Early Mauser Semiauto Rifles

We’ve had a few photos of early Mauser semiauto rifles in the Vault for a while, accompanied by a very brief blurb I wrote up. Well, I got a somewhat disgusted-sounding email from a reader a few days ago explaining how my description of them was pretty much all wrong. I’ll be the first to acknowledge that I’m always learning new things, and early Mauser rifles are definitely not my specialty. So our reader, going simply be the name Pointless, generously wrote up a much more useful article to go along with those photos.

Paul Mauser began his development of semiauto rifle designs in 1897, with a short-recoil design that would ultimately kaboom during testing and cost Mauser an eye. Development continued nonetheless, with the Model 1905 long-recoil rifle and finally the 1906/08 design that was adopted in small numbers by the German Zeppelin corps before being replaced by the Mondragon.

You can read the whole article on the Early Mauser rifle page in the Vault, and I encourage you to do so – it’s a very interesting piece of rifle development. Thanks, Pointless!

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