I've been considering one of these rifles for quite a while and recently went ahead with it. The main reason I wanted one was simple curiosity. Over time, I have built up a fair number of old French parts manuals for these rifles and they document parts such as firing pins, locking shoulders, bolt, etc., changing over time and looking at hand drawings in these manuals can only take you so far. What I really need for my personal research are actual physical examples of the various parts for hands on comparison. I have one of the French issue MAS 49's but, like most French rifles, it had undergone an arsenal refurbishment before going into storage. At that time, a lot of the earlier pattern parts had been replaced with newer ones which is fine, but I still wanted to get my hands on one with the earlier pattern parts. The only practical way for that to happen was to rustle up one of the rifles made for the Syrian army in 1953 so, here we are:
At top is the French army pattern MAS 49 with the Syrian pattern below:
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