Thread: Disassembly of the Mannlicher 1886 straight pull rifle! (slow-internet beware!)

Ok, so since I'm new here I figured I would post some stuff to contribute to the forum. While I seem to have ended up with a lot of old guns, I really tend to shoot anything that's unique, so I've been lucky enough to take apart some pretty rare and lesser known guns. This' a post I did for another forum, but figured it might interest you guys here.

Also please post if the pics aren't showing up. Imgur has been changing their policy about linking photos, so if necessary I'll move them all to another site if they don't work.



The gun in question is a Mannlicher 1886 - I believe it's the first mannlicher straight pull, possibly the first straight pull ever to enter military service. This gun replaced the Werndl in service with the Austrians but due to developments in ballistics and powders was almost immediately obsolete. As a result the majority of the Mannlicher 1886 order was abandoned in favor of the 8mm version; the mannlicher 1888. Those 1886's that had been produced were rebarreled to 8mm and redesignated the M1886/90. The few remaining M1886's in 11mm seem to have come from Chile.



This particular gun is in overall quite good condition. It has obviously been neglected at one point, and has pin prick pitting below the wood line as well as a cracked recoil lug, though fortunately with this design it's replaceable. The entire design has some quite unique features and is rather interesting, especially when considered in relation to the later Steyr Mannlicher straight pulls and the numerous other design features that appear on other Mannlicher firearms. Also keep in mind that this rifle was being introduced while many countries still employed single shot cartridge rifles, and those that used magazines were often tubular mags with conventional bolts.

I'll try to post a disassembly of this gun's predecessor, the Werndl, soon.


Starting at the butt, not much special. Serial is stamped on the left of the stock rather than the right.



Right of the receiver.





Top and left of the receiver showing the bolt release at the front and the safety at the back






Rear of the bolt and safety. Here the safety is disengaged and the bolt uncocked




Here the safety is engaged with the bolt uncocked





And here the safety is engaged with the bolt cocked.





Bolt is open - inside of the action






Moving forwards - the front sight shows the very early style of elevation adjustable sight. It's a good design conceptually, but but obviously prone to wear - it uses twinned spring loaded blades underneath the sight to grip the notches in the sides of the sight ears.



Graduations are probably a little optimistic




Now, notice that little screw on the right face of the rear sight? Guess what that does?

It's a hidden second sight! It slides to the right and acts as a volley sight, sighting off of the middle barrel band, which has its own front sight pin.









This nib is the front post for the volley sight




Moving forward here's another view of the middle band





And finally the front band and muzzle





Moving back to the bolt, this' the unique M1886 bolt. Bolt handle is on the left, bolt face is on the right. The angled tab underneath is the locking flap, which means the design lacks both forward locking lugs and anything in the way of a safety mechanism if it were to fail. Fortunately if it fails it's likely to jam up the action pretty firmly, so that's something of a consolation. Just visible is the bolt wedge which is carried forward by the bolt handle and forces the flap to drop into its locking recess. The wedge and flap are mated together using a T groove in the flap. It should be noted that the flap has a chunk missing from it - they should be square.

In the locked and fired position:




In the bolt open position:




The bolt face is flat, and holds into the bolt body with a very coarse thread. The extractor claw sits in a recess in the bolt face and stops it from unscrewing itself.




To disassemble the bolt, carefully lift the extractor spring from the bolt. It's held by spring tension. They're long and thin so no sense in forcing anything... they haven't made spares for a long time!




Next unscrew the bolt face





Last step requires three hands so no pics of it - similar to mauser bolt disassembly you need to take the firing pin tension off the rear of the bolt. Unfortunately the firing pin is protected by the bolt body, so a piece of wood dowel or thin empty cartridge case has to be inserted inside the bolt body to depress it. After that just unscrew the bolt sear and everything comes apart! Only thing to note is that the firing pin has a flat to keep it from unscrewing inside the bolt - it'll partially fit back in before jamming.

With flash:


Without flash:



Inside of the bolt body and rear of the locking tab showing the T slot in the tab. Again note that the tab is missing a corner. And yes, it needs a good cleaning





Here's the bolt handle with wedge for dropping the locking flap down.




Actual disassembly of the gun is surprisingly straight forward:







Only other thing worth noting is the trigger spring is actually a big piece of sheet metal rather than a forged and shaped spring.





Past that here's the bayonet for the M1886







Also, here's some original ammo, in the original box.... made in Neustad in 1888!!! yeesh!

That's really interesting , cheers for that.

Nice, what other interesting things have you got to show us. I love the engineering that went into some of the early firearms. Show us some more please.

That's all I have pictures of at the moment, but I'll work on some others. I definitely had photos of an evans disassembled at one point.