, this blade hadn´t. I drifted it out carefully.

Then I took a high +2,5 blade from the parts bin and installed it slightly right of center.

As you can see in the pic to the right, the blade is a lot higher than a stock 300 meters blade.

How did it shoot then?

Well, it is not perfect, it now shoots 20 cm below point of aim! I need to check the parts bin again and do some experimentation!

If you are looking for sight blades for these rifles, you should know that the different numbers don´t mean much at all. They make no sense if you don´t know what swedish mauser model they are made for. Measure their height instead.

Söderin Diopter Sunshade

This is an m/Söderin diopter sight with a sunshade installed. This is a nice accessory that mounts directly on the front surface of the diopter housing.

This particular one resides on my Husqvarna m/96. It is a bit unususal as it is not cut to enable more extreme adjustments of the elevation. Most I´ve seen seems to be. As you can see here, the sight has the yellow elevation disc for the 790 m/s 6.5x55 139 grain M-41 military ammo.

A Number of Different Front Sight Blades

The Swedish Mauser rifles were sighted in for 300 meter use, and the average sight blades used were quite low. I have a number of different blades, as seen in the picture.

Some of my blades are super high +3, +2,5, + 2 and one or two items are super low, the numbers slips my mind right now. The high ones would probably work at 100 meters.

These new-old-stock blades are hard to come by today. If you are looking for a high blade for 100 meter shooting, check brownells for a high blade you can file down to fit your requirements.

Pramm Diopter Setup

Here is a Pramm diopter sight with its matching front tunnel, also marked Pramm. There are several variations of both the rear and front sight, an I believe these two are the most common types.

The front sight is to be combined with a fat diopterkorn (I think ring types vere also available) och a high front sight blade. There are at least two types of Pramm tunnels that I don´t have in my collection yet, one has a stop screw from beneath and the other one has an aluminum cover that screws in from the front.

I intend to narrow down my collecting habit to Pramm stuff only. There is also a cool Pramm leaf type micrometer sight very similar to the AGJ Ram, but I haven´t managed to find a complete one yet at a reasonable price.

The setup in the picture will most likely end up on my 1918 Carl Gustaf.

Swedish Mauser Shooting, March 2009

Here are a few pics from a recent range session. Note the frozen sandbag I used as a support for the rifle! I brought my 1944 with a diopter sight and some cheap ammo.

I quickly realized I had the wrong aperture ring and insert in the Elit front sight. The light conditions made a smaller aperture ring more suited, and the big ring insert blocked the edge of the black area of the target. This made centering everything a lot harder.

Next time I will bring all my bits and pieces with me. I have a lot to learn about using peep sights & hope the right setup will improve my groups. Or maybe it´s more about the shooter...

Elit Kornring Front Sight

This is the complete Elit Kornring front sight set.

The kornring came with 3 different aperture rings, as seen above - 20,5, 22 and 23 mm. There are also a number of different inserts that are unique to this particular brand of front sight. I think I have most inserts, here are six of them anyway.

This kornring is very close to mint condition, do doubt thanks to the protective plastic cover. There is also a cover for the diopter itself, but covers are seldom seen for some reason.

Elit Diopter Manual

Here´s the later version swiss made Elite 101 diopter sight. This particular specimen is in a very nice condition.

The earlier Elit (note the difference in spelling!) diopters were manufactured by Olle Edström AB in Ljusdal Sweden. They are the second most common peep sights for these rifles, right after the Söderins. Here are pictures of the manual for the original Elit sight:

Rebarreled at Norma

I took apart my 1944 m/96 and found an NP stamped replacement barrel. Note the absence of bluing between the area of the rear sight and the receiver.

Also there is an NP stamp at the stock, see picture. I wonder if Norma did the work with installing the Söderin diopter as well? The rifle must have been used a lot.

In the lower pic you can see the special longer than issued screw that secures the front of the accessory pistol grip. My grip didn´t come with one, so I had he screw made 1 cm or so longer, as well as cut for new threads.

Silver Stock Disc

This is the stock disc of my CG 1918 Swedish Mauser m/96. It reads "Klippans Skyttkompani", a shooting club in the south of Sweden.

I believe the stamps indicate that it is made by silver. Most (?) ex. shooting club owned m/96 rifles seem to have been supplied with discs with the names/symbols of the clubs they belonged to. Probably for a good reason - imagine the confusion at the range with a hundred shooters all having identical rifles...

Three Different Crown Stamp Variations

This is the Mauser Oberndorf Crown. The bottom line is a bit sagging, as can be seen in the picture above. Screws for these rifles were marked with an "M" symbol.

Next is the Carl-Gustaf crown stamp. I wish I had a better picture, you have to click it to see it in a bigger size. It can be recognized by its straight base. I have seen at least three or four different variations of this stamp - shape and size differs slightly.
Last is the Husqvarna "slanted" crown. Note how it is applied leaning to the right. The rifles made for FSR civilian shooters, as well as the m/38 rifles manufactured by Husqvarna Vapenfabriks Aktiebolag have this symbol.

Some Diopter P0rn Again

OK, this is what a Fäldt diopter looks like when installed on a rifle.

I think it´s really cool, a super simple construction. And quite small & compact compared to most other peep sights for the swedish mauser.

Weapons Vise for Swedish Mauser

This is a must have. A weapons vise for cleaning and repair of rifles and carbines. It was bolted to the tables of old army barracks.

Mine is supposed to be the rare armourers version, it has holes in the sides as well. I don´t know if it´s really correct, because all three vises I have seen have been this model - indicating that the side hole version is the most common one (???). Nice acessory anyway. It fits an m/96 rifle a bit better than an m/94 carbine, the carbine is a bit thinner top to bottom. (Note the m/94 cabine cleaning kit to the right in the last pic.)

I have put a small piece of cleaning patch there to aviod damaging the blued receiver surface. I suppose that this was the way it is supposed to be done. None of my swedish mausers have marks from the "arm" of the vise anyway.

m/94 Ammo Pouch

Here´s an m/94 ammo pouch, made to hold 4 stripper clips. The quality of this item is striking - it is very well made, true workmanship. It even has spring loaded brass flaps to hold the 6,5 mm cardridge clips extra firmly in place.

And while we´re on the subject of clips: I think they are great at the range! A trained soldier must have been able to get a quite high rate of fire using them. Also, a nice feature that I didn´t know before, is that the clip itself ejects when the bolt is pushed forward after the magazine has been filled. No need to remove it by hand in a combat situation.

Soldier with m/94 taking cover behind doghouse

This is a cool pic published at helsingborgs dagblads website, showning a swedish soldier with his m/94 swedish mauser carbine.

To be absolutely sure not to get hit by mortar fire, he hides behind what looks like a doghouse!