https://gunlab.net/sunday-answer-4-12-15/ Adventures in gun building! Thu, 21 May 2026 18:19:14 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.1.41 https://gunlab.net/sunday-answer-4-12-15/#comment-10011 Sun, 19 Apr 2015 21:01:51 +0000 http://gunlab.net/?p=3256#comment-10011 This brought up an interesting memory. Mike, one of my Vietnam comrades said his dad was in north Africa during WWII. Apparently one of the troops got pissed at the old man and was ratted out that he was going to shoot him at an opportune moment! When the old man heard the rumor he had the first sergeant order his troops to turn in all the bolts for their M1’s and they put in the company safe. Shortly thereafter orders came down from above to get ready for the Battle of Kasserine Pass where Rommel kicked out asses! Low and behold when the troops got back their bolts about half of them wouldn’t go into battery and it took the company armorer 3 days to get the right bolts in the right rifle! I was of the opinion on M98 Mausers the German troops would place their bolts in a bucket of diesel when they were cleaning their rifles when they were done cleaning every trooper would just go to the bucket and pull out any bolt and have no headspace problems because of superior German machine tolerances and gages. That’s why I was surprised when you said on the above article that the firing pins didn’t interchange. Usually Euro guns are pretty well manufactured in my experience.

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