The integral bolt handles on most 1893 (and 1895) Mausers were straight. An angled cut in the bridge had a camming surface to help with primary extraction. Its flat-bottomed receiver was machined from a steel forging. The resulting 1893 “Spanish Mauser” was an instant hit, snapped up by armed forces worldwide. Cartridges fed in a staggered column from a flush box. Dual humps on the trigger yielded a two-stage pull. Vertical, it held the cocking piece off the sear but allowed bolt cycling. At “right horizontal,” it locked bolt and striker. The safety became a wing pivoting atop the bolt sleeve. The rifle chambered the new 7×57 cartridge, a standout among early smokeless, rimless rounds.īarely a year passed before Paul refined his rifle. A sear pin nixed firing until the bolt was locked. The 1892 had a fixed, single-stack magazine which, like the 1889’s different box, protruded from the rifle’s belly. Engaging a big chunk of the case rim, it tugged hulls from hot, dirty chambers. Collared to the bolt body, it gripped the rising cartridge before it aligned with the bore, and cleared the breech even if shooters short-cycled. The subsequent Model of 1892 had Mauser’s long, non-rotating extractor, now hailed as the most reliable claw ever. The trigger could be pulled with the bolt out of battery. The narrow extractor and its small spring could fail. Still, the 1889 (and 1890 Turkish and 1891 Argentine Mausers, all bored for the 7.65×53 Mauser) had flaws. The one-piece bolt, bored from the rear, had twin front lugs and the box could be loaded by a stripper clip. Paul’s first successful smokeless arm, the Model of 1889, established him as the Continent’s dominant gun designer. In 1889 Fabrique Nationale d’Armes de Guerre (FN) emerged in Liege to build Mauser rifles for the Belgian government. Reliable but crude, the 71/84 soon gave way to better Mausers. After Wilhelm died young in 1882, Paul designed a nine-shot tube magazine for the 1871 rifle.

The firm delivered the last Model 1871s ahead of schedule in 1878. Undaunted, Paul and Wilhelm earned enough making sights to build a factory.Įventually awarded a contract for 100,000 rifles, they partnered with the Wuerttemberg Vereinsbank of Stuttgart to buy the Wuerttemberg Royal Armory.

Alas, the brothers pocketed just 15% of what they’d expected and the new rifles were to be built in government arsenals, not at the Mauser shop. In 1872 the Mauser Model of 1871 became Prussia’s infantry rifle. Wilhelm’s business acumen brought it to military trials. Together with his brother Wilhelm in Oberndorf, Germany, Paul’s mechanical genius birthed a single-shot rifle firing an 11mm (0.43″) black-powder cartridge hurling 385-grain bullets at 1,400 fps.

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