Can you say one inch at 100 yards? This old beast can with the 173 grain ammunition. Sixty rounds down-range finally made my shoulder retire for the day and I came out with a newfound respect for the M93. Needless to say, I wasn’t too concerned about the integrity of the M93. It has a much beefier receiver ring as well, so the M93 and the later M1916 is considered somewhat weaker in the extreme. The later Model 98 has gas vents and a third safety lug to vent gas away from the shooter’s face in case of a ruptured case. This action is theoretically faster than the later Mausers that cock when the action is closed, but is also theoretically not as safe. Though high and to the left, the M93 still delivers 1.2 inches at 100 yards, nothing to sneeze at, even with a modern scoped rifle. You can load in loose ammunition or strip rounds into the five-shot magazine by inserting a clip of ammunition into the raised bridge and thumbing the rounds down. The magazine, when empty, allows the follower to come up, keeping you from bolting forward on an empty chamber. The bolt is idiot proof with a three position flag safety at the rear and two opposed locking lugs at the front with an oversized claw extractor riding at the side. The rifle is a magazine fed, bolt action rifle that has a straight bolt handle, handy for slapping out swelled cases. What makes the rifle modern is the action. The rifle is quite long, sporting a twenty-nine inch barrel, for fencing with the enemy and repelling enemy cavalry with the bayonet. The sights, consisting of a rear 300 meter battle sight and a ladder ranging out to 2000 meters and a front blade, are not terribly impressive. The rifle has the same hearty steel furniture and wooden stock as any other rifle the day. The M93 is a contradiction of high technology and old-world thinking. That 2000 meter setting on the ladder rear sight seems optimistic, but was meant for volley fire to harass enemy formations. The first M1893s were made in Germany, but domestic production soon caught on and would continue through the 1940s. It was still a five-round bolt action rifle, but it now incorporated the new 7x57mm cartridge, a relatively small-bore, high velocity cartridge. This improved handling, feeding and made the gun about as bulletproof as it could be. This improved model incorporated a staggered box magazine, one of the first of its kind, that was flush with the stock.
An upgraded rifle, the Model 1893, was immediately adopted by Spain. However, the protruding magazine proved vulnerable to damage and it became clear that the 7.65x53mm round the rifle fired could be improved upon. The M1889 got the attention of the Belgians and the Argentinians, who adopted a simplified version in 1891. This rifle did not rely on the clip to control round feeding, which was done by spring-loaded tabs within the magazine. 88, but it fed from a box magazine with a new rapid feeding system called the stripper clip.
His new rifle, the M1889, had the same protruding magazine and metal barrel shroud of the Germans adopted Gew. The Spanish M1893 rifle is slick to operate, but has a pike-like length to fend off horsemen with the bayonet.