[ Swedish m/1894 and m/1894-14 ]
Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com.
I'm Ian McCollum, and I am here today at the Rock Island
Auction Company taking a look at some of the guns
that they're going to be selling in their upcoming
June of 2017 Regional Auction.
And today we're going to take a look at Swedish Mauser carbines.
They have several of them in this particular auction,
and I thought it would be a really good opportunity
to take a look at some of the changes that took place
with these carbines through their development and their service life.
These are really cool, elegant, handy little carbines
in the nice 6.5x55mm Swedish cartridge.
They are cool, it's about time we took a closer look at them.
So development of these started in the 1890s.
Actually before that, the Swedes had used the Remington Rolling Block for quite some time.
Remington was kind of in this position like Mauser.
In the mid-late 1800s Remington supplied
military arms for a very large number of smaller countries.
Countries that didn't necessarily have a lot of indigenous arms production.
They bought Remingtons, and then in the early 20th century they tended to buy Mausers.
And Sweden fell right into that paradigm.
In 1892 they decided to look for a replacement for the Remington Rolling Block.
Apparently this bolt-action magazine rifle
thing was probably a trend that was going to stick around.
So they tested a number of different mechanisms,
they tested Mausers, they tested Mannlichers, Lees, and Krag–Jørgensens.
The Krag–Jørgensen of course had been adopted, or would be adopted,
by several of their Scandinavian neighbours.
But the Swedes decided that the Mauser was the best system for them.
And so in 1894 they adopted a Mauser carbine,
the m/94 carbine, that's this rifle right here.
By the way, these are the exact same size,
but this one's in front, and I know it looks bigger on camera.
Anyway, interestingly the Swedes actually adopted a carbine
... several years before they adopted a full-length infantry rifle.
Maybe they were more interested in getting
repeating firepower for the cavalry quickly before the infantry.
Whatever their rationale, that was the first rifle that they adopted.
And also interestingly, and this is not unique to the Swedes,
the m/94 cavalry carbine had no bayonet lug.
We typically think of carbines as having bayonets, but a lot of people actually didn't.
Some of the early Lee carbines did not, many of the American carbines actually did not.
The US Krag–Jørgensen carbine did not have a bayonet fitting.
So the Swedes followed suit there, and production began in 1895.
Now the first guns were actually produced by Mauser in Oberndorf in Germany,
the company that had provided the rifles for Swedish trials.
What the Swedes did was they purchased about 12,000, I think it's actually 12,195,
of these carbines from Mauser while they set up production at the Carl Gustaf plant in Sweden.
So they both purchased rifles, and they purchased a licence to produce them on their own.
So the first couple of years they got new rifles in from Mauser
to start the transition to these new carbines.
And after that, subsequent production was done at Carl Gustaf.
In total another 115,000 ... carbines more would be made by Sweden,
for a total of about 137,000 of these carbines made total.
Now they did undergo one substantial modification and that was in 1914,
the Swedes did decide to add a bayonet lug.
I don't know the exact circumstances of this decision,
but my assumption would be that they realised that they were starting to issue these
to a lot of troops other than strict cavalry.
Cavalry originally didn't need a bayonet because, well, for one thing
they weren't fighting in a square, and they typically had a sabre.
Well, if you start issuing these out to guys like supply troops,
or drivers, or messengers, or artillery crewmen,
those guys have a more justifiable use for a bayonet.
They may actually be in ... hand to hand combat, and they won't have a sabre.
So, as with some other countries,
the Swedes decided to add a bayonet lug to the m/94 carbine.
And in this format, like this guy right here, this became the m/94-14 carbine.
And we'll take a closer look at exactly how the bayonet was fitted in a moment.
But there was then one other change to the guns,
which was actually a change to the ammunition.
And unlike most other countries, when this happened they didn't change the guns at all.
In 1941 the Swedes finally adopted a spitzer version of the 6.5x55 cartridge.
The rifles manufactured after '41 (by which time these carbines had ceased production),
the new rifles that were being manufactured had sights
that were calibrated for that spitzer ammunition.
Because it has a better ballistic coefficient they'll have less drop over range,
and so your sight calibrations have to be a bit different.
Most countries when they made a change like this would go back
and modify the rear sights on all of their guns
so that they would work ... properly with the new ammunition.
The Swedes decided it really wasn't that big a deal,
and so instead they just mounted a little guide plate on the side of the older carbines
to tell you what your sight settings should actually be.
So, why don't we go ahead and take a closer look at that,
as well as the mechanical elements of this rifle
that distinguish it from some of the other Mausers out there.
So the markings that we are most interested in are going to be on the top of the receiver crest,
and that's the date of production and the location of production.
So I have here one of the very first rifles made by Mauser in Oberndorf, dated 1895.
And then the subsequent Swedish production will have a Swedish royal crest on it.
And then Carl Gustafs Stads was the rifle factory, this is a 1907 production gun.
Now people are going to ask about Husqvarna.
Husqvarna did in fact make Swedish Mauser rifles, but they didn't make any of these carbines.
Or they didn't do the mass production on the carbines.
They did make at least a couple here and there,
but ... after standard carbine production had ended.
Mauser made these in 1895 and '96.
And then it appears that Carl Gustaf was up and running on these by like 1898,
and produced them ultimately until [1932].
But not in a continuous ... sequence.
There were ... periods where they produced a lot, and periods where they didn't produce really any.
You'll find that production is primarily between 1898 and 1907,
and then again between 1914 and 1918.
The rifle's serial number will be located on the left side of the receiver, right here,
along with an inspector's set of initials, that's the "JV".
And then you'll also find three digits of the serial number on most of the major components.
You can see that here on the cocking piece,
here on the bolt release lever,
here on the top of the butt plate, and many other places.
Now mechanically the Swedish Mauser is a cock on closing action.
So the firing pin spring is not tensioned when you open the bolt.
And by the way, it does have a follower
that will stop the bolt from operating when the magazine is empty.
So that lets you know that you're out of cartridges.
When you then close the bolt, like a Lee-Enfield it gets to here
and then you have to tension the firing pin spring in order to close the bolt.
Some people prefer the cock on closing system,
some people prefer to have a cock on opening system, there are kind of arguments both ways.
Now, you have a standard Mauser-style flag safety
which can of course be engaged when the rifle is cocked.
The centre position is for disassembly.
And one of the things that the Swedes did ... that
was a change from the standard 1893 pattern of Mauser
was they wanted this set so that you could also engage the safety when the rifle had been fired.
Presumably for kind of a range protocol sort of thing.
You can always engage the safety on a Swedish Mauser, kind of a cool addition there.
They also added checkering on the top of the cocking piece
so that this can be gently lowered by hand.
In theory you could re-cock it by hand, but that's quite difficult.
The standard 1893 Mausers did not have this graspable piece there.
And then the Swedes also have a cutout for stripper clips.
That is of course how this would load, 5 rounds ... in a stripper clip.
And the bolt guide rib is slightly improved over the standard 1893 pattern
to make the bolt operation a little bit smoother.
The rear sight here goes up to 1,600 metres, a pretty standard ladder-type sight.
Like so.
You'll notice the little crown acceptance marks on pretty much all of the parts,
part of the inspection process.
And then these have the big protective wings
that are kind of typical on a number of early Mauser carbines.
Now the upgrade to the 1914 pattern was
basically the addition of this bayonet lug on the bottom.
This is a really long, hefty piece of hardware that they put on there with a couple of purposes.
There's a lug here on the bottom, and this is what the bayonet would actually attach to.
As with the British and the SMLE, this was there so that you weren't actually putting
weight on the barrel itself when hanging a bayonet on the end of the gun.
So the idea was to reduce the effect that the bayonet would have
on changing your point of impact, that's not a bad idea.
Now there's a difference you can see here.
This 94-14 has a muzzle that extends as far as the bayonet lug,
while this Model ... 1894 ... does not.
This one is actually quite unusual to find in this configuration,
and this is how all of these guns were originally made.
However, the barrel length on these things is 17.7 inches.
And when most of them were imported into the United States
the National Firearms Act in the US
still held that 18 inches was the minimum legal length for a rifle barrel.
Anything less would have ... required registration as a short-barrelled rifle.
So when these were imported, the vast majority of them
had about a 3/8 inch extender permanently affixed to the end of the barrel.
And that's what you have right there.
So we have a quite substantial bayonet here.
It does actually have a button locking the scabbard in place.
It is a double-edged bayonet
and simply locks onto the locking lug and the front lug.
The slings on these carbines are kind of an interesting design,
they have a standard loop up front, and a lot of adjustability to them.
And then they go through the stock here,
kind of like a German style of sling, but they are a little bit different.
On these Swedish carbines the rear half of the sling
is actually permanently screwed into the stock.
And we've got a buckle right there.
And so what happens is the end of the sling comes through the slot in the stock,
hooks onto this buckle, and then there's a little keeper here
for the ... leftover bit of the sling there.
So you can take the sling off, but this rear buckle remains attached to the rifle.
Some of the guns will have a unit marking disc up here on the top,
although this is relatively uncommon. And this one has actually had its markings ground off.
More commonly you'll find a unit disc here.
And that disc identifies the unit that the rifle was issued to, not surprisingly.
So this is I.5, this is the Fifth Infantry, company number eight,
and this is rifle number 158 of that company.
You'll find a whole bunch of different abbreviations down here.
As well as occasionally designations for training rifles,
for rifles that were issued to the Landstorm, the National Guard, and various other groups.
Now I mentioned that when they changed cartridge they didn't bother changing the sights,
they just gave you a table of new ranges and sight settings to use,
and this is an example of that table.
Now you may be looking at this and thinking, "Those idiots put it on upside down."
But they were actually a little more clever than that.
This [chart] is fitted such that when you are holding the rifle right handed,
as the vast majority of soldiers would,
you can simply tilt the rifle slightly to the side, look down over the side of the stock,
and read that ... chart while you have the rifle shouldered.
So you don't have to take the rifle down and flip it around,
and then try and figure out what your sights are supposed to be.
You can actually read it from a shooting position.
And if we take a closer look at this, you'll note that this is specifically for the m/94,
because the m/96 long rifles would have a slightly
different set of changes because they had longer barrels.
And this translates into basically "shooting spitzer rounds".
What you do is this is the range that you want to shoot at,
and this is the sight setting that you use.
So if we want to shoot at 50 metres,
we're going to set the sight to 300, which is its lowest position.
And then we're going to aim 2 decimetres low.
So 20 centimetres low, that would be about eight inches low.
I think they decided that ... people weren't shooting all that much at long range.
And so it was simpler just to do an adjustment table like this,
rather than go through and actually try and collect up all the rifles and replace their rear sights.
In addition to that aluminium plate that has been tacked onto the stock,
you will also sometimes find them with a paper chart
that has been shellacked onto the stock, and that's what we have in this case.
Now I should also point out that the change from ... round nose to spitzer
wasn't necessarily all that significant ballistically.
The original round was 156 grains at 2,300 feet per second,
or 10.1 gram at 700 metres per second.
The change to the spitzer reduced the bullet weight to 139 grains,
moving at 2,450 feet per second, which would be 9 grams at 745 metres per second.
So it was a change, it did impact the sight settings, but it wasn't a huge change.
Which may be why the Swedes didn't bother to make that change until 1941.
These carbines do get faked from time to time,
because they do command a premium over long rifles on the collectors market.
... So there are a couple of things that you can do to verify the authenticity
of a 94 or a 94-14 carbine.
The simplest one is to just compare the serial number and the production date on the receiver.
These [carbines] were made in a separate serial number range from the long rifles. ...
And so ... for example if you have an alleged carbine with a serial number over 140,000,
well, you know right away that that's not an original carbine
because they only made less than 140,000 of these.
Beyond that, when you have serial numbers that are in the potentially correct range,
you can compare those to the production date on the receiver
and see if that number actually matches what the production would have been in that year.
That's an option, and there are data tables out there on the internet of
production date and serial number for Swedish Mauser carbines.
You can also look at some of the elements like the
location of the ... grasping grooves in the stock,
because they were different on rifle and carbine stocks.
So if someone has tried to take a rifle stock
and cut it down to fit a carbine, that can usually be detected.
At any rate, there are a number of these guns here in this particular auction.
And so if you're interested in these two,
there are links to them in the description text below.
And there are several others in the catalogue,
so a bit of searching there can find you a couple more
if you'd like to pick up a handy little Swedish Mauser carbine for your own collection.
Thanks for watching.