[ Ethiopian Oddities: Smallbore Gewehr 71 ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at
Inter Ordnance / Royal Tiger Imports
taking a look at another Ethiopian oddity.
This one is definitely odd, this came in with a
bunch of Mausers that were imported from Ethiopia.
And this thing started out life,
a long hard life, a long time ago as a Mauser 1871 carbine.
So that would be a single-shot carbine chambered for 11mm Mauser.
And it was ... basically the first cartridge rifle used by German, or at the time Prussian, cavalry.
And this one, someone decided that they needed it to be in a smaller calibre than 11mm Mauser,
and they also wanted it to be in a totally different stock.
So we have the original bolt and receiver,
and everything else is weird and put together, let's take a closer look at it.
So when I say this had a very long and hard life, I don't think I'm exaggerating at all.
There is a lot of old pitting on this thing.
There's the original Mauser Karabiner-71 designation.
Up here, if you look past the gratuitous hammer marks on the front of the receiver,
you've got the serial number, 1127 echo.
And it is actually a matching bolt still.
So the Gewehr 71 carbines had bent bolt handles like this.
And just a flat loading tray in there.
What's a little bit terrifying about this one is that the bolt head has actually been cut down.
So this would originally have fired 11mm Mauser,
which is a big, rimmed, black-powder, 11mm cartridge.
And this is a much smaller case, this looks
frankly like a modern sort of smokeless powder case.
And if we take a look at the bore, that's definitely not an 11mm bore.
It looks more like about .30 calibre, rather crudely cut too.
So I think this has been, rather worryingly,
re-chambered for a smokeless powder, rather high-pressure cartridge.
And this is a system that locks only on the bolt handle root here.
So I definitely would never fire this thing
unless it was tied down to a bench and I had a very long string.
Now looking at the rest of the gun, we have a totally fabricated new stock and handguard.
And that's very much Mauser style, finger grooves in there.
An upper handguard, typically used
for protecting the hand from heat if you're going to be using a bayonet.
This does have what appears to be a bayonet lug, but is in fact not at all a bayonet lug.
This is just a visual representation of a bayonet lug, shall we say.
It's got no grooves, no locking latch, nothing. It's just there to look like a bayonet lug.
The front band is styled after a Mauser, but clearly handmade.
It's a very light and handy gun, that's for sure.
Interesting that on this side we've got a metal strap holding the top handguard in place.
It sort of has a rear sight.
Except the actual leaf is missing, and may have always been missing, it's a little hard to say.
Because there aren't any holes in these two brackets to mount a rear sight leaf.
So maybe it was incomplete, or ...
you know, the kind of artisan who does that for a bayonet lug
may have been copying a gun [that] had a rear sight base and no rear sight leaf.
And just copied that and,
At the back end of the gun we have actually a quite nice style of pistol grip to it.
It's comfortable in the hand, it's light, it's handy.
If it wasn't terrifyingly dangerous, it could be a really cool gun.
We do have the remnants of an Ethiopian sling here.
And then there is a little bit of decorative artwork that's been put into the stock.
This is similar in style to what I've seen on some of the other Ethiopian import guns.
Not a lot of them have stock art, but a few do, and this style is fairly typical.
Nothing on the other side.
And then just a pretty plain, flat, butt plate.
I wish I knew what cartridge this was actually chambered for,
but I don't have the ability to do a chamber cast at this point.
And ... there are so many different guns in service in Ethiopia over the decades
that it could be literally anything, so kind of your guess is as good as mine.
I am pretty sure I would not want to actually fire it,
I don't really trust the headspace, even a little tiny bit.
Frankly, I don't trust much of anything on this particular rifle.
But it certainly is interesting to see
the sort of adaptation and improvisation that was done by some of the Ethiopian armourers.
So some of their guns are fantastic and totally professional,
and some of them are a little more like this. Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.