Hi guys, thanks for tuning into another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian. I am here today at the James D Julia auction house.
I'm taking a look at some of the guns that they have for sale
in their upcoming October of 2015 auction. And
in the first day's selection, which are a new thing for Julia,
I mentioned it yesterday. It's one of the...
it's a special day for guns that are in, like, the 2,000 to 8,000 dollar
range that are a little more affordable than some of the
things Julia typically sells. Well, amongst those
I found this very interesting gun
that actually looks like it probably would have cost about
two dollars and fifty cents to manufacture.
We know that like the Japanese for example, it's very
common knowledge, the Japanese had a last-ditch sort of rifle.
When the war was really in it's declining days for Japan,
the factories were being bombed left and right, they had to make some sort of weapon. And so they really
lowered the production standards for a lot of the elements of the Arisaka rifle.
Well, what's not quite as well known is that the Germans did the exact same thing,
and really for the exact same reasons. They were being bombed literally day and night
and it just wasn't possible to have the materials and the workmanship and the time necessary
to make rifles anywhere near the quality standards of, say, 1938 Mauser.
So they went through actually a fair amount of trial and experiment and different submissions
from different companies for basically last-ditch rifles.
Germany's fascist political system (a lot of people just hear the word fascist and kind of zone out),
what this led to in Germany was this interesting
interface between government and industrial production
where the two really were kind of bound together.
But a lot of industrial concerns were completely dependent on government contracts,
and they were fighting each other, even right here at the very end of the war,
for contracts on Volkssturm rifles. Things that they could produce and get paid for.
So this is a VG-5, also known as a VK-98, and this was one of the ideas that came out of the Steyr plant.
... Mechanically it's a Kar 98k, it's a Mauser bolt- action but it's been simplified in a bunch of ways
so that it takes a lot less time and a lot less material, or at least a little bit less material, to manufacture.
So, you have to be careful because there are a ton of
fakes of these rifles out there. Unlike the, say, last-ditch Arisakas
there's really a premium for some of this late war German stuff because there's not as much of it,
and well, a lot of people are a lot more interested in German arms.
And it's not necessarily all that hard to take a beat-up Mauser and kind of
fake it into maybe "Oo, it's a late war, last-ditch Mauser".
Well this one is genuine and legitimate, and so I wanted to take a look at it
so we can see what the Germans were actually doing at the very last days of the war.
Alright, so one of the distinctive things about these and it's pretty light on this rifle, but you can see it there.
The receiver crest is going to be marked "bnz 45".
If it's anything other than that, it's not an authentic one of these rifles
(with the exception of a very few "bnz 44" receivers that were used at the very beginning).
Steyr manufactured these rifles, "bnz" was their ... three-letter code.
In 1945 they did use the code "swj", that was applied to some
of their other guns, but it was not used on these VK-98 or VG-5 rifles.
So if you look at this, you'll see that the parts, they're Kar 98k Mauser components,
but man, they're pretty crudely made. A lot of the forgings, by this point,
they would be given a lot less aesthetic finish. They would only do finishing operations
where they really mattered, you can see that in particular on this
the ... shroud back there, just a really rough finish to it.
You know what, the Allies are getting really close, it doesn't really have to be all pretty and shiny to work right,
so don't bother spending the time to do it.
There is kind of a mythology to these rifles, that at the end of the war
they were just throwing together absolutely anything that you could get your hands on
and turning it into a rifle. And that's sort of true, but it's not necessarily true in the way people think.
Rifles like this one were manufactured to a particular standard, it may have been a low standard,
but it was a standard. And there are discrete recognisable types of parts that were used.
So for example, they wouldn't have taken a Kar 98k receiver and rebuilt it into one of these.
Because they were ... you know, you could get stocks or whatever might be broken on a Kar 98k, you could fix it.
There's no reason you take that, get rid of the sights, put on
a little really crappy rear notch sight like this if you didn't have to.
So receivers were made for these. You will find them with a variety of bolt components because Steyr was able
to use some components that they still had in stock, having been manufactured before they got to this point.
They were also able to divert some of their actual K98k production to some of these contracts.
So you'll find a variety there.
The wood stocks are found in two different types, this one is a beechwood, just a slab stock.
It doesn't even have a butt plate. It's just ... on the end, it's just flat wood.
Someone's kind of filed some cross chequering into it, and that's it.
The front sling swivel is a piece of wire, it's a loop up here,
and then it goes through and there's a washer and it's bent across in the front to hold it in place.
That's a standard feature of these rifles. You will also find them with cut-down laminated stocks as well.
So these guns are serialised, this is number 6421.
The contract for these was 10,000 guns, and it looks like that whole contract was probably made.
Serial number data that's been put together shows numbers up into, like, the 9,500s,
but none that have a numeral prefix or suffix. So they didn't ... go over the number 10,000.
You will also find an eagle up here on the barrel. You'll always find that on these rifles,
that was a firing proof test. You will not find Waffenamts on these guns,
with the exception of some of the bolt parts that may have been scrounged from other projects,
because the Waffenamt was the Army's procurement and approval stamp, and these guns were not made for the Army.
These were made for the Volkssturm and were acquired by the Nazi party themselves.
The Nazi party didn't use Waffenamts, that's part of the Army bureaucracy.
So if you find one of these with Waffenamts it's probably someone trying too hard to make a fake rifle.
The barrel, ... there's a lot of talk of, like, salvaged Luftwaffe aircraft machine gun barrels being used,
and those were used in some Volkssturm rifle projects, but not in the VK-98.
These had two different types of barrels: they had pretty much standard K98k barrels,
and they had what we've got here, which is... it started off as a K98k
barrel blank and they just did a little bit less machining.
Really only the absolutely necessary amount of machining to finish it up.
So it's thicker, it's got a really big step right here. That's a standard type to see on these.
I mentioned the rear sight, we'll take a closer look at it here.
It's a simple notch, it's dovetailed into the top of the receiver and staked in place.
And that's just a simple 100 yard zero, that's all there is to it.
The front sight is pretty much equally crude.
... It's a band that is literally tack welded onto the barrel, pretty crude front blade and
(it's a little hard to see here), but the muzzles of these are actually counterbored.
They're about a 10mm in diameter counterbore, which is really wide, and it goes about 30mm deep.
So it's a pretty big counterbore, when you look in the muzzle
of one of these you should not be able to see rifling right off the bat.
Now here's an interesting view. If you've messed with many Mausers, you may notice that
something is missing there. That being a floor plate.
Some of ... the early production examples of the VK-98 do have
standard ... Mauser style trigger guards and floor plates,
but after about number 2,500 they ran out, and it was a lot
simpler just to make a very simple stamped trigger guard and
to have a blind magazine. So this does have a 5 round magazine,
just like a Mauser, spring and everything,
but instead of having a floor plate that comes out,
this just has a blind magazine cut into the stock and
the spring and the follower go in there.
So that's a standard production variation that you'll find.
Now of course the trigger guard there is ... humph, doesn't really get a whole lot simpler than that.
It's just a chunk of stamped flat steel.
One other thing to point out, the recoil lug here looks different from what you'll find on a standard K98k.
And you'll notice that in the butt-stock there is no disassembly disk.
So when you take apart the bolt of one of these, you need a thing to push the firing pin into.
Normally that would be the stock disk. What they did on these to simplify them,
they simply hollowed out the first bit of the recoil lug on both sides
and that serves as your disassembly disk.
So that's pretty much it for the Steyr VG-5, aka the VK-98.
These are ... Mechanically they are Mausers. They're just very simple, very crude Mausers. They worked.
You know you don't want to get shot by one of these, it'll kill you just as dead as anything else.
Uses the standard 8mm Mauser cartridge.
But probably wouldn't inspire all that much confidence in the Volkssturm that got issued these things.
Thanks for watching guys. I hope you enjoyed the video.
There are more of these VK-98s out there than a lot of people suspect, but they're still
pretty uncommon to run across. So I'm happy to have been able to take a look at this one and
show it to you guys. I hope you enjoyed it too.
If you'd like to own it yourself, look at it anytime you like.
Well, check the description for the link, that'll take you to Julia's auction catalogue page on this rifle.
You can see their pictures and their description and you can place a bid online
or if you want to see everything they've got, you can come down here in person at
the beginning of October and participate in the auction live.
Thanks for watching.