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AFAIK the Steyr factory did not sell barreled actions or actions only to other gunmakers. But as the M92, 93, 95 Romanian/Dutch/Portuguese military rifles were made only for export anyhow, they sold complete military rifles to anyone wanting them. As St.George Littledale once wrote to Denis Lyell: "In 1895 Sir Edmund Loder gave me a Mannlicher rifle, bayonet and all complete on the eve of starting for Tibet. Had only time to have sighting altered. On my protesting that I had a room full of rifles and did not want any more, all he said was try the Mannlicher, and like Lily Langtry and the soap, I have used no other since." (quote from Truesdell, The Rifle) The British imported the complete military rifles and sporterized them to varying degrees. Here are the Mannlicher ads from the 1910-11 Jeffery's catalog. As you see, the cheaper grades No. 4,5,6 retained the shortened military straight gripped stocks, with "civilian" sights and maybe checkering added, while the higher grades No.1, 2, 3 were restocked with pistol grip stocks. I know an "Army & Navy" M95 Mannlicher with such a sporterized and checkered military stock, still showing the plugged cleaning rod hole at the foreend tip. Here is a Mannlicher that conforms in some way to Jeffery's No.1. It was proofed and probably restocked in Birmingham. George Gibbs of Bristol did a lot of Mannlicher imports and remodelling in a quite distinctive style, also supplied other name gunmakers like Rigby, Fraser, Purdey or Atkins with his conversions. In wide parts of the British the 6.5x53R Mannlicher cartridge was called the .256 Gibbs Rimmed. According to Kirton Gibbs used the letter prefixes of his serial numbers this way: A = completely made by us, B = barrelled action by another, stocked, sighted and finished by us C = complete gun bought in from another maker This is my B-prefix G.Gibbs in .256 Gibbs Rimmed, receiver dated 1899. It retains the original Steyr military barrel, but stock, sling eyes and sights are clearly Gibbs. |