http://hunting-washington.com/.../topic,107929.0.html

as you can see in this thread on hunting-washington dot com, this small ring mauser fired when the man's wife was rotating the bolt down. Broken firing pin, right?

judging by the bolt, its a 96, not a mexican small ring 98 --

glad she wasn't hurt -- the bolt appears to be intact, so take it apart and check the firing pin...

many mausers, 96 and 98, can be fired with out of battery - there are several reasons it could be fired out of battery...

a broken firing pin? it could happen.. but not likely to set one off when closing it ... unless broken and jammed, and alot of force was used, and quickly, to set it off -- i've fought light primer strikes on enfields, which dimple the primer, enough that i always am suspect of a broken firing pin claim...

glad she's alright --

quote:

Yea, if it should get reported, it should be to the Consumer Product Safety Administration.

You should tell the manufacturer

Should be easy enough, just jump in the wayback machine.


Another thing to look at is that normally on a small ring the only thing that stops out of battery firing is the bump on the front of the sear and the notch in the bolt. If someone tried to "improve" the trigger that feature may not be working. Of coarse even when working it only prevents the trigger from being pulled.

It's DEFINITELY NOT a 98, I agree with the 96 opinion.

A friend had this exact accident happen with an 1891 except it didn't break his thumb, only bruised his palm badly.

The culprit in my friend's case was the striker nose NOT being mechanically held back far enough to prevent a very slight protrusion when unlocked or partially locked. We concluded that the cocking piece had slipped off the sear at the moment he started to rotate the bolt handle, and that the resultant abrupt jar along with the slight striker nose protrusion was enough to set off the primer.

In any case a slight shortening of the striker nose apparently served to solve the problem, 'cause that fix happened 10 years ago and the rifle is still shooting fine since the repair.

These cock-on-closing Mausers are supposed to be dimensioned so that this type accident can't happen, by hard mechanical interference, but many times a too-long striker nose will allow too much protrusion when the handle is still up in the unlocked position. I've frequently seen examples where the firing position protrusion is in excess of 0.060", and many times this excess protrusion allows up to 0.010"-0.015" protrusion in the unlocked position.

Check yours, you might be surprised (grin).

A striker nose protrusion of 0.035"-0.040" is perfectly adequate to fire any primer if the rifle/ammo combination is headspaced correctly. Unfortunately we have become accustomed to the much greater military protrusion dimensions, designed to function with merely-close-to-spec ammo.
JMOFWIW, regards, Joe

7 mm with a hinged trigger guard, rounded underside rear tang, pre-98 M93 bolt shroud equals most likely a M93-95 Spanish/Chilean. Stock trigger would have a pin that would prevent the sear from releasing unless the bolt was in battery. If it released the striker before closure, the FP broke in the lug area or there was an issue with the sear/cocking piece interface, or somebody removed the safety pin from the sear.

Receiver is a 95 Chileno. Bottom metal off a Spanish mauser unless altered to be hinged.

Too many possibilities of what may be the cause.

Glad no one was seriously injured.

The receiver does not appear to be a 95 - no metal behind the bolt handle. The hinged floorplate was issue hardware on some Spanish M93s. Many of the bolts on thes old rifles have a badly worn camming surface on the rear end of the bolt. Sometimes you will find one with the firing pin projecting out of the bolt face.
If the trigger and sear are dirty and bound up on the pins the trigger action can get erratic too - meaning the cocking piece and the sear may barely engage. Any bubbafication of the trigger could also be a factor.

Operator error.

Sounds like the sear slipped by the cocking piece. Excess shroud wear? Loose trigger ass'y? Poor gal.

A friend of mine had his rifle fire when closing the bolt when out spotlighting deer. His rifle was a Parker Hale Mauser 98 derivative.
Anyway he was resting his rifle over his brother's shoulder to take the shot at a deer in the light and closed the bolt with the rifle firing. Luckily he had put the rifle over his brother's shoulder before closing the bolt (his brother's only remark was "gee that was quick") and the bolt was obviously in battery when it fired so no harm was done other than they did not get the deer!

My friend traced the problem, which had never occurred before, to the fact that he had only just taken the action out of the stock to give it a good clean up and when he put it back into the stock and tightened up the action screws the rear screw protruded through the tang just enough to lift the cocking piece which slipped over the sear as the bolt closed. It appears he had not checked everything out after his cleaning session or did not notice that the bolt was uncocking on closing, if indeed it did everytime.

Perhaps the stock had shrunk a little and the rear screw was overtightened. Filing off a few threads from the end of the screw, tightened everything back up and my friend never had any more issues.

quote:

My friend traced the problem, which had never occurred before, to the fact that he had only just taken the action out of the stock to give it a good clean up and when he put it back into the stock and tightened up the action screws the rear screw protruded through the tang just enough to lift the cocking piece which slipped over the sear as the bolt closed. It appears he had not checked everything out after his cleaning session or did not notice that the bolt was uncocking on closing, if indeed it did everytime.

Perhaps the stock had shrunk a little and the rear screw was overtightened. Filing off a few threads from the end of the screw, tightened everything back up and my friend never had any more issues.

Glad you found the problem.