Last updated 24.8.2010


Swedish Maple Stockwoods

August 24, 2010

Photos courtesy of..ah...ummm....

Spend some time looking at this m/96 that recently floated up from Gunbroker.com. The new owner graciously shared these photos.
It sold for $580 in March, 2010. That may seem like a lot but I feel it is a very close approximation of the true market value of this rifle.
It would be dumb luck to otherwise come across this rifle in this condition for much less.

We've come to understand that maple stocks are much more scarce than elm.
While the figure isn't real flashy like the rifle further down the page, it is still obivously fiddleback maple. It is easily graded as "excellent" condition.






First thing you notice here is the grease in the action. That's pretty much standard Swedish military storage grease. This rifle appears to have been taken out of storage, put on a boat to America, sold by an importer to a private citizen and some years later sold on Gunbroker.com. At the least we can surmise this from the appearance of this rifle.

It appears to have been freshly rebuilt, probably rebarreled and put into long term storage. For this reason I'd tend to believe the brass disc data.
It shows a #1 bore @ 6.50mm.

The barrel is marked for Carlsborg army workshop (now Karlsborg). There is a crown/CB cartouche on the wrist. The second little thing is that "flat" on the barrel. That was caused by a barrel vise when the new barrel was installed. We have noted a minority of m/96 with this kind of mark on the barrel shank. We don't have enough data to come to any conclusions about it. At some point it may be traceable to a specific army workshop.






Maple shows up only in 1915-1916-1917. If it appears on a rifle with a date different it is probably a replacement stock. We've seen a couple instances of this already but it's not common.

Rear sight has the Dulite black oxide and is smeared with grease.









We welcome this beautiful addition to the website especially for the fine example of
fiddleback maple it allows us all to examine. Its a 1915 Carl Gustaf m/96 s/n 368657.




Rifles with this degree of figure don't come along often so we consider it cause for
celebration that we can witness such a fine example of a maple stocked m/96.


As with elm and mahogany, maple occurs only during the years 1915 to 1917.
At present its a toss up which is the rarer stockwood, maple or mahogany.
Its my feeling that mahogany can't touch a stock like this for it pure dynamic presentation.


These above images courtesy of John Eiden.









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