This MAS Modele 1936 is a French service rifle chambered in 7.5x54mm French, serial FG 701xx, and is in excellent condition as arsenal refurbished. It appears to be unfired since that work was done. The bore is mirror bright and the stock is excellent. The bolt is matching to the receiver, while the magazine and trigger guard do not match, which is the ordinary result of arsenal rebuilding and is stated here rather than left for a buyer to discover. The rifle is complete with its spike bayonet, which is the part most often missing from these today because it lives inside the rifle rather than on a belt. The rifle is offered as it is shown.
The MAS-36 was the last bolt-action rifle adopted by any major power, taken into French service in 1936 to replace the ageing Lebel and Berthier rifles and built at the Manufacture d'Armes de Saint-Etienne from late 1937 until 1952, to a total of roughly 1.1 million. Only about 250,000 had reached the troops by the Battle of France in 1940, and it was after the war that production finally caught up; the rifle then served through Indochina, Algeria and Suez, and stayed on as a training arm into the late 1970s. The design borrows openly and intelligently, pairing two rear locking lugs in the manner of the SMLE with the dog-leg bolt handle of the P14 and M1917 Enfield, bent forward so that the bolt knob sits close to the trigger and the shooter's hand travels less between shots. It feeds five rounds from an internal box magazine loaded with stripper clips, and sights through an aperture rear sight. It has no manual safety of any kind, French doctrine of the period holding that a rifle should simply be carried unloaded until the moment it was wanted. Most distinctive of all is the bayonet: a long spike carried reversed in a tube beneath the barrel and released by a spring plunger, so that the rifle carries its own bayonet and needs no scabbard at all.
Specifications
Manufacturer: Manufacture d'Armes de Saint-Etienne, MAS, France
Model: Fusil Modele 1936, MAS-36
Caliber: 7.5x54mm French
Serial: FG 701xx
Capacity: 5 rounds, internal box magazine, stripper clip loaded
Action: Bolt action, two rear locking lugs, forward bent bolt handle
Safety: None fitted, as designed
Sights: Aperture rear sight
Bayonet: Spike bayonet, carried reversed in the tube beneath the barrel, present
Matching: Bolt matching to the receiver, magazine and trigger guard do not match
Stock: Excellent
Bore: Mirror
Condition: Excellent, arsenal refurbished, appears unfired since
