A magazine is not a clip. Really, only a 'bloc clip' (or 'block clip') can be called a clip.
For disassembly instructions, just refer to the Steyr M95 rifle and M95 bolt disassembly instructions on the Surplusrifle.com website. I won't bother to repeat anything like them here, because they're very good.
Here's a picture of the action and barrel after being removed from the stock. The little winglike tabs on the rear sight serve to hold down the back end of the handguard. The barrelbands hold down the front end of it.
Here we can see the 'Budapest' marking on the reciever ring, denoting that it was made by the Hungarian armory at Budapest. There is also the prominent 'S' mark ('Spitzgeschoss' -- pointed bullet), made by the Austrians when these guns were re-arsenaled for the 8x56R cartridge.
This is the sear, ejector, and trigger group. The sear is the triangular block at the top, the vertical face of which engages the cocking piece of the bolt and holds the firing pin back until the trigger is pulled. The 'K' inspection mark on the sides of these parts makes me wonder if they were originally Austrian-made (K == 'Kaiserliche' [Imperial] or 'Koenigsliche' [Royal] ?). When the gun is assembled the sear engages the cocking piece about .02inch too far, and so doesn't disengage properly when the trigger is pulled. I'm going to grind down the top of the sear a bit, so it doesn't stick up into the bolt raceway when the trigger is pulled all the way back. As it is now, the cocking piece never cleanly disengages from the sear, it just sort of rides up over the sear eventually, giving a really mushy and hard pull. (This lends some credence to the idea that they're Austrian parts in a Hungarian rifle... parts made in different arsenals to different sets of gauges are much less likely to match up nicely.)
The curved piece sticking up on the left side of the picture is the ejector blade. This rides in a slot in the bolt head, and when the extractor pulls the casehead back against this, the case is pivoted out and ejected from the gun.
The bolt stop lugs are what keep the bolt from coming free of the gun when it's pulled all the way back. Pushing the trigger forward causes these to be lowered out of the way, and the bolt can be removed.
After cleaning some of the shellac off the stock with denatured alcohol (ethyl alcohol... vodka might work, but rubbing alcohol [isopropyl alcohol], mineral spirits, and varnish remover will not work), this faint cartouche/stamp on the stock became a bit more visible. I thought that it was a '7', but after the alcohol dulled the finish on top and increased the contrast, it's more apparently a '17'. I'm wondering if this was an original stamp from the gun's manufacture, which was covered by the stock refinishing in 1930/31.
On the left (from the left side of the buttstock), the original serial number of this stock (obviously different from the action it ended up with after the re-arsenaling). I'm guessing that it was scratched out with an awl run along a straight-edge. The numbers are only partly legible; probably having been sanded/steamed/gunked/whatever during the refinishing. Based on their appearance -- resembling wood that has had dents steamed out -- I'm guessing that some sort of hot water treatment was used on the stocks during the re-arsenaling. I can't read the first number of the original. I think it's a '9', tho it could be a '2', or a 9 overstamped with a 2. So the original was 9974 or 2974. This doesn't give much clue to the date of manufacture, since none of these guns have been found with a serial number of more than 4 digits. They just kept wrapping around that number space, probably figuring that was good enough for an individual soldier or armorer's purposes.
On the right (from the right side of the stock) is the new serial number, 4254.
Here we see the mortices in the stock that the action fits into. The magazine well has wide slots along the side, which the bloc clip slides into.
The forend is 'stepped' twice for the barrel bands. At the muzzlemost extremity, a thin shim of wood is glued into place. This keeps most of the barrel free-floating, so that changes in the wood due to altitude, humidity, temperature, and age do not cause the forend to push the barrel around, ruining accuracy and repeatability. This channel was loaded with cosmoline when I got it.
The gripping groove on the right side shows little wear; in all likelihood this rifle was carried much and shot little. (Most of them were relegated to police and other rear-echelon duties). The shellac is splotchy and flaked off in many places though. I've rubbed this wood down with some denatured alcohol, which seems to have affected it a little bit; but shellac that has been in place for 70 years won't be removed easily.
These seem to be some sort of inspection marks on the recoil lugs under the reciever. I've seen some mention of the "+05, -05" markings; but no answers about what they mean. Can anyone advise me on this?
The "3" on the lug might correspond with the "3" stamped on the inside of the handguard, but I seriously doubt it. The "1" (?) and "8" might optomistically be thought to be some sort of date stamp, but I doubt it (they'd likely be next to each other in that case). Anyone have any clue about these markings? If so, let me know and I'll put your information here with an attribution. My address is at the bottom of the page.
Here we see the mysterious "-05" on underside of the rear sight. We can also see that the rear sight base is fastened by a band shrunk onto the barrel.
Here's the importer's name and information, as required by U.S. law. C.A.I. is Century Arms International.
Here's what the foresight dovetail looks like now that I've driven out the cruddy old sight. Still beat up in some ways, but should be usable.
On the inside of the handguard the serial number of the gun is penciled in, next to the mysterious "3". Presumably they used a pencil because stamping a thin piece of curved wood like this is a recipe for splitting it. Unfortunately, the cosmoline is about the only thing holding the graphite in place, so if I wipe much of the cosmoline off, it'll likely remove this notation.
Perhaps the "3" is the last serial number of the original stock and gun this handguard was associated with?
A view of the whole length of the handguard.
The forked end of the handguard goes around the rear sight of course, and is held down by the two small tabs protruding from the rear sight.
The bolt itself has a pair of helical grooves around it's shaft, which engage in helical lugs in the bolt body. Working the bolt body back and forth causes the bolt head and shaft to be rotated. The longitudinal grooves extending from the helical grooves like spurs from a railroad track are places for the tail of the extractor spring to snap into, thus holding the bolt in one of its two full-travel positions. (Fully in or fully out). You may also not the small 'R' stamped in the top of the bolt shaft. There is also a small 'K' stamped on the underside of the bolt head. I'm guessing these are both inspection marks, one original and one from the re-arsenaling; but if anyone has a better idea, please let me know.
On the bolt face we see some slight pitting around the firing pin hole. This is very common on older guns, and results from the corrosive priming compound used before the 1950s.
Looking down into the bolt body we see the long, helical lugs which engage in the camming grooves in the bolt shaft. I'm still wondering how these were manufactured. They look too deep to be hammer-forged, and I can't see how they'd be milled out.
Here's the extractor in its normal position next to the bolt. The tail of the extractor has a rib on it (see David Gorzsaz's page for details, which snaps into the longitudinal grooves in the bolt shaft to keep it in place. Without that, the bolt head would tend to snap into the 'open' position (head retracted) and it would be much harder to operate, let alone replace the bolt into the reciever after being removed for cleaning.
I've heard that having the serial number electro-penciled in to this position on the bolt, means that the gun has been in Bulgarian service. I've heard that most of the guns coming in to the country now come out of Bulgaria, so that makes sense. You can't see it in the photograph, but the bolt knob has a definite flat spot on the top. This is probably where the original serial number was, before all these parts were assembled into a new gun.
Here we see the shape of the 'hook' or 'lug' under the cocking piece that engages the sear in order to hold back the firing pin until the trigger is pulled. Note there are two positions for the safety lever to snap into; one for when the gun is cocked (to keep it from going off if the trigger is pulled), and another for when the striker is down which locks the firing pin in placeand prevents the firing pin from being driven against any cartridge in the chamber. Safety or not, I wouldn't try carrying any gun (other than a modern revolver) with the striker/hammer down on a round in the chamber, and the Italian Army manual for this rifle explicitly tells you not to do this.
This shows the normal arrangement of trigger, sear, and cocking piece before firing.
The Mannlicher magazine well bears some special attention, simply because of its clip-loaded design. The catch at the back of the magazine is for holding the clip down against the spring pressure of the magazine follower. The magazine follower pushes up between the sides of the clip, pushing cartridges up to be fed by the bolt into the chamber. The top of the clip serves as the feed lips on the magazine (kind of a nifty idea really, and one of the big benefits of the clip-fed system). Once there are no more cartridges in the clip, there is nothing for the follower to push up against, and the clip falls out the bottom of the magazine by virtue of gravity.
Looking down into the magwell we see that it's driven by an arrangement of flat springs. I'm not sure why it was done this way, since coil springs are inherently more reliable as far as I know, and coil springs are used on other parts of the gun. Probably they just kept using the old design. Vitali had designed a coil-spring driven box magazine a few years prior to this tho, which was a very popular retrofit to many military rifles of the time, like the Dutch Beaumont.
This is what the parts look like assembled, without the stock hiding them from view. We see how the trigger extends down into the trigger guard, and the magazine follower extends all the way up to the bolt raceway in the reciever.
