Hey guys, thanks for tuning in to another 
video on ForgottenWeapons.com, I'm Ian McCollum.
And today we have another episode of "Adventures in Surplus!"
Today we're taking a look at another of these rifles
that I got as part of a lot at Rock Island.
This is a "CE44" German Mauser Kar98k.
So what the heck is a CE44? Let's dig into it.
When I say CE44 what I'm referring 
to are the receiver markings here,
where there is a manufacturer's code of "ce", and a date of 44.
This is a 1944 production rifle and "ce" is 
the production code for J.P. Sauer & Sohn,
a company that still exists today, or it has a corporate 
history that continues today. Today it is part of SIG Sauer.
At any rate, Sauer & Sohn 
started producing rifles fairly early.
Their first production code was S/147, 
then it was simplified to just 147.
In 1941 it became "ce" and for the first couple of years
they used a cursive "ce" that 
actually looks something like that,
before in 1944 they changed to a standard "ce".
This is the sort of detail that you will inevitably 
find yourself in if you start researching Kar98ks.
We have Model 98 on the side rail here, and we 
have kind of what you would expect for markings.
We have a serial number 4220 g, "g" suffix there, Sauer 
used all script letters for everything, including those suffixes.
This is the last year that Sauer would 
produce Kar98ks. As 1944 came to a close
the company was in the process of transitioning 
into production of MP44 assault rifles.
That was something they had actually started all the 
way back in '43 to try and be able to seamlessly transition.
They made a total of about 230,000 Kar98ks 
in 1944, so still a substantial number.
But they never did quite get to 
the full-on Kriegsmodell version,
which was the final version of 
the German last-ditch rifles.
So what we see here is what some people 
would call maybe semi-Kriegsmodell,
where we have a lot of simplified parts. So 
the front band here is a stamped component,
instead of being finely milled, and it's got 
this kind of raw looking weld on the bottom.
It's a piece of stamped sheet metal, bent 
around in a circle, and then welded together.
We still however have ... a barrel band 
spring here that holds these parts,
the nose cap and the barrel band in place.
So later on, the true Kriegsmodells replaced these 
springs with simple wood screws going into the stock.
Similarly J.P. Sauer never gave up on 
having bayonet lugs and cleaning rods,
which the true Kriegsmodell rifles 
got rid of just for reduced cost.
We have a stamped barrel band here.
One of the cool things about this 
particular rifle is that it is all matching.
And we have a serial number here under the sight.
A somewhat crudely stamped one on the sight leaf.
And another slightly askew serial number 
stamped onto the adjustment slider.
However, we don't have Waffenamts, military 
acceptance inspection marks, on any of those parts.
And that's because as part of the 
simplification and economisation process,
Sauer stopped doing a lot of the formal inspections. 
A lot of these parts were inspected in batches,
and the individual parts didn't all get stamps 
the way they did at the beginning of the war.
Now some of the particularly 
important parts did, of course,
and ... there's an interesting bit of detail 
we can get by looking at some of them.
So the side of the receiver here 
has an eagle over 280 Waffenamt.
That indicates that this receiver was actually 
manufactured by a company in the Erfurt area,
I can't pronounce the full German name, 
but it's shortened to Feima. [Feinmechanische Werke.]
Sauer produced some of their own parts, 
but they outsourced a lot of them.
And receivers are one of the things that they outsourced. 
I don't believe they ever made their own receivers in-house.
So we have the 280 mark that was put on 
when the receiver was inspected as a bare part.
However, we have an eagle over 37 
as a final production acceptance mark.
37 was the code number for the 
Waffenamt team at the J.P. Sauer factory.
So parts that were done there specifically are 
all going to be marked with the eagle over 37.
If we take a look at the barrel 
markings, we see a "ce" in script,
which indicates that the barrel was 
in fact made in-house by Sauer.
"cq" there, which might be "cg" poorly stamped, 
that is simply a ... material batch code.
So they ... went sequentially in order "ca", "cb", 
and there's no particular meaning to that,
except that ... it identifies the batch of material.
And then we have a pair of eagle over 37 proof 
marks, again indicating that the barrel was
manufactured in-house and then inspected in-house.
The other common one you will see would be "fxo", one of 
the other companies that Sauer subcontracted parts from.
Now I mentioned that this particular rifle was all matching: 
the bolt handle, the gas shield, the safety. That's really cool.
And we see here that the trigger guard is also matching. At the 
very end of 1944 Sauer would do a little bit more simplification.
They ended their production run with a small number 
of these where they got rid of the locking screw here.
The purpose of this is unless you loosen 
this screw, you can't loosen this screw.
So, ... it's an equivalent to something like a lock 
washer to prevent this screw from coming out.
The one problem with this rifle 
is that magazine floorplate.
And again, we're getting into some pretty 
deep minutiae of Mauser production.
But this should be a milled floor plate, not a stamped 
one. You can tell it's stamped from these little indents.
It's very light, but right there you can 
see that this floor plate is stamped "byf",
and that is a Mauser made component, Sauer 
did not subcontract floor plates to Mauser.
So the floor plate from this rifle went missing at 
some point, and someone replaced it with this one.
Other than that, the rifle is a really good 
example of a late production Sauer Kar98k.
We have a stock cartouche here, again simplified. 
This is just an eagle over a big letter "H".
There should be a small 37 Waffenamt 
on here as well, but the stock's fairly worn.
And you can see how the eagle on this guy is pretty light, 
and I can't find the other stamp. It has simply worn off.
So this isn't a rifle that is specifically indicative of 
like the very beginning of production, or the very end.
This is a rifle from the mid-point, and just 
this image right here kind of exemplifies that,
where you've got a welded band 
but you've still got a spring.
But you can very clearly see 
the lathe marks left on the barrel
because they weren't taking the time to 
really finely polish that down any more.
Because it didn't really matter, and it was far more 
important to get as many rifles out the door as possible.
If you think about ... production of 230,000 rifles 
over the course of one year in one factory,
that's averaging out to more than 500 rifles per day 
... completed out the door of that factory.
So that is a serious feat of industrial production, and 
Sauer was just one of the many companies making these
for the German military during World War Two.
German World War Two Mauser collecting is 
... I think the best mixed metaphor
I could use here would be something like: 
a minefield of rabbit holes of information to get into.
There are a lot of people very interested in these rifles, 
and that has led to a bunch of scholarship on them.
So I would say ... one of the basic sorts of books you can 
get on this is "Backbone of the Wehrmacht" by ... Richard Law.
If you want to get more detailed than that, and 
in fact the source that I used primarily for this video,
is Volume IIa of "Karabiner 98k" by Karem and Steves, 
Bruce Karem and Michael Steves.
So this book I know for sure is still 
available, you can find it out there.
And it is an absolute wealth of information that goes in 
detail beyond even what I was talking about here today.
So if you're interested, there are a couple 
of resources to get you further along.
Thanks for watching.
[ sub by sk cn2 ]
