Just thought I'd share a K98 I acquired recently. I bought this rifle from a mountain town interstate where my Grandfather once lived ... this mountain village is also known for having a large German population. It came to my attention that there was a K98 selling for a very decent price out of an old gents collections where it had sat for many years - said fellow was German actually.
So the photographs of the rifle I requested showed this rifle to be in fairly tired shape regarding the furniture - there weren't many dings but the laminated stock was very dry and there was a large crack in the stock that would need repair. The rifle is all matching but for the bolt and has all relevant waffenampts intact - so I bought it.
It wasn't until I got the rifle home a few weeks later that during clean up I noticed something underneath the surface rust on the stock disk - there were some numbers, a stylized N and below that a K. I did a bit of research and came to the conclusion this was indeed a Nord Sea Fleet K98 marked Kriegsmarine rifle made by Steyr/660 early in the war as they were contracted to do. The buttstock still had the H ( Heer ) stamp but this is correct also since these early 660 codes were sequestered by the Kriegsmarine from Army stock - another nice feature is the serial number is in the early 900's and was among the first 1000 rifles ever made by Steyr/660. There were only 10,000 rifles produced by Stery in 1939 all up.
Anyway, enough of my jabbering. I repaired the butt stock crack and the rifle looks beautiful now and you would never know it had any damage at all. I'm very proud of this one and it's the only K98 I own. These pics show the rifle just before repair and gentle restoration of the furniture.
This shows the crack and the take down disk before repair with N and K proofs. The numbers on the disk would be the Naval assigned rack numbers. When I think of how formidable the German Navy were during WW2 it's quite something to consider where this rifle may have seen service. The stock is also serialed to the receiver so is correct.
Thanks for looking.
