Military Mauser firing pins

[ovenpaa]

I had my M1930 Mauser bolt down today and noticed the firing pin has a Waffenamt stamp on it. The M1930 was built by Fabrique Nationale and I had a feeling the K98 pin was slightly longer as the bolts are of different lengths (I think!) If this is the case they would not be interchangeable.

It could be the rifle was in German hands at some point which might explain why the receiver has been scrubbed, especially it it had a liberal smattering of stamp on it and was re-purposed come the end of the war, however it could just be a German FP was fitted at some stage.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

[saddler]

What 3 digit code was on the stamp?

[ovenpaa]

I did not make a note of it, I will pull it apart again in the morning, measure it and record the stamp details.

[ovenpaa]

It is stamped WaA53 and numbered 31 77 on the flat side with the obligatory S on the other side. Wiki tells me this is Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nürnberg A.G.

The FP is 186,5mm in length

[ovenpaa]

I just measured the bolt body and it 161,5 which is around 6.36" or close enough to be a standard K98 type bolt which explains why a K98 firing pin fits. I could do with a chat with a Mauser man at this point.

[froggy]

The Germans have re-issued nearly every type of foreign made Mauser action rifles they could lay their hands on, including FN made ones . If your rifle were one of them, it would have more WaA control stamps scatered all over. I'd imagine yours merely had a firing pin raplacement fitted in ?

[WelshShooter]

My Yugoslavian M48 has a different firing pin to the regular kar98. The action, and therefore bolt-body and firing pin of a Yugo M48 are smaller than the German kar98. I'm not sure why the Yugoslavian's decided to do this, but it could be possible that other manufacturers did this too?

[ovenpaa]

FN also made the 'intermediate length' M24 which was a tad shorter than the standard Mauser length receiver