Mismatched to the receivers they are in? Seems like a very high % of the bolts aren’t original. Any specific reason why?

you tend to throw things together really fast when bombs are falling on you

Funny but definitely not true; no factory assembled rifles with mismatched numbers. Quality control is amazingly good right up to the war's end; polish and finish of metal did deteriorate a bit. Varied by plant. All were civilian contractors in WW2. Ok, Gustloff is special. Another story. They did quit numbering certain parts later in WW2, like bands and trigger guards (it varied by plant), but the bolts are always numbered to the rifle. Most small arms plants in WW2 were not bombed (Oberndorf was), but they were not a high priority. Fuel and bearing production plants were far more important. After all, a soldier with a rifle is useless unless he can be transported, provided air support, and logistically supplied with food and ammo, etc.
The reason is that they have mismatched bolts is that bolts are easy to remove, either in the field, or later. Often captured rifles were stripped of the bolts so they could not be used; bolts were thrown into the creek, etc. Lots of reasons for mismatched parts, but the factory is not one of them.

Between wars, arsenal rebuilds, enemy captured weapons, weapons resold many times to many different countries, the reasons are endless. I would say that arsenal rebuilds are the biggest culprit. When changing barrels out you can adjust headspace with a mismatched bolt, or, as they probably did, index the barrel and reach into a box of bolts until you find one that headspaces. Third world arsenals can be lax about such matters and if the mismatched bolt headspaces within spec, it does not matter, but you would think that it would not have been that hard to keep them together.

Actually, the tolerances were so well held to that there is a very high probability that any bolt made at any time, in any factory, will give acceptable and safe headspace in any other rifle. Based on checking more a few (hundred) Mausers. Which is why you can take most any bolt and put it in most any Mauser and have a safe rifle. (Field reject gauge) The safety/trigger interface is far more likely to be an issue than headspace.
If it went through an arsenal rebuild, which most of them did not, they would have checked the headspace. No country would arm it's soldiers with an unsafe weapon.
Consider US weapons; we did not number the bolts. Do you think that our manufacturing was better than the Germans? It wasn't. More capacity, yes.

I had a friend that worked for Century in days gone by and he tells that much of the mismatch is due to the importation process where bolts and rifles were shipped separately. No explanation as to why but he reports receiving them in the warehouse in separate containers.

And if any other Army cleaned weapons like the US one does, we do not place any effort to make sure the original bolt goes back into it's place. I do not know what any other country's soldiers were told, but I suspect they were told nothing. So when the guys are all sitting around the solvent trough, or however they did it, no one cared which bolt went where. I suspect the Germans were told to make sure.
We used to remove the bolts from our M14s and store them in the safe. Totally random; no issues. We're talking about 1000 of them.

what i had been told is that when weapons where rounded up from prisoners and from depots, that the fastest way to deactivate a bolt gun was rifle in one pile, bolt in another --- bolts could go in a barrel and be driven away pretty quickly .....

made, and still makes, perfect sense to me .. no bolt, no gun, and since one country isn't likely to re-arm with the defeated country's firearm AND you wanted to control the guns ... well, bolts in a barrel take up WAY WAY WAY less room than trying to, well, you get it...

by the by, this was explained to me why an arisaka with matching bolt AND flower was more than 10X the price of a mix match .. i wasn't interested in the rifle, per say, but there was literally two on the gent's table, with crazy difference in price
j

quote:

Originally posted by dpcd:
And if any other Army cleaned weapons like the US one does, we do not place any effort to make sure the original bolt goes back into it's place. I do not know what any other country's soldiers were told, but I suspect they were told nothing. So when the guys are all sitting around the solvent trough, or however they did it, no one cared which bolt went where. I suspect the Germans were told to make sure.
We used to remove the bolts from our M14s and store them in the safe. Totally random; no issues. We're talking about 1000 of them.

When I was in the service at the M60 qualification range some of the recruits were assigned to clean the weapons after being fired so much. I was test firing one of the cleaned MG and this happened. The top latch cover blew off and the M60 emitted quite a bit of blow back. I believe the bolts were mixed.

Cool info, thanks. Makes sense.

That was not due to a mismatched bolt; a failure like that is due to firing unlocked. Even with the wrong bolt it is designed not to fire when unlocked. Is the primer indented?

Jeff is right; as for the arisakas; when they were captured they have the Mum; when surrendered we let them grind off the Mum as that was the royal symbol.

quote:

Originally posted by dpcd:
That was not due to a mismatched bolt; a failure like that is due to firing unlocked. Even with the wrong bolt it is designed not to fire when unlocked. Is the primer indented?

Bolt mismatch was just my guess. Several NCO’s collected up the weapon and carried it off. I managed to keep one piece of brass.

Bolt not matching would not cause that. Study the M60; the firing pin can't contact a primer unless the bolt is rotated and locked.
Could be a hang fire, but it fired while unlocked. Even the wrong bolt would not allow the firing pin to contact the primer unless locked.
I'm not sure that M60s had numbered bolts; we only used M219s (junk) ; later M240 (fantastic) as the coax MG on tanks.

Biggest reason for mismatched bolts (shouldn't matter) is that during a war, guns dropped by dying soldiers, etc., were gathered up off the battlefield and taken to repair facilities where they'd be stripped and all bolts in the tub and all whatever, in that tub. Then cleaned and put back together. This was especially true of the M1 Garand, (I know it's not a bolt gun, but a war implement just the same), have a Winchester action, HR bolt, someone elses op rod, etc. they were made to be taken apart and thrown back together, without worrying about if THIS part exactly matched that one. Perhaps with a bolt gun, they'd be head spaced checked, and a bolt that head spaced okay, installed, but that'd be it. No lack of safety.

One also have to remember they were tools not collector items.

quote:

Originally posted by tysue:
Biggest reason for mismatched bolts (shouldn't matter) is that during a war, guns dropped by dying soldiers, etc., were gathered up off the battlefield and taken to repair facilities where they'd be stripped and all bolts in the tub and all whatever, in that tub. Then cleaned and put back together.

Not arguing that this is a part of it, though the numbers don't back this as the majority of the rifles, as the majority of soldiers were NOT killed or wounded in battle.. Even germany, where roughly 2.1M were killed (and HALF of those on the eastern front) out of an army of roughly 16.5M

and those guys were the ones WITH the mausers.

Percentage-wise, the Russians likely had the highest soldier death/rifle reuse - with anecdotes that "1 in 5 where issued a rifle, the other 4 given ONE clip of 7,2x54, and told to pick up the rifle when the other was killed, and keep fightin"g.... with Finland being the SOLE country to REALLY rework battlefield captures, which led to the desirable tikka or valmet barrels on some nagant variants.


I submit that your position COULD account for some mismatches, though either war-time that being a highly localized and segmented set, and may have a higher correlation post-war, though I would expect that this actually had more of a "additional mixation" than the source of the mix.

i could be entirely wrong, but the whole idea of deactivating weapons of war QUICKLY (other examples include artillery breech blocks, spiked tank barrels, burning ammo, and shooting engines, as well as destroying comms gear) ...

let's say 1,000 enemies were captured .. and you CAN'T carry away the rifles .. at 10# (it's handy, not accurate) per rifle, as well as cubic size, you can't rapidly ensure the rifles aren't used against you .. but a 55 gallon drum in a truck could carry away a HUGE number of bolts, ..

and if it's 10 enemies, one could carry away the bolts, leaving the rifle as just a club

I tend to agree with this notion. Can you imagine trying to reunite matching bolts and rifles if shipped separate? Lets say Century imports 30,000 Columbian Mausers and the bolts are in drums. You would have to catalog and index each bolt into a retrievable system in order to grab a rifle and find the matching bolt. Well beyond the resources of an importer.

quote:

Originally posted by z1r:
I had a friend that worked for Century in days gone by and he tells that much of the mismatch is due to the importation process where bolts and rifles were shipped separately. No explanation as to why but he reports receiving them in the warehouse in separate containers.

Most of the vet bring back 98ks I have (I have every variation), have matching bolts. Most of the ones I got from any of the importers, and we used to drive up to Springfield Sporters and buy them by the truck bed load at $40 each, don't. So, the importers making them mismatched is the answer.
I have also heard the story first hand, where soldiers threw German bolts into the brush and left the rifles because they couldn't carry them. But those would be a minority.

My theory on why the bolts and receivers were shipped separately is so the importers could avoid regulations on importing complete firearms. Shipped separately, they are considered parts.

That’s my guess....

My resource: retired NY Policemen that retired and moved to Deming, New Mexico:

They said it was easier to neatly stack Mausers without the bolts. They said when they were notified of large shipments that were going to be distributed to gun dealers in the area they made an effort to get the rifles back with the matching bolt. They made a coordinated effort to get the gun dealers to list the serial number of bolts and rifles.

The dealers had rather sell rifles with matching numbers so they welcomed the effort.

F. Guffey

Rifles I saw at three big importers were stacked on pallets like cord wood. Bolts in didn’t matter.

That's likely where most of the "compression dents" and gouges came from. Especially the rear sight slider checkering imprints! But in those days they were next to junk and nobdy really cared that much. I will say that the Brazilian and Argentine Mausers were generally matched. Others not so much.

quote:

Originally posted by dpcd:
Rifles I saw at three big importers were stacked on pallets like cord wood. Bolts in didn’t matter.

quote:

Originally posted by Uncle Grinch:

It looks pretty clear to me that the shoulder was about .150" +++ short of headspace in this picture.

I could be wrong, just doubt it.

Looks like a lot more than .150; note that there is no neck left. So it fired at the exact length of the neck, out of the chamber. Only way that can happen is a hang fire; the bolt can't rotate, nor can the firing pin hit the primer, when the bolt is that far out.
The M60 does not have adjustable headspace or timing, like the Browning designs do, so that is not the issue.

quote:

Rifles I saw at three big importers were stacked on pallets like cord wood. Bolts in didn’t matter.

And if the rifles arrived in NY on pallets no one would know what a forklift was.

F. Guffey

I purchased 4 Mausers that were sold with the understanding the receivers were suspect. At the time the receivers were on their 2 barrel and the bolts were not salvageable. I saved the barrels for gages.

I tested all 4 receivers with one barrel and one bolt, the receivers were not suspect. I have one M1917 with a chamber that is .002” longer than a field reject length chamber. I have fired minimum length/full length sized cases it the M1917; the ejected cases did not stretch between the case head and case body because my cases do not have head space. My fired cases did get longer from the shoulder to the case head, my original shoulder did not move, my new shoulder formed when I fired the case. AND my necks got shorter.

Mixed bolts? I had a perfectly good bolt in a perfectly good Mauser; Instead of changing the bolt I changed the chamber. I chambered the Mauser to 8MM06, it started out as a 8MM57.

I fired an 8MM57 round in the 8MM06 chamber. The case did not stretch between the case head and case body, the shoulder did not move but the case increased in length .127” from the case head to the shoulder. The shoulder I started with became part of the case body; the shoulder became part of the case neck. The neck almost disappeared.

The case got shorter ‘big time’ between the end of the neck and case head. The no-neck cases told me where the brass went.

F. Guffey

quote:

Originally posted by Uncle Grinch:
My theory on why the bolts and receivers were shipped separately is so the importers could avoid regulations on importing complete firearms. Shipped separately, they are considered parts.

That’s my guess....

I do know that some dealers here have not been too concerned with matching parts in all matters.

I wanted to buy a milsurp Greek MS 30 years ago but could not find one at the importer's with both good wood and a reasonable bore. So, the dealer told me to find one with a good bore and another with a good stock. When I'd done that he just swapped the stocks over, even though they had serial numbers, too.