FN had a long relationship with Mauser, and produced its own variants of Mauser designs for export around the world. At any rate, this stipulation resulted in the creation of Belgium's state run firearms company, Fabrique Nationale d'Armes de Guerre, otherwise known as FN. This of course made sense for various reasons, not the least of which is that you don't want a powerful rival like Germany being the sole source of your military hardware. Belgium alsoВ got the rights to manufacture the Model 1889 themselves, in their own country. Instead, it was Belgium who placed the first orders for the new rifle.

Paul Mauser's first successful repeating bolt action rifle, the Model 1889, was oddly enough not adopted by the German military. I mentioned earlier that there are Mauser rifles, and Mauser pattern rifles. The standard loading was a ~150 gr bullet at 2,900 fps, making it the most powerful battle rifle cartridge of its day. The Germans even used it in their fighter planes. The 8mm Mauser cartridge served admirably in two World Wars and was chambered in everything from bolt action rifles to crew-served machine guns. 323' bullet which remains the current diameter to this day.

318' diameter projectile this was later changed to a. The cartridge was originally designed with a. The grand daddy of modern cartridges,В the 8mm Mauser pushed a heavier,В larger diameter bullet at higher velocities than the 7mm Mauser used in the 1893 designed action. As such, the '98 action could handle whatever cartridge you threw at it,В and Paul Mauser provided that cartridge in the form of the 8 x 57mm Mauser. This design was a significant departure from the earlier 1893/1895 designВ I wrote about here.В It had a new, stronger boltВ with no less than three lugs that locked into the receiver at different points. The new rifle was adopted as Germany's battle rifle, and variants of the '98 were sold to countries around the world. The Mauser design reached its zenith in 1898 with the appropriately named Mauser Model 98. Thousands of Russian captured Mauser rifles in stacks during WWII, awaiting refurbishment. I don't say this to glorify war, but merely to state a fact: Mauser rifles were and remain very effective weapons. Millions of Mauser and Mauser pattern rifles (I'll explain the difference later) were produced, and to this day, you can bet that someone, somewhere has one of Paul Mauser's progeny in his hands, ready to do violence to those who would oppose him. Paul Mauser's designs were some of the most influential and lasting contributions to firearms development in the late 19th and early 20th century, and indeed, many of these contributions live on today in modern hunting and target rifles ( like the Winchester Model 70). It's no secret that I'm a fan of Mauser rifles, and for good reason.

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