My first long gun!

D

duck hunt

New member
So me and Shin-Tao were driving back from our vacation today, and there happened to be a little (literally) Mom and Pop gun store along the highway...we had deliberately allowed time for such an eventuality, so we pulled in. The shop not only sold your garden variety new and used firearms, but also a fair assortment -- no, an impressive assortment -- of collectible and rare firearms. After poking around a bit -- and picking up a lovely pair of wooden grips carved with a wildflower motif for my Taurus -- I spied something right up my alley: A 1936 8 millimeter Turkish Mauser. It has lovely Arabic script engraved down the receiver, and every piece of metal on it, including the barrel bands, is embossed with an Islamic crescent. The perfect rifle for a belly dancer, wouldn't you say?

Oh, and it has a hand-tooled leather sling -- camel leather? Who knows?

Shin-Tao finagled me some good soft point ammo for it, and we picked up a few other odds and ends there, too. Check 'em out if you are ever in Moyock, NC -- Cole's Gun Works on the main road. Lots of cool stuff!
Now I just have to work on holding the blasted thing...it's about as tall as I am...

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*quack*

[This message has been edited by duck hunt (edited September 30, 2000).]
 
Congrats.
The Mauser is one of the finest rifle actions you can get. Reliable and robust.
Photos of the engraving would be appreciated.
This sounds like not the ordinary rifle - or scripting.
Any chance on getting translations of the script?

Its a shooter - it should feel like a pussycat. A push - but not hard on the recoil at all. Accurate to 500 meters IIRC.
 
George,

On one of the discussion boards, it says the Arabic script says "Mauser Arms" and the year. So, I guess that's it.

I'll send pictures when I have them. Weird hardware problem hooking my digital camera to my new PC.


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*quack*
 
Congratulations on the Turkish Mauser with the pretty script. There were a number of these appearing at local St. Louis Gunshows a few years ago. I kept on putting off buying one, being real picky and hoping for the perfect one, then they just disappeared and I was left with none. So you did good just to grab one when you saw it.
It's probably a 1903 Turkish Mauser made by Waffen Fabrik Mauser before WW1, but could be an even older model. The script is Turkish, which looks like Arabic, of course, and probably says Waffen Fabrik Mauser Obendorf and the muslim year, as you note.
The original caliber was 7.65 Mauser, but this one was rebarreled and rebuilt in 8mm Mauser in 1936.
After the fall of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey dropped the old script and adopted the western one you see on the top of the receiver. A little later on, they took to removing all the old script on their rebuilt rifles. Its nice to have the old script on these.
 
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