I had one of the "Chinese" Radom K98- It was rough and had a sheet metal front band that was held together with screws. I also have an SCW Interarms import K98 with a crest and a 1930 date. The stock is the Wz.29 configuration and not the K-98, Kar.98 copy style stock. Also is it is the small ring action and not the standard Large Ring Wz.29 style action. It seems that the non standard Polish rifles ended up in China so was it stuff the Soviets captured in 1939 and eventually shipped there post WW2? or just supplied the communist Guerillas with this stuff during WW2?

 

I had one of the "Chinese" Radom K98- It was rough and had a sheet metal front band that was held together with screws.

One of these? There were a bunch of them in a pile, some with screws, some without. I couldn’t identify it in person but took one as a representative example to research later.

 

Cool piece. Given the Chinese militia markings on the stock, I'd venture a guess that this was one of the early Radom export rifles that Poland sold to China in small batches in 1930 (4,200 rifles) or 1931 (8,250 rifles), and likely made using at least some German reparation parts. Unfortunately, I've never seen a verified example of a rifle in these batches to know what the baseline markings should be, so again just a guess. Probably not many survived.

 

Yes that is my suspicion as well. I just had to have it for its uniqueness and to enhance a Polish K98 collection for different variants. It’s ugly but I love it.

 

Here are the markings on two of the stocks that were sadly in disastrous shape.

 

I dug around and found some more examples.

One was a barreled action on GunBroker from a few month back, also marked with a C suffix serial number. It was also marked imported by Sile Sporters of Ossian IN. It is in similarly rough shape with pitting (and sold for a heck of a lot more than I paid!).

 

Here is another example I found posted in GunBoards by our member @ryg . He stated that these “no dates” and any rough looking carbines with a C suffix serial came out of China and likely were part of the early 1930’s export contract. It is interesting that this one has a K98-29 style stock with some “home/field-made” stock hardware.

 

Regarding @Betonfahrer ’s previous post, it seemed to address a question I had about an odd looking front barrel band I found on one of the spare K98-29 bayonet lugs I found. I could not find another example on any of the major parts retailers previously. It appears that these are Chinese home-grown front barrel bands for the Polish K98-29's that were sent there via an export contract in 1930 and 1931 (I think). They ONLY fit the Kar98a/K98 bayonet lugs, and have a little "detent' where they click into place on the bayonet lug recess for the hinged German/Polish barrel bands, but are instead tightened down with two small simple screws. They must be designed for the K98-29 conversion rifles only, because there is literally no way to install them on a normal Kar98a/K98 style of carbine without bending them out severely to clear the front end of the rifle. They also don't fit a normal Wz29 short rifle bayonet lug at all, as it is too large. Interesting....

 

late reply, but those Radom Mauser sure did get around