" You sometimes find the Siemens & Halske logo, just like the Pieper/Bayard one, on receivers, never barrels, of WW1 Gew98 military rifles and post-WW1 Suhl and Z-M sporters built on such actions. Both marks are stamped under the receiver ring, in front of the recoil lug. These receivers go back to the 1916 “Hindenburg – Programm” for increasing production of war material. Due to the 1914 – 15 losses the capacity of the few factories making M98 rifles, Mauser, DWM and the government arsenals at Amberg, Danzig, Erfurt, Spandau became insufficient. So the making of the military rifles was decentralized, most of the guntrade involved making parts. But in both WWs the making of M98 receivers was the bottleneck of production, as it required special broaching machinery, not available in Suhl or Zella-Mehlis. The Suhl factories like Sauer & Sohn or Simson never made a single receiver themselves, but depended on those made by others. Apparently both S&H and Pieper had such machines, so many receivers with their marks were sent to Suhl to be completed with other farmed-out parts. I suspect the Pieper/Bayard trademark merely was used to hide the real making of those receivers by the Belgian Fabrique Nationale (FN) in German occupied Herstal nearby. FN had the machines to make receivers. Pre-WW1 it was part-owned by DWM too, but as a “Belgian government factory” was reluctant to produce gun parts for the “official enemy” openly."

"As many 1930s to WW2 era original Mauser sporters have a small superposed WR stamp under the barrel and Walter Röll was then a master gunsmith, later head of the Mauser sporting rifle shop, I think SK or KS was such a master about WW1. Simply a factory Quality control mark."

"As these marks, the MB, the SK or KS and the yet undiscussed mark forward of the others are neither proof marks nor marks of subcontractors, they have to be factory internal quality control marks for different steps in gunmaking. (Mauser did not farm out barrelmaking, at least not for standard calibers. Alas, their's was the largest barrel making facility in Germany then) MB at least may be a factory code for the barrel steel lot used. Later Mauser Barrels were maked, f.i., CH40 as a steel code. As these factory internal stamps were not recorded and apparently not even durably recorded, any attempt to interpretation is pure speculation. Even Lud Olson in "Mauser Bolt Rifles" and Jon Speed in "Mauser - Original Oberndorf Sporting Rifles" and "The Mauser Archive" avoid to discuss these marks. Friend Jon would have certainly done, if he had found anything on them in the surviving Mauser factory files."

http://www.germanguns.com/upload/showthread.php?999-Oberndorf-Mauser-Type-S-barrel-markings/page2


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