[ Tsingtao Ironworks C96 Carbine ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are taking a look at a
fancy, fantastic, actually pretty remarkably good condition
for where it came from and how old it is,
C96 Mauser carbine manufactured in Warlord Era China.
Now this is obviously a copy of the presentation,
fancy, high-end Mauser sporting carbines
that were manufactured by the Mauser Company on the basis of its C96 pistol platform.
And while those pistols were extensively copied and manufactured in China,
there were also a small number of carbines that were made in China.
This would not have been a military issue weapon,
this would have been something for a wealthy individual purchaser,
high-level officer, diplomat, someone who is getting a fancy gun.
Because this is expensive, it's a sporting arm much more than it is any sort of military firearm.
Now this particular one was manufactured by the Tsingtao Ironworks,
and unfortunately we just don't know very much about that particular manufacturing facility.
I can tell you a little bit about the background of the place.
Tsingtao is on the coast, it was the site of naval fortifications
that were built by the Qing Dynasty government in 1891.
And it's fairly common for some of these larger military facilities
to incorporate arsenals and small arms or ammunition production.
In particular here we know that small arms production started,
but we don't know exactly when, we know they made C96s.
I can't tell you much more about what else was manufactured there.
Unfortunately for the Chinese, in 1898, just a few years after they established their fortifications,
the whole site was seized by Germany and became a major German colony in coastal China.
That of course lasted until 1918. At the end of World War One
that colony was handed over by the Treaty of Versailles to the Japanese.
Not necessarily particularly fair to the Chinese who probably wanted it back themselves,
but they did actually regain ownership and control of Tsingtao in 1922 from the Japanese.
From that point for a whopping 16 years it was a Chinese site,
until it was reoccupied again by the Japanese in 1938
until of course the end of World War Two.
So [arms] manufacture at the facility there ... was certainly relatively limited,
because we don't have very many examples of Tsingtao marked guns.
But we do have this one, so let's take a closer look at it.
What we have here mechanically, is a copy of a Mauser pre-war commercial C96 carbine.
So we have the small ring style of hammer.
We do not have any of the new safety updates that were developed during World War One.
We have a rear sight that goes out to 500 metres.
This is chambered for the 7.63mm Mauser cartridge.
Standard 10 round double-stack magazine, just as you would get from Mauser themselves.
It is interesting to point out that we have this groove
running the full length of the slide and all the way up into the mounting base.
That is exactly how the Mauser Company
manufactured the sights on their own production carbines.
And it's little details like that that have no actual impact on the use of the firearm,
but they show that some of these Chinese arsenals and manufacturers
were really watching closely and copying Mauser developments in significant detail.
A similar thing goes for the solid side rails here.
On the pistols these always had little lightening cutouts of maybe kind of dubious practicality.
Like you don't ... lose that much weight by making those cuts,
but the solid side rails were typical on carbines like this one.
We have the pattern of side panels that you would expect on a Mauser here on this side.
And then where we would normally have markings on the chamber flats,
we do in fact have a manufacturer's mark, this is Tsingtao Ironwork.
You may be wondering why that would be in English,
and actually a surprising number of especially the arsenal production guns
made in Warlord Era China have markings that are in English.
This is largely because a bunch of these arsenals worked with
industrial engineering advisors from the West, from the United States and from Western Europe.
And English was more of a lingua franca at the time for the international trade,
and a sign of the ... higher quality firearms that were coming from Europe and the United States.
And I think for a combination of all of those reasons,
you will see some of these arsenals marking some of their guns in English, like this one.
The highest known serial number of a Tsingtao carbine is 19, they didn't make very many of these.
This is serial number 6, marked on the frame and the buttstock extension there.
We also have a number 6 on the bolt.
Looking at a few of the other features, our front sight is a sporting style of front sight
with sort of a bead there. A bright bead, a little easier to pick up with the eye.
Serrations here to prevent glare. The front sight is windage adjustable.
We have a sporting-style sling swivel out here on the front.
And this nice original-looking wooden forend is actually attached to the frame of the gun.
So when the barrel recoils with each shot,
you are not actually impeding operation of the gun.
You can see the barrel sliding ... above the forend there.
The design of the pistol grip is a little bit different from the German standard.
It's a little more cylindrical and a little bit longer, but that does give you
a little bit more solid of a full-hand grip on the base of the gun here.
As with the German patterns, this is a detachable buttstock.
So it's just a bayonet lug style of attachment right there.
A little spring-loaded button to lock it in place.
That allows you to break the gun apart for much more compact, easy transportation.
I should say the barrel length on this is right at 16 inches, so it's a pretty long gun.
This ... may be built from a pistol frame, but this is the length of a proper carbine.
You can see we have ... the second sling swivel back here of the same style.
The length of pull on these carbines is pretty significant,
this isn't a little compact short-stocked thing, that's a full-on length of pull.
And then if we look at the butt plate, it is a metal butt plate.
That is also something that Mauser did not do, Mauser used rubber and horn butt plates.
But we have also a serial number 6 on there. We have a trap door in the buttstock.
Again, something Mauser didn't do, but you've got storage space in there for
cleaning rods and cleaning supplies, it's something that's practical, makes a lot of sense.
And you can see there having the stock taken off
really does make this a much more transportable package.
It originally, I'm sure, came in a nice carry case which unfortunately is long gone now.
Mauser carbines like this are some of the rarest types of firearms to come out of Warlord Era China.
They are really cool, really high-end guns,
and it's really neat to see examples of different ones and how good the workmanship is.
Really kind of putting the lie to the idea that
all of these Chinese Warlord Era firearms were marginal junk.
Some of them absolutely were, but ... one shouldn't discount the skill of the Chinese gunsmiths
and artisans and craftsmen and workers who were in a lot of these arsenals.
Because a lot of them could do really exquisite work, like this particular carbine.
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. If you'd like to know more about guns like this,
I would recommend, naturally, my own book on the subject,
Pistols of the Warlords, Chinese Domestic ... Handguns 1911 to 1949
which is in stock and shipping from Headstamp Publishing.
So I'll have a link to that in the description text below.
Thanks for watching.