Clips: Two major faults of the Gewehr 1888 

"The bolt release is biased such that it will allow anything to enter from the rear...." I knew a woman like that once.

I quite enjoy all the weird quirks of these early smokeless designs. Doesn’t mean I’d want to fight with them though.

I have both a Commision 88 and a Hanyang 88. Despite thinking that the rifles are essentially the same, the bolts are not infact, interchangeable. I discovered this when I had them both out and sitting next to each other. Being the curios fellow I am, I decided to see if the bolts were interchangeable. On first glance, they look exactly the same. The Hanyang bolt slipped easily into the receiver of the Commission rifle, but I could not fully close the bolt. On further inspection, the Hanyang bold is just a teensy tiny bit longer in the bolt head. I may be just not seeing correctly, however there is something different about the two bolts. However, you CAN put a Commission 88 bolt into a Hanyang 88 and fully close the bolt. It is probably extremely dangerous to attempt to fire the Hanyang in this configuration, as the chamber may not be fully closed and the headspace could be dangerously off and could cause a catestrophic failure of the rifle.

More training is never wrong. Even after leaving the Bundeswehr 13 years ago I am confident I still can assemble and disassemble the G36 without much problem. It just becomes a reflex at some point.

I do love how silky my 1890 Spandau 88/05 is. Massive difference over a Mosin.

On the second issue, the Ross rifle now feels less of a trouble maker!

Here's another factoid: the probably most famous user of a Gewehr 88 was the philosopher and Pour Le Merite-recipient Ernst Jünger. His rifle had the typical feeding issues as long as the lower dust cover was on the magazine. So he secretly took it off even though it was strictly forbidden. This is from his diary (not the memoir "Storms of Steel")

The clips are great and way better than being bored and falling asleep thru the longer version. You got to the point and explained it without all the minute details that are extremely boring.

Rushed development is dangerous thing indeed.

Me, with no experience with designing weapons or engineering: "wow what idiot thought that was a good idea?"

Othias its because of your videos I have made the purchase of all the 1& 2 wars rifles I own, and miss Mae's sometimes puns with you! Great stuff

Great video - love the clips.

Great video. Thanks.

Yay, more Clips!

There was a measure added to the rear of the bolt to somewhat protect the shooter in case of gas coming backwards through the receiver. The square sticking out from the left of the bolt nut was the solution to my knowledge as the earlier bolt nuts where only round

Things like this is why I actually like this channel

Why didn't the government ask Mauser if he had anything to bring to the table, anyway? It strikes me as one heck of an oversight to not ask the maker of your current service rifle what he thinks of this new smokeless malarkey.

Best channel on RU-vid change my mind

Thank you

I really these short info spots keep it up.

Yay bell notification worked for me.

Germany's Worst Rifle is actually a fair description and not click-bait, because it really was the only service rifle of the German state since the 1860s to have so many serious and even hazardous issues. Nothing comes close, despite the best efforts of the Internet to meme the G36 as hot-garbage.

Good to know. I love these "clips."

Wait a minute, isn't that how the Remington 700 works, and therefore thousands of other rifles with similar actions, that just push-feed right? Isn't this why when people are really serious, they want control round feed, they want a Mauser Claw? Because of this very thing, the boldface(bolt face, stupid voice translation) doesn't grab the round until you close the bolt.

good video

thanks german design commission

The Gewehr 88 was my first military surplus rifle purchase, and I bought it because of C and R. It's a great rifle IMO after its various magazine and other upgrades. It shoots well and is a great piece of history. Now I have 13 other Mausers (two Swedish Mausers and a Gewehr 1898 being my favorites) and Enfields mounted along side it on the walls of my garage. And my wife really does NOT like to watch Othais and Mae!

Very interesting and terrifying at the same time

The 8mm Mauser round concurrent with that rifle was a round nose as you'd find in tube fed rifles of the era. It's much blunter than the dummy rounds used in the video and blunter than the "S" cartridge that came along in 1903 which was also pretty blunt. So probably very unlikely to set off the round in front of it, though I'm sure if you jammed that bolt hard enough you might manage to stupid yourself out of a few fingers. Weirdly, I just learned this yesterday in a discussion about the famous Kodiak bear guide, Bill Pinnel. Pinnel preferred an 1888 Commission rifle (perhaps a carbine version) even though his heyday was in the 1940s/50s. I suspect he just trusted that big blunt early 225 grainer to give him all the penetration he needed.

H! The Duchy of Grand Elbonia needs your help. They've regained their independence after WW 1, but need to reequip their army. The Brown Bess muskets had proved inadequate. This being Elbonia, the new Minister of Defense is corrupt and has been bribed by an enemy to procure the worst assortment of small arms possible. He wants to purchase the worst rifle, carbine, and pistol possible. Both a revolver and automatic pistol are desired. The selection criteria of course include disparate ammo and perhaps a difficult to repair weapon. What weapons used in WW 1 should this fine fellow choose? His colleagues have little firearms familiarity beyond the Brown Bess, so he can get all but the most absurd guns past them.

Your comment about the revolver on matt and blonde went over both their heads.

We have C&R Clips, when are you going to release the C&R Magazine?

Is the second one only an issue with original 88s? My 88/05 will not close all the way if the bolt head is in wrong

Would the round nose of the Patrone 88 really set off a primer? They didn't use spitzer bullets back then.

Did the Mauser 74/8something have the same uncontrolled feed? And what about the Chinese version?

Much like clips sped up the loading of firearms considerably, the Clips series has allowed C&Rsenal to deliver content at an unprecedented rate.

Im unusually excited for my shirts, I’m not normally excited for shirts

Cool

What happened to the weekly Minute of Mae?

I bet you give good hugs.

Does the Mosin-Nagant rifle have the same issue? I mean, is it capable firing a round without the bolt head?

And everyone slags off the Ross. Even before you said it, my instant reaction was poor/inadequate training. Which was the real issue with the Ross.

Dang, I got a lucky refresh lmao

Any book recommendations about the 'controversy' of the 88? My search doesn't lead anywhere. Oh I'm a patreon supporter and love the shows!

To get the terminology right, small arms ammunition doesn't detonate, the propellant burns, the tiny amount of primary explosive in the primer does detonate though.

Bummer. It’s probably out of warranty, too.

Okay, but a heck of a lot better than the previous Gew. 71/84 service rifle.

Ironically, that first problem is still probably the most common malfunction I've seen with the M16/M4/AR. If you ride the charging handle forward at all, the extractor won't pick up the cartridge and it won't fire. You can pull the charging handle back and slam another round into the back of the first one though. The fix was also the same: just train people not to do that. Technically, the forward assist will completely fix the problem if you know you did it, but as all the "gun experts" will tell you: the forward assist on an AR is utterly worthless and serves no purpose. I've never personally seen one fire out of battery from this in particular but I guarantee it could happen.

👍👍👍

its all in the training

You have to wonder if Germany should have simply taken a bit more time to get this rifle out, and how it would have been different if they had done so; the Lebel, while a massive leap in terms of propellant, wasn’t that much better than the 71/84, and many countries took much longer to get a smokeless rifle out; I feel like the problems with extraction and double feeding were inherited from the 71/84, and the barrel bursting was a result of lack of testing and a rushed development, so it’s possible both could have been avoided by doing that; I also wonder how the later Mauser rifles might have differed, since they were largely developed out of spite from this gun, and the designs after the 1891 had features to counter the double feeding problem, so perhaps they might have gone a different direction there; moreover, the flawed barrel and bolt face were developed from the earlier Mausers, so perhaps they might have not corrected those issues until much later, and either in a way the commission came up with or in some completely different method, or possibly just what was done in our own time but further down the line. To be frank, Germany likely could have gotten by with a 71/84 using smokeless powder as a stopgap until they sorted out the flaws in this rifle, though it likely would have resulted in the same flaws we see here showing up on that rifle, but because they were so desperate to keep up with the French, they pushed this rifle out before it was quite ready, inadvertently screwing over (and possibly saving the name of) Paul Mauser (who may never have started his line of rifles had he been invited to work on this one), and ultimately pushing ahead arms development by several years as a result

Does it hurt when you do that? Well don't do that! Training accomplished.

only if they waited a year for the 1889 mauser

Tip to butt.....always gotta be weary

But I just watched the 88 episode last night, and you want me to watch it again? Ok

lads, behold the slam fire bolt action

The G36 would like a word.

Dude l know texted me a week or so ago asking if the gew88's he bought could be rebarreled to .338 Lapua........

Yet many nation adopt them.

First one; yeah i've seen that before as said its not a fully unique issue. Second one: Hoooooly crap!

Had a commission rifle when I was younger that was missing the bolt head I was going to shoot it but talked to older gun enthusiasts and he told me not to without that part

I still think it’s wrong not seeing her in the video

My cousin almost did this with his mosin

"if you don't put the bolt head back on then the gun can misfire" "The Mauser is a terrible gun because if you load it and point at your head and pull the trigger then you die"

i love you mae ; )

They should have just contracted Mauser instead of having a Commission come up with this silly rifle.

repeating firearms didn't became reliable enough to be popularised long after they were first invented.

Yeah, id have to say its terrible. I have several. All of them have problems. The bolts are rarer than the rifles, and run about $300.00! Ejectors and extractors are unavailable. Dustcovers are rare and demand a premium. Mags wont swap between an 88 and 88/05 or 88/35 because the mag well hole in the stock has to be opened up for the taller walls on the 88/05/14/35 magazines. Not to mention the spring steel feed lip/ interruptor. My major issues are that my czech 1930s barrels are finicky on ammo- certain cases wont chamber fully. The rear sight slides are almost always missing and impossible to find. The extractor only pulls a spent case out 50% of the time, and the ejector only detaches the spent case from the bolt head face right on top of the magazines next round. And the rounds tip up after the bolt pushes them from under the feed lip/ interruptor, and they get stuck pointing up in the receiver bolt lug recesses....even if the rounds are, as Othias says," keep ' em to the back of the mag." Using a plate however to make it a single shot, it feeds and extracts fine. Id never use it in a war!

59th

Wow, what an unsafe, rushed, piece of junk the G88 is! Still, better than a Lebel

Эх, эти шикарные видео с переводом на русский язык, просмотров было бы очень много..

👍 für den Algorithmus

Is there a reason why this channel started to overly bash certain german weapons like the Reichsrevolver or this rifle ?

Am I first? Cool episode

Yeah, these are barely issues. Loads of MODERN actions are push feed, have removable bolt heads and on almost all rifles you just have to steer the bolt in for it to snap behind the bolt stop. You're grasping here Othais.

Bolt release like my ex-girlfriend.

Algorithm engagement comment

Comment for the a l g o r i th h h m n mn mmn mn nn nm nm

I had an unconverted Gew 88 for a long time and I love how absolutely awful the rifle is, probably the worst design the Germans ever issued. It's funny too cause rifles like the Lebel 1886 and Schmidt-Rubin 1889 are from the same time period and are an order of magnitude more serviceable.

The 88 was never meant for idiots it's a service man's rifle built for the imperial German army a well-trained army not conscripts. I have had one for many years and never once had a problem with it . It's for better than the carcano !

But I just watched the 88 episode last night, and you want me to watch it again? Ok