Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I am Ian McCollum, and today we are taking a look
at a pretty cool hybrid Steyr-Mannlicher carbine.
Now this started as an Austrian Army issue Model of 1890 carbine,
but at some point in its life it was updated to basically the 1895 pattern.
But not quite entirely, and it retains distinctive characteristics of both.
Now Bulgaria did some of that work themselves I believe during World War One,
but this isn't a Bulgarian gun, this is a gun that started off as an Austrian issue rifle.
It was then presumably, we kind of have to do a little bit of guesswork here,
but it probably was then given over to the Italians as war reparations after World War One.
At which point it probably found its way down to Ethiopia. It certainly came out of Ethiopia,
this is one of the guns out of the large batch of all sorts of interesting stuff
that's being imported out of Ethiopia by Royal Tiger/Inter Ordnance.
At any rate, while in Ethiopia it was officially marked and used by AOI,
which is the Italian East African Corps, so it's got that going for it.
And then it ended up here in the United States.
But what's cool about it is it's a uniquely Ethiopian pattern.
Because this isn't something that was actually done by the factories.
So let's take a closer look at it.
One of the things you can definitely say about a lot of these Ethiopian rifles
is that they are in relatively pretty poor condition.
This one in particular has been used and abused for, well,
if we look at the top of the barrel here we will see a "w-n", and then a proof mark, and then a 92,
indicating 1892. So this gun was proof tested in 1892, which would make it 128 years old now.
Which is pretty fantastically old.
This ... carbine is older than any living human on earth, how about that comparison?
If we move over to the receiver here, we'll see the manufacturer marks,
this is "OE WG Steyr", that was the factory that started production of these.
They would also end up being produced (Steyr M95 pattern straight pulls that is)
at the FÉG plant in Budapest.
So the Austro-Hungarian Empire would have its arms produced by two independent factories
to provide some redundancy, and just extra manufacturing capability.
Now the really distinctive element of the 1890 pattern carbine is this rear sight.
This follows the form of the rear sights that were on all the previous models
of Mannlicher straight-pull rifles, the 1886s, 1888s, and 1890 rifles.
You can see that it is graduated up to 2,400, but that is not metres, that is 'schritt'.
One schritt is equal to .82 metres, or about 2.7 feet. It's basically a pace.
So that's a unit of measurement that makes sense, but today obsolete and archaic.
And to adjust this there is a little spring in between these two legs,
you squeeze those together, and then you can bring them up to whatever particular range setting you like,
the ones on the left are held in place by this left bar,
the ones on the right are a half step off and held in place by the right bar.
Now as originally adopted by the Austo-Hungarian Empire, there were three different versions of 1890 carbine.
One of them had no bayonet lug at all, and the other two had a bayonet lug that was mounted on the side.
... Actually it would have been this side, the same way as the earlier 1880 through 1890 pattern long rifles.
This one has the nose cap that is distinctively from an 1895 pattern carbine,
which has a bayonet lug on the bottom and a stacking rod.
This ... would have been designed to fit the exact same bayonet that was on the 1895 long rifle. So,
basically the short version of what happened in Austria- Hungary was that the 1890 rifle had a wedge lock system.
And right about this time period, between 1888 and 1895, the Austro-Hungarians were looking for
a smokeless powder replacement for their original compressed black powder military cartridge.
And the wedge lock of the early straight pulls had been just fine for a black powder loading,
but it wasn't really strong enough for long-term durability with smokeless powder.
And so Mannlicher went back to an early trials design with a rotating bolt,
and ... brought that out for the 1890 carbines.
So the 1890 rifle has the wedge lock, the 1890 carbine has this rotating bolt.
I should say, if you are interested in all the details of this developmental story,
C&Rsenal, Othais and Mae, have ... three separate epsiodes covering
the development of all the Mannlicher straight pulls through World War One.
So, check that out for the full details. But the short version is you get a rotating bolt,
but we still have this kind of bulky tangent sight here.
Now, in 1895 they decide to adopt a new long rifle, and they want this stronger rotating bolt system,
but they're also modernising other elements, they're using the bayonet that I described already.
And they transitioned from this old style of sight to a flat ladder sight.
So they decide at the time to update the 1890 carbines as well,
or not so much to update them, but to design and adopt a new pattern of 1895 carbine
that has mechanically the same bolt, but it will have standardised furniture,
standardised bayonet, standardised rear sight style.
What we will also see on this particular one is that it has a large thumb pad on the cocking piece,
that was developed for the 1895 rifles and carbines.
And that has been ... swapped into this 1890 carbine,
because ... the original 1890 carbine just had a round cocking piece,
but the two parts are interchangeable between the models.
The 1890 carbines also had a trap in the stock and in the putt plate for a cleaning rod, 1895s did not.
This has been given an 1895 stock. It has a bottom mounted sling swivel only.
A lot of the 1895s would eventually get side mounted sling swivels in the wrist of the gun,
as well as having either a sling bar or a sling swivel on the barrel band.
This has just a bottom sling swivel. So,
what we have here is an 1890 carbine that went to Ethiopia,
and at some point was basically put into 1895 furniture.
The stock is an 1895, the barrel band and the nose cap are 1895 pattern parts,
as well as the cocking piece being swapped in.
This was never an official Austrian thing, they didn't do this.
They ... did a lot of updates and changes to their 1895 carbines,
but only Bulgaria, as far as I am aware, ever actually converted 1890s to 1895.
And this is definitely not a Bulgarian issue gun.
Now I mentioned that this was Italian military as well.
And I can tell that from this round stamp, which is almost completely worn away.
But if we get it in the right angle like that, you can see a round stamp,
and it would have originally said, right up here, AOI.
... Part of the A and the O are sort of visible, the I is gone.
And that is Italian East Africa. So this is a distinctive and fairly well-known mark
that you will find on a wide variety of rifles that were used by basically native troops,
under Italian command, during the Italian occupation of Ethiopia in the 1930s.
I should also point out that I think that this is in 8x50.
I haven't actually done a chamber cast or anything to confirm it,
but that would fit with the chronology of the carbine.
The 8x50mm cartridge was the first adopted ... Austro- Hungarian smokeless powder round for these rifles.
In the 1930s they would adopt 8x56 kind of as a strengthened,
powered up version of the same round, primarily intended for machine guns.
But this particular carbine would have been given to Italy as war reparations in the 1920s, by the early 1920s.
It was sent to Ethiopia at some point during the 1920s, or possibly early 1930s,
and thus was not in Austrian military possession when Austria was doing that rechambering to 8x56.
I may be sounding like a broken record at this point, but I'm really enjoying
seeing some of the cool stuff that's coming out of Ethiopia by way of
... this continuing import from Inter Ordnance/Royal Tiger.
In this case Ethiopia is serving kind of as two different things.
First off, there's a lot of whacky, uniquely Ethiopian stuff, like this carbine, that is coming out.
And we saw that with some of the earlier guns. When we looked at Ethiopian Gras carbines,
you saw them in some unique patterns, ... they weren't factory patterns.
They were conversions, modifications, that were done in Ethiopia.
And I've seen some ... anecdotal pictures from other people who have got Ethiopian guns,
of patterns that just don't exist anywhere else.
And it's really cool to me to see some of the configurations that were put together in Ethiopia.
At the same time, some of the guns haven't been messed with at all, and in that case
Ethiopia has served as sort of a time capsule for us, preserving guns in states that we don't normally see.
Where, generally speaking, militaries would update various patterns of gun to new configurations, new standards,
but some of these things ended up in Ethiopia before the conversions were done and thus
they survive as collector's pieces now in those early configuration patterns.
I saw a picture of one, I think this is going into Inter Ordnance's owner's personal collection, but
an 1891 Mosin-Nagant, still in 1891 configuration.
Which is virtually impossible to find here in the United States today,
because everything that was in Russian military hands was updated,
either to 91/30 status, or went to Finland and was ... modified in various ways by the Finns.
But that's just one example.
So, anyway I'm getting kind of off track here.
This is ... one of the examples of something that is ... uniquely Ethiopian
with its combination of '90 and '95 features. So, hopefully you guys enjoyed the video.
Thanks for watching.
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