I am, or at least used to be, a pretty good shot. About 40 years or so ago I could buy mil-surp ammo for about 2 cents a round, but then I was also only making about $1.80 an hour.

I am by no means a gun expert, so I would like to ask a question or two.

Some background....

A friend of mine bought an 8mm Mauser, which I think might be a K98, in the late 70's for $35. This was at a Warehouse Sale for a company called Gibson's Discount (This was at their Garland, Texas, warehouse) which was a large chain in the Southwest. Sam Walton admits that he took much of his theory of discount sales from the Gibson brothers, and I only say this to let you know that GIbson's was as much as a gun dealer then as Walmart is today. They had a sporting goods section, but Gibson's also sold mil-surp guns like Mausers and Lee-Enfields.

At this sale, which I attended with him, the section of the store selling the Mausers would lay out five at a time and when those five were sold they would lay out five more. Most were really only worth $35 as they were really worn out and cracked up. The goal of the 'sale' was to get you into the store and make you stay there while your wife shopped.

Add to all of this that it was rather dark where the guns were being sold so it was hard to check the condition. I had not bought a light, but I did have one of those bent fiber-optic things to check the bore.

After about an hour a group of five came out and one was clearly above the rest. I picked it up and noticed it was stamped 'Loeweberlin 1890', and, by the light of a near-by time-clock, I was able to see that the inside of the barrel looked very good.

It also had numbers that matched on the receiver and the barrel, so I knew that had to be a good sign.

I just called him and he says the receiver is stamped 3814 and the barrel is stamped 814. Under that is a 1400 and under that is a P.

It also has Goew.88 in old German script on the receiver.

My questions on this would be: Anyone know what these numbers mean, and if not, can anyone direct me to a web-site that would be good for decoding these?

There is also an S stamped on the barrel that he already knows means it was Sized to take a longer round than the original.

The few times I fired it I was able to hit a horse-apple at about 30 yards, so it really shoots well. I can't think of anything else that is 120 years old and still works like new.

A very interesting rifle indeed. If it's really 8mm caliber then it's something with which I'm not familiar. Ludwig Lowe was a weapons manufacturer in Berlin back in those days and an 1890 date would seem to indicate it was originally an 1888 Comission rifle. But I wouldn't have thought that such a rifle could be re-arsenaled to 8mm caliber. However I'm also no expert and am not sure about which models existed between the "Commission" rifle and the Gewehr98.

I have a couple of books on Mausers back at home and I'll see if I can turn up any more info for you. One forum that might be of use to you is the

"Curioandrelicsfirearmsforum" of which I'm also a member.
http://curioandrelicfirearmsforum.yuku.com

And it doesn't particularly surprise me that such and Old Mauser, in good condition, is highly accurate. They were of fantastic quality back then and remained so right up till the necessities of wartime production started to result in some cheapening of the overall appearance, though not of functional reliability towards the end of WWII.

- Peter.

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You are scaring me with this gun thing, hopefully you like me.

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I've read many several about Post-1896 Rifles competing....successfully against many of their modern counterparts.

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"The thing is Bob, its not that I'm lazy...its that I just don't care."

I do recall firing it and using 8mm ammo. The only rounds we could get were hunting rounds as all the surplus ammo was gone.

What I am trying to say here is that I don't really know what caliber it is or where to look on it for such info, but that 8mm ammo worked quite well.

Thanks for the website. I will pass it on to him to check out.

Depends on your taste and what it's purpose is, there are numerous high dollar rifles out there.

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Oh yeah, a good Fin Mosin or any of the Swiss milsurps will shoot with very expensive modern rifles.

A good shooter, shooting a K31/K11 with competition sights can put to shame many modern rifles. I'd put the K31 sniper version, the ZFK55 up against just about anything. I have seen guys shoot sub MOA groups with them at 100 meters.

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$2 each for Mauser ammo is nuts. Google 7.65x54 and you will find it for about $.50 each.

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I think the last time we shot it was before the Internet was around. The only place to buy ammo for the thing was a sporting goods store and the only rounds available were hunting rounds.

It was a case of having to take what we could get and having to pay the price they were asking.

2 things. My mauser is 7.92x57mm also know as the 8x57 mm, and I'm in the country known as kanukistan.... Also sometimes called Canada.
Cheapest ammo that I have seen in a long time for a mauser like that is about $2 a round...

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'95 S320 LWB
'87 300SDL
'04 E500 wagon 4matic

7.62x54R is the rimmed round the Russians use, its actualy the longest serving military cartridge. 1890 to present.

K98's shoot 7.92, also called 8mm Mauser.

You should be able to buy 440 spam cans for about $90. 8mm Mauser is similer, AIM has some pretty good deals.

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The rifle I am talking about has an 'S' stamped into the barrel. I think this means it was re-sized after WW 1 to take a longer round.

During WW 1 dum-dum rounds were used, and somewhere along the line the major nations agreed to never use them again in combat. This led to a mass re-sizing of the bore where the bullet enters it to make is slightly, like 2mm, longer.

As weird as it sounds, the British did this to their .303 and then made millions of rounds that had a bit of sawdust in the tip of them. The lighter and less dense sawdust acted just like the hallow point of a dum-dum when it came to hitting a target, but since the rounds did not have a hallow nose they were 'legal'.

It probably took some Lawyer to come up with that.

Ah, Kanukistan! Land of the Kanuks, also known as the land above the 49th degree of Latitude, where Lumberjacks stir their coffee with their thumbs.

I remember I once shot a bear there in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas I will never know.

Once, during a Masterdon hunt, it was my job to extract the tusks of the beast. It was a cold and difficult job, and one I prefer to do in Alabama since that is where you will find the Tuscaloosa.

Please feel to add your own memories of hunting trips like these....

The "S" stamp was a designator meaning that it was bored to .323. That means it can use almost all 8mm mauser rounds.
If it was stamped as "I" or "J", it manes that it was bored to .318, for which ammo is scarce, and you have to make sure it's correct, or you could blow your gun up.
Whether or not it's stamped with "s" does not mean that it has been resized. Many "S" stamps came from the factory without being resized...
The russian Draganov round is very similar to what you're describing. Oly that also had a bi metal core. steel front with a lead rear IIRC with a hollow area in the front of the SP jacket. Few people survive being shot with one of those rounds...

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Too many people tip toe through life, never attempting or doing anything great, hoping to make it safely to death... Bob Proctor

'95 S320 LWB
'87 300SDL
'04 E500 wagon 4matic

Sounds like the Marines new SOST round which is pretty much a hollow point.

Or my favorite the 5.45 Russian round that has a hollow section at the front. The tip flattens out and it travels all over the place once it hits flesh. Its nickname is the "poison bullet".

Still I love my 7.62x54R steel core, I have shot through 3/8 plate like its nothing.

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