The body of the rifle remained a single-piece wooden element with all major internals set within the receiver in the usual way. The forend was shortened on the new design which exposed more of the barrel above the handguard. Key design differences greeted the Model 1895 over its predecessors including a single-piece trigger-guard and magazine case which were separated by a gap in earlier Mannlicher marks. The Model 1895 utilized a thinner-neck 8x50R cartridge firing from an integral magazine fed from a 5-round clip. The Model 1895 continued the straight-pull bolt-action design of the original Model 1886 series. It was this cavalry carbine that originated the new Mannlicher Model 1895 service rifle for the Austro-Hungarian Army. Model 1888 rifles produced for the newer cartridge types became the Model 1888/90 Cavalry Carbine. A semi-smokeless cartridge was introduced in 1890 and this was followed by the finalized smokeless cartridge of 1893. The Austro-Hungarians then took to revising the Model 1886 into the 8mm Model 1888 - though it took several years for Austrian engineers to perfect an indigenous smokeless powder cartridge. However, the French Lebel 8mm service rifle formally brought about use of a smokeless powder cartridge and this quickly made all smoke-based cartridge rifles obsolete.
This created the 11mm Mannlicher Model 1885 which was finalized as the Model 1886 after trials. In the mid-1880s, the Austro-Hungarian Army sought to modernized their infantry regiments with a new service rifle.