Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com,
I'm Ian McCollum, and I'm here today at the Rock Island Auction Company, taking a look at some of the guns
they're going to be selling in their upcoming February of 2018 regional auction, and today:
We're taking a look at a really nice example of a kind of unknown, but really cool, Mauser rifle.
This is a 1935 pattern Mauser made for the Chilean corps of, well, the Chilean Carabineros.
I guess I should say the Carabineros de Chile, which is their official name
These were rifles that were manufactured by Mauser in Germany in the mid-to-late 1930s,
which is kind of cool; for one thing, first off a lot of the Mausers at that point
were being manufactured by FN in Belgium;
and so the Mauser banner rifles
typically we associate with early German military production, and not so much external foreign contracts,
but this is one example of that. The Chileans ordered 10,000 of these rifles
for the Carabineros, and these guys are
sort of a combination of, they're sort of a military force, but they're also a police force.
This is a role and a sort of an armed group that exists in many countries around the world,
but it's something we don't really have in the United States.
Think of them kind of like an amalgamation of the FBI and the National Guard and the police.
Their jurisdiction is across the entire country and, in time of emergency or war, they are actually folded into the official military.
They're administered by the military,
but they do a lot of police sort of work as well so, an interesting
amalgamation sort of unit, similar to like the gendarmerie units you'll find in France and elsewhere in Europe.
Anyway, they're not strictly the national military, and they needed to supply their own firearms,
so they ordered these Mausers, ten thousand of them, in 7mm Mauser,
which was the standard Chilean military cartridge, in 1935 from the Mauser company in Germany and
a lot of these got imported into the US, I believe in the early 80s, and
a lot of them, like this one, are in really fantastic condition,
all matching, and they've got some really cool markings on them, so let's take a look at that.
The coolest marking on this thing is the one right on the receiver ring.
"Chile"; a cool pair of crossed rifles,
and then the slogan of the Carabineros, which is "ORDEN Y PATRIA", which is "order and fatherland";
or "order and homeland" depending on how you want to translate it; and Modelo 1935.
And then there are a bunch of other markings: There is the Mauser banner on the rear bridge of the receiver;
and, as you would expect for a Mauser produced rifle, on the left side of the receiver we have
Mauser-Werke, Oberndorf
The serial number is marked on the side of the receiver ring, and you'll note
this is a little bit different than a typical military serial number, so this says
"Serie C-dot-Ch", and that's "Carabineros de Chile"; number, in this case, Five-Sixty-Seven.
This particular rifle is all matched;
including the safety flag, the rear cap there, the bolt handle; either 567 or just 67.
Being German production, of course they put serial numbers all over the place, so the nose cap has one.
And even the cleaning rod has a "C. Ch 567", so it's even a matching cleaning rod.
Why they would need to serialize the cleaning rod...? That's just like, German obsessive compulsiveness right there, I think.
Magazine housing assembly right there is serialized...
The floor plate is serialized, I could go on and on...
And just in case that isn't enough cool stuff on the rifle, they also stamped this really ornate and well-preserved
Chilean crest in the receiver; the model number; I have not been able to determine exactly what this "C A I E"
stands for, but it was basically an acceptance mark for the rifles, so you'll find those on all of these as well.
Now in general, this is simply a Mauser bolt-action rifle,
but one that happens to have some specific interesting markings, and that was provided to a specific interesting customer;
however, there is one unique feature
to these Carabineros rifles that I will point out, and that is the sling attachments here.
So, the sling is mounted to the side of the rifle; that name "Carabineros" kind of implies horseback;
carbines were traditionally short rifles for mounted troops,
and the Carabineros have, and still to this day,
used horse transportation in many places. Chile has some pretty rural rugged areas,
and horseback can be, especially you know back when the Carabineros were founded in the Twenties,
horseback was one of the best ways to access some of those areas, and they still use horses today.
In order to facilitate this they put a sling ring on the side of the gun, so this acts,
this is basically a single point sling attachment; you would wear a sling cross brace across your body; you could snap it into this,
while riding on horseback; the rifle would hang down
at your side, maybe loose, maybe in a scabbard;
but it would ensure that you didn't drop the rifle, and it was always there
easily at hand, without having it,
you know, bouncing across your back like you might carry it normally on foot. Now when they put this together,
these actually started as a standard Mauser quick detach sling swivel;
you'll notice that
there is a swivel on the rifles on the bottom as well, and normally
you could take this from the side mount and you could move it to the bottom depending on how you wanted to carry it;
however by attaching this sling ring, they have made this quick detach mount
into a not-detachable-at-all mount that just, well, it stays there,
so this is the only way that the sling can be configured for the Carabineros.
One other neat little feature on here is the front sight; it's got some pretty hefty protective wings,
but then more importantly, you'll notice that the front sight is actually mounted in a diagonal dovetail
in the front sight base, and what that means is that, instead of
adjusting windage by having to use a punch and just tap the front sight left to right;
which if you've ever done that, what inevitably happens
is the first couple of taps it doesn't move, and you start hitting the thing harder and harder,
and the first hit where it actually moves, it jumps way farther than you actually want it to go,
and then you have to fight with moving it back and forth and trying to figure out exactly where it needs to be;
well, by having a diagonal bar like this, and the Swiss did this as well, (in fact the Swiss we're doing this way earlier than 1935),
it means you can actually tap the front sight forward and back and move it in much smaller, more controllable
increments to adjust your windage, so I think that's always been pretty cool.
So the Carabineros are actually a more recent organization than you might expect;
they were founded in 1927, so they just had their 90th anniversary last year.
They were formed by combining a couple of pre-existing groups that kind of did the same sort of job;
they were founded through a combination of the Rural Police, the Fiscal Police, (which were basically a city police force),
And what was called the Cuerpo de Carabineri, or Cuerpo de Carabineros,
which was sort of a military police force; you put all these guys together to get a single overarching organization
under the military authority to basically do the job of all three, so
it wasn't that long after they were formed that they went ahead and put in this order with Mauser for ten thousand of these 7mm carbines.
These are actually, at least some of them, still in use today;
not necessarily as like main service rifles, but they are still used for training and for parade and drill,
and it's pretty cool to see older style rifles like this still in use, they're certainly, you know...
You're not gonna beat the quality of a 1935 Mauser rifle.
Well if you would like to have this particular one for yourself,
it is being sold here at Rock Island as part of a larger lot;
if you take a look at the description text below you'll find a link to Rock Island's catalog page for this guy,
and there you can see the pictures and description for both this and the other rifles that it's being packaged with, and the price estimate and
all that sort of good stuff. If you're interested in participating in the auction you can even do that right through their website.
Thanks for watching.