1878 WMO I.G. Mod. 71 2894G (no unit, Wurttemburg accepted)

[Cyrano4747]

I've been meaning to make a thread on this for a while now. I posted it over in the SN tracking thread a while ago and was a bit surprised how much attention it got. I've been going through my collection and detail stripping everything to get good pictures of markings etc., so now that I have some decent pics I can do it justice with a thread of its own.

I picked this rifle up a few years ago on GB for pretty cheap - about $600 as I recall. The condition is rough, but everything is there and it is mostly matching. The pictures will speak for themselves, but the non-matching parts that I've found are the bolt head, extractor, bolt stop washer, bolt stop screw, the trigger guard (WW1 era iron replacement, complete with black paint) and whatever you call the screw that holds the trigger assembly into the bottom of the receiver. That screw was the more interesting thing to me, as it indicates that this gun was broken down in service. That screw isn't going to get removed and damaged or lost unless you're pretty far into a tear down, and frankly I would have expected other small parts to get mixed up in that kind of situation. All in all it's a gun with a lot of honest wear, but fairly intact as far as having its original bits and pieces despite that. Not unit marked, unfortunately.

The other noteworthy thing about it is that it's Wurttemburg accepted on the stock.

I'm dropping good pictures of all the markings, but if anyone wants a more specific picture of a part just ask, I was pretty thorough with taking pictures of random presumably in-process inspection stamps that are normally hidden from view. Did you know there's one inside the nose cap? I didn't either until I got really thorough about this tear down.

 

[Cyrano4747]

Photo batch #2, including the stock

 

[Cyrano4747]

Photo batch #3, mostly trigger components and the assorted below-the-woodline markings on the barrel and receiver. As you can see there's a fair bit of pitting below the woodline. This rifle has had an active life.

 

[Cyrano4747]

Finally just a few things I found amusing or interesting while tearing this rifle down.

First off the trigger guard assembly. You've all seen this, nothing surprising:


TG screws into that base piece that serves as the anchor point to sandwich the stock between it and the receiver. TG removed looks like this, again nothing too exciting:



What did surprise me, enough that I quite literally laughed out loud, was when I looked at the metal that the trigger guard normally sits on top of. Note the discolored and slightly pitted semi-circle here where you can see where the TG sat:



. . . it's a serial number. On a piece of metal that isn't just hid in that it's under the stock or something else relatively normal and expected, but that is actually in a place where it is sandwiched between two other pieces of metal. This is a SN that even an armorer wouldn't be expected to see with any regularity. I have to say, that surprised me. Only Germans.

I also found this interesting. It's some kind of inspection mark or maybe the mark of a subcontractor for the buttplate? Just an oddball little mark that I hadn't run across before and which I thought was neat. Inside top of the buttplate.



Finally, with the buttplate off I noticed two interesting things about the stock. One is the series of cracks that are forming in the wood as it shrinks with age. That's pretty normal for very old wood. You can see them in this picture down towards the lower right hand quadrant, especially directly below the screw for the buttplate:



The other thing I thought was neat was the visible tool marks left on the wood here, much more so than in other areas. I guess you didn't need a perfect surface for the buttplate. You can see both the small left to right strokes from what I'm going to guess was a file or some kind of rasp. Then there are the much thicker, deeper up and down strokes that I'd hazard a guess were from a chisel or similar tool when they roughed out the spot for the buttplate. I find those kinds of little marks neat, and guns from the 19th century in particular are great for seeing the remnants of work done with hand tools

 

[chrisftk]

Great thread and thank you for taking the time for copious pictures!

As far as I have seen all IG, Kar and Jäger 71s from Mauser are for Württemberg use. I also believe that a significant number of these were eventually dumped for surplus over in Asia as I have seen a disproportionate number of them with signs of service there. (Cut down, or chakras on the receiver from Thai use) Pretty cool to find one with the steel trigger guard. More than makes up for the lack of unit!

 

[Cyrano4747]

Yeah, it's kind of neat that it stayed in Germany long enough to get the WW1 treatment. I've always wondered what it ended up doing, as most of those got handed off to various second tier units, police, etc who could deal with having outdated weapons. No markings to tell the tale unfortunately.

 

[Cyrano4747]

Oh, I totally forgot a whole set of photographs. This really falls under the just for fun part of my process, but it's still an interesting view that you don't normally get. I've taken to borescoping all my guns when I do these kinds of detailed inspections. It's a lot more useful with the modern rifles that I shoot a lot.

A few years ago I got a borescope, and I've been making a point of documenting barrels when I've got them on the bench. With modern guns it helps to establish a baseline for wear, but even with older guns it's useful for seeing if the bore is noticeably worse now than it was before. This is especially important with guns that have gas ports. With older guns it's also interesting to see exactly how much rifling is left and some of the marks that accumulate inside the barrel.

Here is the typical bore shot that we're all familiar with. Bore light shoved in the back, camera precariously angled to try and get a good shot without washing out the light sensors:



Not bad, but we can do better. This is what you can get with even a cheap borescope. Mine is just some USB garbage that I got off Amazon for $40. I'll also note that the focal distance of this one is set up for .20-.30 caliber barrels, so something large like the ~.43 inches of a Gew71 family barrel can take a bit of juggling to get things in focus.



That is staring straight at the side of the inside of the barrel. The borescope has a 90 degree mirror on it, so you get a view to the side of where it's pushed into. That is a good chunk of groove, with a bit of land visible on the right. What I find really interesting about these older rifles is just how much more topography you see inside them compared to modern ones. I don't know for sure, but I'm pretty sure the length-wise striations you see are tooling marks from the rifling process.

Here we see a pretty typical pit inside the barrel.




And here is a section of light pitting, what most of us would describe as frosting:



One more for good measure.



The other thing I like this tool for is that it's a reasonably good resolution camera with an extremely short focal distance. This means that it's good for getting extreme closeups of things. This can be useful for inspecting the crown:



But what I really have fun doing is using it to pick out very faint or partially obscured stampings. Here are a couple of smaller stamps just to show what it's capable of. The first is a inspection stamp on a screw, the second is the "12" below the rear sight notch.



It's a fun toy and a useful tool. Mine is comparative garbage, and I should probably upgrade it soon. You can see some noise and artifacting in the images of the stamps up there, for example. That said, it works for what I use it for. I highly recommend people adding one to their toolbox if you're deep enough into the hobby to care about stuff like this.

 

[AN-94]

Nice pickup, Oberndorf IG71s aren't all that common and yours having stuck around in Germany long enough to get the steel trigger guard is a neat touch. I do like having a bore scope on hand and agree that it should be an essential tool for anyone invested in buying old firearms, it helped prove that I had a slight bulge in the barrel of my IG71.

 

[Loewe]

First class display - added it to the study with link to this thread.

 

[joryfreeburg]

Neat rifle with great photos…. Congrats

 

[Cyrano4747]

One other observation: it's always interesting taking apart a design that you don't know as well. When I take apart a 98-pattern rifle I just toss all the screws in a jar because at this point it's second nature to know what goes where when it's all coming back together. If I'm removing buttplates I'll note which one goes in which hole just to make sure everything mates together right at the end and because buggering up 80+ year old screw holes sucks, but that's it.

But this? Photograph every screw before removing it. Tape every screw to a sheet of paper with a brief note about where it came from and, with the stuff that had really worn into the surrounding metal (e.g. buttplate screws) a note on how the head was oriented. And even then I had to triple check a few with the photos when it came to putting the triggerguard back together.

Also a much longer process. I had this in parts on my bench for the better part of three days. Most of that was detail cleaning, but final assembly at the end probably took an hour and a half. I'm pretty sure I could throw a detail stripped Gew98 back together in fifteen minutes if I was on the clock.

 

[Vish645]

Wow,Nice rifle.Congrats

 

[OnlyMil]

Nice rifle! Another Württemberg bubbles up to the surface lol.

 

[biggymu]

Fantastic pictures. Your lighting/focus is spot on. Almost as good as in hand. Nice rifle!

 

[Cyrano4747]

Fantastic pictures. Your lighting/focus is spot on. Almost as good as in hand. Nice rifle!

Thanks, that's something I've been working really hard on. I'm actually in the middle of a project to try and get good photos of everything in the collection.

That said, one area I'm working to improve is some of the shadowing. I need to get a second light source to help with that. These are good, but there's always room to be better.