With the bolt face completely encircling the rim of the cartridge the action operates as a "push feed". Here are a few photos of the later version showing the cartridge slowly rising under the extractor as it is chambered.

The block in my rifle completely compresses the follower and spring so there is next to zero movement if you press down on it. The bottom is not flat so it is quite stable on top of the follower.

The rifle is completely matching numbers so I got curious and took the gun back apart to check the wood block, sadly it is not numbered but it is also not a mismatch.

Yes, mine was a converted military rifle, and to my limited understanding, that was a rather common conversion following WWI. I really should have kept it….sigh

The rear sight was identical to that on the rifle chipmaker posted
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The vast majority of wehrmannsgewehr98's were made from rejected parts . You will never find one with military proofs on stock or similar proofs unless restored by someone. These were sold by guilds and small shops that did work during the war and prior for the german govt. So military inspected parts on them would have got them in the wringer if they were not rejected for govt contract. I have seen a few wehrmannsgewehrs that had the crown R/C proof to show they were sent to the revisions commission and adjudged out of spec , and in most cases used , but as often rejected if too far out of tolerance. There were many star/asterisk assembled gew98's during the great war and those were done at depots with badly out of tolerance parts and their serials have number prefixes instead of alphabet prefixes. These can also run into total rebuild of pre war rifles that are even remarked to the arsenal doing that salvage yet leaving original date/maker intact. Neat niche and some put crazy values on them. Every whermannsgewehr I ever had or handled never had final military acceptance proofs on stock or receiver , and often stocks were mauser foreign contract reject wood that was repurposed for wehrmannsgewehr sales. I have seen wehrmannsgewehrs assembled from 3 or four different rifles by "restorers" , but they all looked like a good going over would have been needed to get them to shoot tight as the parts were ham fisted fit. I used to fireform 30-30 and 32 win spl brass for that caliber. Worked great for me.

3 of the rifles have the Gew98 rear sight base, and have a "star" stamp for 175 and 300 meters, for the 8.15x46R target round.

2 of them were upgraded with "Haenel" target sights in the 1930s. Those sights were marked for 100, 175, and 300 meters.

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