Tech Time with an 8mm Czech Mauser and an M14

Sangamon County Rifle Association
Right Reason on Second Amendment Rights
Springfield, Illinois

Brent Harney, SCRA Meeting, 12/05/11

January 2012 GunNews

Brent with a Czech Mauser from 1937

Brent brought in a couple of guns. The first rifle was a Czechoslovakian VZ24, 8 mm Mauser made in about 1937 along with some 64-year-old surplus Yugoslavian ammo.

Brent said he recently shot it at 100 yards, right out of the box and the iron sights were an inch high and an inch right.

Brent said he got his ammo at Bullet Express. It was fairly cheap, but corrosive.

One of the tricks with the old corrosive ammo is to clean with Windex because the ammonia and staff that's in Windex gets rid of the corrosive salts.

Mosin-Nagants are especially notorious for corrosion caused from corrosive ammo.

He also talked about old military gun cleaning kits damaging the barrel crowns of rifles with chains or other gun cleaning gear. Damaged crowns lead to poor accuracy. Just another thing to look for if you're wanting to buy an old military surplus rifle.

He showed how to release the bolt in the Mauser and some of the features the US Springfield 1903 rifle shared with the Mauser including the tangent rear sights or "volley sights".

The Springfield was so much of a copy of the Mauser the the US Government was taken to court by Mauser and sued for stealing their design after the end of World War I. The had to pay Mauser royalties for the Springfield design.

Tom Shafer noted that the Mauser action is very popular throughout the world and you still see it today. Harney agree, saying that our troops find them a lot in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Brent next picked up most of an old M14 rifle rifle, a civilian version of the select fire M14 used by the military to replace the M1 Garand.

He explained that they had a switch on the rifle, semiautomatic and automatic. If you had the little key switch you could use the happy switch to go full auto. The platoon leader kept the key because they didn't want everybody and their brother going full auto.

In 7.62 x 51, this is a 1962 Harrington & Richardson and when they demilled these, they did away with the receiver. Springfield Armory makes this same rifle today and it's called the M1A. Today's M1As are made with a cast receiver.

Brent's going to place his order for the parts he's missing to put this rifle together as a semi-automatic version of the old M14.

Brent continued on answering questions from SCRA members.

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