Mohawk 555

RememberTheSomme

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Who is old enough to remember the Mohawk 555 for sale in the early 70s from SIR in Winnipeg ,and what info is there on them? A semi auto, .303 British, sporter based on Tokarev??
 
Mort English who owned Globle Firearms was no moron. Mort KNEW how to make money and that is what business is all about. I've give my left gonad to turn the clock back and have a week to root in the basement of the place in Ottawa or out at his farm where he used to heat the office by burning Browning hi-power butts and Lee Enfield stocks and a lot of the stocks were Metford, Long Lee and Mk.1 wood. There was enough kit in those two places to cause most if not everyone on this board to weep...
The Mohawk 555 was very touchy due to the mags. The rim difference between the 7.62 x 54 and the .303 was enough to cause some problems, but a lot of it was caused by people bending the mag lips trying to get different bullet weights and types of ammo to work. Plus, most of the Tokarevs were well beat and it was a miracle that Mort was able to make anything out of them at all. He also had a pile of Johnsons as well and they were rougher than the batch that International (Century) sold at $35.00 ea in the 70's. The Johnsons went to the USA where the REAL money was....... The market is in the USA and Century and Mort both knew this and this is the reason Century blew Canada and went where the real money was and people were happy to pay for milsurp. The "as new" Mosin's with bayonet ammo pouches and tool kit, were $22.96 in Canada at one time and would not sell...go figure.....
 
"...A semi auto, .303 British, sporter based on Tokarev??..." A converted Tokarev to use ammo that could not be found, at the time. Most had bad headspace. Zero QC. Couldn't give 'em to anybody who knew better in the shop I worked in, then. Wouldn't sell one, even on consigment or take one in trade. Unsafe junk.
"...Mort English, who owned Globle Firearms, was no moron..." Maybe so, but he also sold rifles that were unsafe to shoot. Mind you, so did Century. They assembled thousands of both Lee-Enfield models out of parts bins and sold 'em cheap without bothering to ensure they rifles were safe to shoot.
 
Mort English who owned Globle Firearms was no moron. Mort KNEW how to make money and that is what business is all about. ......he used to heat the office by burning Browning hi-power butts and Lee Enfield stocks and a lot of the stocks were Metford, Long Lee and Mk.1 wood. There was enough kit in those two places to cause most if not everyone on this board to weep...

Being able to make money does not equate to intelligence. Look at Justin Bieber or Jersey Shores as proof. Plus telling me that he burned Enfield wood and Browning Hi Power stocks as firewood does not make a convincing argument against the moron argument. Apologies if he is a friend, I also have friends who are nice enough guys but are dumb as a sack of hammers.
 
Biggest issue with the 555 was the lack of understanding of port pressure issues, combined with the lack of tools for adjustment.

Properly, the rifle should have been adjusted for different loads, but nobody knew how to do this. Rifles therefore were set to operate with ust about whatever ammo was available. As they had very short pistons, port pressures were very high, which is NOT good. End result was that it was possible, under some circumstances, for a rifle to slam-fire in an out-of-battery condition. This is NOT good. I have seen the wreckage of two rifles that this happened to.

Still, they were a snazzy-looking rifle and the idea was fine, even though the execution thereof might have had problems.
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The market is in the USA and Century and Mort both knew this and this is the reason Century blew Canada and went where the real money was and people were happy to pay for milsurp. The "as new" Mosin's with bayonet ammo pouches and tool kit, were $22.96 in Canada at one time and would not sell...go figure.....

The RCMP and Customs closing them down for illegally smuggling firearms into Canada as Automotive parts had noooooooooooooothing to do with them running away...I mean moving. :D
 
The RCMP and Customs closing them down for illegally smuggling firearms into Canada as Automotive parts had noooooooooooooothing to do with them running away...I mean moving.

If you are talking about the importation of Garands rifles and parts into the USA, that was long after Century left Canada. Century was the source of the guns, but the illegal acts were committed by a dealer from Toronto and one from the USA.
 
God i couldnt wait for the new SIR catalogue every year ,everything from willys jeeps , CCKWs, CMP trucks and Mohawk 555s. Was this the good old days , or are these the good old days 40 years from now? I wonder.

Happy New Year:wave:
 
IIRC it was Mel Bishop(US) and hercules (TO) who tried to ship the garand parts to the US ...Bishop was very well known in the US for garand parts
 
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