Hi, I'm Ian
Thanks for tuning in to another episode on Forgotten Weapons.com Today we're here in our part of our reference collection
We've got another interesting rifle to take a look at, we have a Mannlicher Model 1901 Carbine today.
Most of the early automatic pistols were sold
either as pistols or as carbines. Either by and often cases both
by having removable shoulder stocks that could be used with the handgun version of the firearm or
as complete Carbine variants that didn't have a standard pistol grip and instead had a
typical wood stock on them. The Mannlicher 1901 is
kind of like this. They were available both as a handgun, a
handgun with a detachable shoulder stock, and also as a carbine with in this case 12 inch barrel and a complete fixed
wooden buttstock.
So disassembly of the Mannlicher carbine starts
with this tab right here. There are a couple different versions of this. This is actually an early prototype of this particular gun.
The production ones had a
disassembly notch that was shaped a little differently and actually hidden inside the receiver a bit. On this one
we pull this all the way back
and
the entire trigger assembly and magazine housing comes out as a single unit. Once that's done
the upper assembly of the gun slides right off.
That's a basic field-stripped
display of this particular gun.
You do have to have the hammer cocked to disassemble it.
The locking piece here is held in place by a single pin. It's not threaded or anything. It's just
pushed out and the locking piece drops out of the upper receiver.
Once the locking piece is removed you still have the bolt
in here under spring pressure.
The way to remove this is simply to pull it back until the handle is right here, and then the whole thing drops down.
Just like that
When this is inside the bolt
even at full extension there's very little loose spring available. That's a good feature most the other pistols of this, era
had a lot more spring
accessible like that
and we're a lot more prone to kinked recoil springs.
On this a little bend in the spring isn't going to hurt anything because there's so little space available for it to kink.
Here is the bolt in the the locking piece inside the upper receiver and
this is in a locked position right now,
See that this locking piece is flush up against the bolt, what happens when this reciprocates is
that the locking piece is forced downward and the bolt slides back on top of it.
When the bolt comes all the way forward the locking piece is forced up against it again;
Thus as long as the upper receiver of the gun is under spring pressure and being pushed forward
the bolt remains locked.
So this is the configuration of all the parts internally when the guns locked and ready to fire without the frame around it and
what you can see is
the locking lug
is held up by the bottom frame of the gun and it's holding bolt in place. When the slide and bolt rotate backwards
it pushes this locking lug down and allows the bolt to travel rearward. When this comes forward
everything is pushed back up into a locked position again.
One element that the Mannlicher has that was a bit unusual for its time
was that everything is contained within the receiver of the gun. You can see the back end here is entirely closed off and
the bolt travels entirely within the receiver.
Compare that to something like a "Broom-Handle" Mauser,
You can see how far back the bolt cycles every time you fire.
Without with having a system like this there's always a slim potential that if something breaks this bolt goes shooting back through your forehead and
even if not, it's a good entry point for dirt and Debris and just generally not
real elegant engineering.
So compared to its most common competitor at the time the C96 Mauser you can see that the Mannlicher is
shorter overall, it has a shorter bolt on it,
Obviously nothing extrudes out the back of the Mannlicher. This is just overall a very compact very convenient
for cute little gun.
The safety notch is back here this catch is pushed up and forward to engage the safety
very simply and ambidextrous
Snap it back down to fire.
The other interesting control you'll see on the Mannlicher is this lever, that is actually directly connected to the hammer.
So this allows you to re-cock the gun
without messing with the bolt if you have a light strike.
Simply pushing that down re-cocks the hammer.
Now this the carbine version of the Mannlicher was available with a 12 inch long barrel here.
And really a standard size, maybe a little bit shorter than normal shoulder stock.
Comparing that to an M1 carbine,
generally regarded to be a very compact convenient light rifle. You can see it's significantly smaller.
Accuracy on the the Mannlicher was actually remarkably good.
The one the one caveat to it is the barrel does recoil
as part of the action so you really have to hold the magazine well instead of holding the forend.
If you would like to know a little more about these guns and you happen to speak German
we do have a copy of one of the original manuals scanned and available on Forgotten Weapons
Will be adding anything extra we can find on Mannlicher handguns and Carbines as well as time goes.
We hope you enjoyed the episode,
if you ever run across one of these now you'll know how it works and how to take it apart, thanks for watching.