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Hi guys, this is my first post on the bunker forum, just thought I would kick it off with this! It's my deact C96 bolo Mauser, it was manufactured 1920/22 and comes with the stock pictured.

These postwar Bolos account for nearly a third of all C-96 production. Any customer for new Mauser pistols throughout most of the 1920s would buy Bolos. Just who was buying large quantities of military pistols in those days isn't clear. The Bolo is associated with the Bolsheviks (although the Party had changed its name to the Communist Party in 1918 - and the bol prefix in Russian means large, an odd nickname for a relatively small gun). Although there was considerable fighting after World War One in Russia, Poland, Turkey, and Greece, that had all settled down, more or less, by 1922 or so. In any event, large numbers of Mauser pistols ended up in Russia. They must have appreciated them, as the Red Army adopted the cartridge in 1930 as the 7.62x25 mm Tokarev.

Note that although the Bolo is sometimes called the "small frame" Mauser, the only thing smaller about the frame is the grip area. Everything else - including all pieces of the lock mechanism - is exactly the same size. In fact, the internal parts are interchangeable between Bolos and full size guns.

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Hi Buster, welcome to the forum , nice looking Mauser and very informative post :thumbsup:

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Cheers Kenny , it's a right old school engineered pistol, the only screw or bolt in them are the ones holding the grips on,

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  • 7 months later...

I managed to track down a very hard to find a new set of grips for my C96 bolo mauser! ( the ordinary C96 grips are easy to find), The old ones where to far gone and worn smooth, they are supposed to have 21 grooves cut in. I think they have really lifted the look of the old girl.

( old and new pics )

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I think the pistol looks better with the original grips - they are original as the weapon, the new varnished grips stand out too much and don't match the age or the style of the pistol.

You might as well get a new pistol made.

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Thanks for your input, but the old grips where not original to the gun as the serial number did not match the pistol. Also if the recoil spring snaps or i replace the mag spring i should get a new gun as its no longer original ! ! And as for the style of the grips , they are the same as the original grips would be from the mauser factory .

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I agree with both of you. I think Buster did the right thing putting the correct grips on it however I also agree with Paul that it looks a little new, especially when compared with the stock, maybe an idea would be to try to tone down the varnish a little ? but at the end of the day it's personal taste and what you think looks best. :)

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Way ahead of you Kenny lol, rubbed then with fine wire wool then darkened them slightly to age them more ( they where a bit glossy) here's before & after pics.

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I must be honest, when I saw it first, I thought I don't like that at all, but should I say anything? Then thanks to Paul's post (he takes no prisoners :D ) I decided to comment, glad I did, as it looks great now :thumbsup:

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Whatever, but do keep the "original" grips, which you removed. Never "throw away" any original material, however appalling it's condition may be in. I kept some "old" material from the restauration of a French musket, including a badly damaged sling swivel, a stock spring and a makeshift flintlock hammer, which had probably been hand made in the early post WW2 years in the GDR, these I simply stored in a small box, along with other odds & ends. A replacement copy hammer came from "Pedersoli", Italy, the orig. swivel from an antique gun dealer in Lower Saxony and an original spring from Antwerp, via an English gun craftsman.

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  • 2 years later...
On 01/04/2017 at 20:14, kenny andrew said:

I must be honest, when I saw it first, I thought I don't like that at all, but should I say anything? Then thanks to Paul's post (he takes no prisoners :D ) I decided to comment, glad I did, as it looks great now :thumbsup:

Hart aber fair  -  wie man mit mir verfährt, meine Herren, so werde ich auch mit Ihnen verfahren! quote: Generaloberst Fromm am 20. Juli 1944

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