Mauser K98k High Turret with Matching Numbers Mount

From the same seller as the J. P. Sauer & Sohn K98k High Turret Sniper Rifle from the Mauser Factory collection I bought another High Turret sniper rifle. This other sniper rifle is a byf44 k-block rifle. It is one of those when the factory moved the serial back to the receiver, and for the sniper rifles the barrel was re-stamped (by hand?) with the rifle serial number. It came with a mismatching bolt body (early Steyr with E/77 stamps on bottom) that I had replaced with another bolt that does not have a serial (which I think was scrubbed), but interestingly the gas shield is matching numbers and came with an original shortened safety, so interestingly the bolt assembly seemed to survive with the rifle.

The scope rings are matching numbers to this rifle. What though kept me scratching my head when purchasing already was the fact that the scope it comes with is a Kahles H/4x60 scope. Up until now I always had thought that H/4x60 are exclusive to J. P. Sauer & Sohn K98k Turret Sniper sniper rifles whereas cad coded Kahles scopes are exclusive to Mauser (not speaking on LSR now), but this combination of a H/4x60 on matching rings to a Mauser K98k High Turret make me not fully sure on this any more.

From looking at the rings in very detail I do think they are original factory serialized to the rifle and not force matched to this rifle, but please others let me know whether you'd agree to this. Could it had been a recycled scope that was used by Mauser? Or are there anyway more H/4x60 on Mauser turret rings that I simply do not know of?

No surprise to me. I am relieved that my own byf44 HT has now been exonerated as suspect, because it has a matched optic ( Kahles Wien H/4x60 ) as well...

https://www.k98kforum.com/threads/sauer-high-turret-scope-kahles-wien-h4x60-41490.58009/#post-452657

@pwcosol would you mind telling me the serial of your H/4x60 scope as well as the rifle serial (including the letter suffix)? It might be a dense block where stuff like that could appear.

Absolut said:

@pwcosol would you mind telling me the serial of your H/4x60 scope as well as the rifle serial (including the letter suffix)? It might be a dense block where stuff like that could appear.

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OK, rifle is 38456 k and the H/4x60 is 41685. Wish I had info on the other example my friend had around the time I got this rifle, but someone out there has it ...

… so my rifle is 62135k and the scope is 41816. Same letter block of rifle and pretty close scope serials do sound good.

... need to correct myself. Scope on my rifle is 41916. Tough to read. Noticed some issues with depth blurring so adjusted settings of my camera.

Mauser used these scopes too.

... Vol.IIa on page 222 shows byf44 High Turret serial 29108k with matching numbers scope coded "cad", serial number 41656 (if I read it correctly). Hence the serial of that scope is just a handful digits under your scope @pwcosol. Interestingly this is an early k-block where the serial is only on the barrel. They might have delivered a batch of scopes which were both cad as well as H/4x60 coded.

There is Documentation out there that shows MAUSER received Scopes from SAUER and IMO these 2 Mauser HT with KAHLES H/4x60 Scopes shows this too be true . We think we know everything or assume to know most everything about German Sniper production that is so far from the truth , there is still much we don't know . Hence my favorite quote Never Say Never !!!!!!!!! .

Nice and Very Interesting HT Georg !!!!

It is my understanding that Kahles made both H/4x60 coded scope as well as cad scopes in the same serial range (meaning serial 42001 could carry H/4x60 designation whereas 42002 could be carry cad designation). So if in Vol.IIa is pictured scope 41656 coded cad and @pwcosol owns scope 41685 coded H/4x60 then those are only 29 digits apart. It then might just be that Kahles delivered a batch of mixed coded scopes to Mauser, or do you @Dave Roberts think that they stopped somewhere in between and instead the second half of the scopes came from Sauer?

Edit: @Hercules told me he has a H/4x60 on "Mauser serialized" HT rings too. It would be great if Brian would let me know his scope serial so we could compare it to the other serials already mentioned. Does anyone else also have a H/4x60 which are "Mauser serialized"?

Absolut said:

Edit: @Hercules told me he has a H/4x60 on "Mauser serialized" HT rings too. It would be great if Brian would let me know his scope serial so we could compare it to the other serials already mentioned. Does anyone else also have a H/4x60 which are "Mauser serialized"?

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I always personally wondered if it was a Mauser Scope or Sauer changed their serial number location as scope has a 4 digit serial on ring. I suppose it is probably a Mauser Scope. Not far in scope serial from yours Georg, but far away from your Rifle serial. Nice rifle.

Hercules said:

I always personally wondered if it was a Mauser Scope or Sauer changed their serial number location as scope has a 4 digit serial on ring. I suppose it is probably a Mauser Scope. Not far in scope serial from yours Georg, but far away from your Rifle serial. Nice rifle.

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Well, actually I also have a four digit byf44 k-block sniper rifle . I assume yours originally was mounted to byf44 2076k. Pretty amazing how close determination nowadays is possible with being able to compare with others over the internet.

One thing I noticed, it seems that all these Kahles H/4x60 from this serial range bear the screw for the arctic sunshade whereas J. P. Sauer & Sohn serialized H/4x60 on turret mounts with both higher and lower serials lack this screw. Does your scope have it too?

Absolut said:

It is my understanding that Kahles made both H/4x60 coded scope as well as cad scopes in the same serial range (meaning serial 42001 could carry H/4x60 designation whereas 42002 could be carry cad designation). So if in Vol.IIa is pictured scope 41656 coded cad and @pwcosol owns scope 41685 coded H/4x60 then those are only 29 digits apart. It then might just be that Kahles delivered a batch of mixed coded scopes to Mauser, or do you @Dave Roberts think that they stopped somewhere in between and instead the second half of the scopes came from Sauer?

Edit: @Hercules told me he has a H/4x60 on "Mauser serialized" HT rings too. It would be great if Brian would let me know his scope serial so we could compare it to the other serials already mentioned. Does anyone else also have a H/4x60 which are "Mauser serialized"?

Click to expand...

Georg
I will answer this way , I can not say definitively at this time that its one or the other , Bruce mentioned to me that theres documentation showing that Sauer transferred Scopes to Mauser . The other thing that I will mention I have had conversations with Robert , Wolfgang &Thomas Meyer and others about the Serial Numbering of Scopes , it is possible that the Serial Numbering for the Cad & H/4X60 maybe linear and not a separate serial range for each Type/Code . More investigation is certainly needed to make a determination .

Absolut said:

Well, actually I also have a four digit byf44 k-block sniper rifle . I assume yours originally was mounted to byf44 2076k. Pretty amazing how close determination nowadays is possible with being able to compare with others over the internet.

One thing I noticed, it seems that all these Kahles H/4x60 from this serial range bear the screw for the arctic sunshade whereas J. P. Sauer & Sohn serialized H/4x60 on turret mounts with both higher and lower serials lack this screw. Does your scope have it too?

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Yes. There is an Arctic Sunshade under the front cover.

Dave Roberts said:

The other thing that I will mention I have had conversations with Robert , Wolfgang &Thomas Meyer and others about the Serial Numbering of Scopes , it is possible that the Serial Numbering for the Cad & H/4X60 maybe linear and not a separate serial range for each Type/Code . More investigation is certainly needed to make a determination .

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That would be an interesting task to research. I'll look into this, to get a serial listing for H/4x60 as well as cad coded scopes, and see whether there are mixed serial ranges, or possibly even identical serial ranges.

From a very rough overall feeling I do think they made all scopes in the same serial range. Zeiss did this, Hensoldt did this, Schneider did this, ... so why not Kahles? And judging overall from the Hensoldt serial numbers which would for example for the bmj+ scopes allows a quite good overall production number estimate. If I on the contrary was to assume Kahles made around 10k H/4x60 marked scopes as well as 10k cad coded scopes, then they would be like the major manufacturer of scopes from WWII period, and while they are of of the most common manufacturers to be found frequently, it still is my feeling that you'll find more bmj+ scopes than Kahles scopes with German WWII sniper rifles. But this just for the start what my feeling tells me .. maybe I'm all wrong and we'll find out differently, but to make it clear where we start from, at least to my best knowledge.

Brian, thanks for checking. This would confirm once more that the arctic sunshade locking stud on turret sniper rifles might be a Mauser thing (... until a Sauer mounted Kahles scope with this stud turns up, but a quick check of my Sauer mounted turret scopes confirmed this so far).

Hello,

Absolut any updates on your findings? I have HT H4x60 for CE/MO from 40,700- 43,600 (about 3K, 600 are LSR models) . CAD starting at 43,800-47,900 (about 3K scopes again with about 1K LSR). The H4x60 6 digit serials though 6 digit seem to fall at the moment in the missing chunk of observations I have at least if you drop the 1 off you are left with scopes with serials in the 42,300 serial ranges, but its to early to say anything definitive yet. Roughly a total of about 6000-7000 HT H4x60/CAD scopes made in pretty even quantities of each version.

Later
Vaughn

I had not found time yet into making a scope serial studies, but thanks for bringing this up. Maybe worth its own thread, serial and model designation research for military Kahles H/4x60 and cad coded scopes. Which information do you think we'd need, other than the following:
- H/4x60 or cad?
- scope serial number
- scope mount if still present (high or low turret, long side rail, short side rail, ..)
- rifle number if with mount
(- scope finish?)
(- arctic sunshade screw present?)
(- reticle?)
(- scope assembly number from bottom?)

Edit .. if my memory serves me correct then there are two different lengths of rainshield too, so maybe that would be good to know as well)

Absolut said:

... Vol.IIa on page 222 shows byf44 High Turret serial 29108k with matching numbers scope coded "cad", serial number 41656 (if I read it correctly). Hence the serial of that scope is just a handful digits under your scope @pwcosol. Interestingly this is an early k-block where the serial is only on the barrel. They might have delivered a batch of scopes which were both cad as well as H/4x60 coded.

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There is no picture showing the cad instead of the h4x60 marking.
Regards

Xavier said:

There is no picture showing the cad instead of the h4x60 marking.
Regards

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... but text says cad coded. I don't think @bruce98k wrote this wrong on purpose.

Georg, I went back and checked the images and the scope on P222 is indeed a H/4x60 marked and not CAD coded.
I missed that detail but correctly identified the company.

Scope serial is 41656.