What do you guys know about the French Berthier Carbine? Does anyone have one? I saw another one at gun shop and I have to say that I was impressed. The gun was a little work of art and just felt fantastic to hold, light, well balanced, smooth action and that cool french writing on the receiver...I was caught completely off guard by this one. The one that I saw has a bubba'd stock and something was a little funky with the magazine but I am not familiar enough with this carbine to know exactly what I was looking at.

I have to do some reading but it looks like these carbines were originally made with an integral 3 shot magazine and then modifed after WWI to use a 5 shot magazine. I also have to do some reading about the 8mm Lebel cartridge as I do not think they are readily available and I am guessing that an 8mm Lebel cartridge has nothing to do with an 8mm Mauser cartridge. Anyways, this is my new interest and I will probably talk myself out of it after I do some reading but what a wonderful gun to hold.

I still done like the French but I have to give credit where credit is due...what a great little carbine.

Mlousqueton Berthier I have several, at one time you couldn't give them away, but they have become more popular as the end of "the war to end all wars" comes close to the century mark. There were many variations of the Berthier carbine, the last of them, the Mle16 was a five shot model, the earlier ones were converted by the addition of a magazine extension and a modification to the original magazine. You can use the five shot Mannlicher clip in the three shot models by leaving off two rounds, the clip will just stick out the bottom of the magazine as they are designed to drop out the bottom once the last round is fired. Forget about factory ammo, the US stuff is unobtanium, and the French milsurp rounds were loaded with a non corrosive primer that went dead by the time it was 40 years old, and that would be 40 years ago now. Brass from Privi is available,Dies from Lee, and it is not hard to reload, I do it myself for my Lebels, and Berthiers. They are among the lightest, and most handy of carbines, and are fun to shoot. You will want to find one with the N stamp on the receiver ring to indicate that it will handle the 1932N cartridge introduced after the war.

The most commonly encountered model is the Mle 1892/16, these carbines were still in service into the 1960's This is the five shot model. The rifles tended to get sporterized more so that the carbines , sometimes rifles were cut down to carbine size both by Bubba, and the French government, so care must be taken if a carbine is seen with Mle 1907/15 stamped on it as this would indicate a cut down rifle.
Here are some pics of a three shot Mle 1892 carbine made in 1894. The last pic shows the Mosin 1891 Lotta rifle, 1886 Lebel, and the Mle 1907/15 Berthier on the bottom, note the five shot mag extension.

Great info and fantastic pics! I appreciate the help, thanks. I definately need to do some reading and become more familiar with these before I drop $300 to $400 as that is what they are fetching now. I was looking around for ammo and Privi used to make some new commercial stuff but it is hard to find now.

I noticed your pic of the 1907/15 has a straight bolt handle. Is the turned down bolt handle specific to the Mle 16 as I believe that is what I was looking at in the gun shop.

These certainly are wonderful little carbines.

The carbines use the down turned bolt handle, the rifles, and converted to carbine rifles use the straight bolt handle. To think I used to get these for $25, and people were happy to be rid of them, back then ammo was not around. Forget factory ammo, it's expensive, The privi cases from Graf's are not. I load with 29 grains of IMR 3031 and a Hornady .323 170 grain round nose bullet, with CCI large rifle primer. The dies can be had from Lee for less than $30, and a Lee hand press for around the same. This load is easy on the cases, and the rifle. If you are not yet reloading then this is an easy round to learn on. It's a rimmed case very similar to the 7.62x54r, and ballistic the same as the 7.92mm Mauser. In fact substitute the 8mm Mauser case and leave the rest of the load the same and you have a good round for the Turk Mauser's, or any other Mauser.
The Russians "borrowed" the design of the bolt head from the French along with the cartridge design for the Mosin, so the two rifles are related, of course the bolt head started off it's life in the 1886 Lebel rifle. The First Mosins were made in France so I guess the French were OK with it.

HAve a berthier laying in pieces and will probably be that way until I get done working out of town Light and handy feeling little carbine

Great info, thanks again!

Noblesniper...if you get tired of tripping over all of those Berthier parts you know where to send them.