Which brand of Mauser
I am thinking of building a varmint rifle up from a mauser action.
Which of the imports are the best buy? I have heard that there is a surplus of parts, but I don't want one thats wore smooth out. If its good enough I might buy a case of 8mm and use it up before changing barrels.
Thanks
JW
Which of the imports are the best buy? I have heard that there is a surplus of parts, but I don't want one thats wore smooth out. If its good enough I might buy a case of 8mm and use it up before changing barrels.
Thanks
JW
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CZ or even the new CZ 98's are supposed to be real good foundations for a custom job. 0 -
The Yugo/Bosnian M48's are relatively inexpensive and have decent bores. CZ/VZ 24's are good too.
Anad0 -
hitman#1 -
Here's a little thing I wrote a while back when I got done building up a Mauser ... it can be done for less, but It's easy to get carried away.
Building a Custom Rifle
A word to the wise ... If you want to build a custom gun, start with a modern barreled action ... this is coming from a guy that is in the ending phase of going down the path you may be thinking about. I've easily spent more than enough to buy a new Kimber 22-250 heavy barrel varmint rifle ... and that's not counting my time.
German receiver - complete ................... $150
Parker-Hale bolt and adjustable trigger ... $189
Boyd's Thumbhole stock .......................... $179
Douglas Heavy Varmint Barrel ................. $145
Leupold rings and Bases ........................... $ 70
In retrospect, I could have saved money in several areas, but as the project progressed I up-graded on several things, to start with, if I'd bought just a striped action I could have saved about ? of that cost since I decided matching numbers weren't a concern anyway, then I went with a more appealing (to me) stock and I went with the P-H bolt and trigger (which has a safety lever similar to a Remington) instead of the modified wing safety and military trigger, (which I'd bought and didn't like). I felt its not only more modern, but also cleaner looking. After almost 2 years, I decided I wasn't going to buy the scope mount drilling jig, receiver wrench, barrel jaws for my vice, reamer and headspace gauges ... a competent and real gunsmith charges less to do it than I could buy the tools for, and since this is not a project I'm going to take up again, I opted to have him do it ... he noticed the bolt wasn't closing all the way and also had to inlet the stock a bit more for the trigger and bolt handle, everything came to another $200 ... so now were up to $933 ... and I still have to do a lot of polishing and maybe bluing. I've just finished doing some inletting to fully float the barrel and lastly it will need to be glass bedded, which I also plan to do myself.... I haven't decided weather I'm going to try to clean up the floor plate/trigger guard or just spend another $150 or so for a commercial hinged floor plate. This brings up another problem ... the floor plate/mag well! If your going to stay with a length of caliber the Mauser action was designed for its no problem, however I went with the 22-250 which is .8" shorter ... almost an inch! What happens if you use the mag well? Well, under recoil the cartridges slide around and bind up ... you can put 1 round in the mag and one in the chamber, but it's basically a single shot. What I did to overcome this is to make and install a ?" X 1" nylon block at the rear of the mag well and pin it in place, cut down the follower to the correct length for the 22-250 then got a mag follower spring for a Remington short action ... this fit perfectly in the mag well. Now then, when I cut off the back of the follower I removed the follower stop. This was easily corrected by building up the corner with a short bead of weld then shaping square ... it worked great, unfortunately about 90% of the time, after the last round was ejected the bolt would get hung-up on the back of the follower ... so back to look at the part of the follower I removed ... again! Now, I consider myself fairly observant, but I didn't notice on the back of the follower there was a sort of ramp cut at about a 20-degree angle ... so I took out my follower and just on my bench-grinder cut a ramp on the back of my modified follower and it worked perfectly! Now that you've read all that I have a secret for you that I only recently discovered! Back when Gibbs was sporterizing Mauser's, they developed a detachable mag, that fits without modification into the standard floor-plate, you can get them at Numrich Gun Parts in standard or short action length for $24.95 ... the only drawback is that they only hold 3 rounds.
Anyway, it looks like I'll have somewhere around $1100 plus Optics and a total of about 100 hours of my time in this puppy ... frustrating at times, but its been fun and educational. I did shoot it 2 days ago (without bedding) to "break in the barrel" and work up some loads. I mounted a BSA 6-24X44 Platinum Target scope from another rifle until I decide what to top this one with. Shooting 55 grain Winchesters, CCI primers and Accurate 2230, I started at 33 grains (2 grains under the max load) and loaded 9 rounds each of 33, 33.5, 34, 34.5 and 35. Shooting 3 shot groups, one round of each load into the appropriate target successively (to allow for barrel temp change), I ended up with groups measuring from 1.75 to 0.38 with the max load of 35 grains performing the best. If it keeps shooting like this, the BSA may stay on it and I'll find something else for the other rifle.
Well that's my experience; hope it's been informative or at least entertaining [:)]
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Chance favors the prepared mind
kimberkid@gunbroker.zzn.com0 -
yugo would be the one to go with on that 0 -
Downside to the Yugo is it is a short action which causes problems when you try to find a stock for it. Good action, odd size[:D] 0 -
hitman, check out the Czech VZ-24; I think that they are real good actions which can be bought reasonably, and so are the rifles if you can find a nice one.
BTW, kimberkid has provided some good info for you to consider.
OleDuk0 -
Thanks for all of the help guys. I was afraid of kimbers story.
Maybe I'll just shoot 8mm for a while0 -
On a competitors forum, a reputable swedish gun expert says the belgium made mauser actions are the best, if that helps.
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Heston for prez.0 -
Kimberkid,
But, what a BEAUTIFUL piece it is!!
You guys have got me thinkin' now, and I'm seein' dollar signs!
The road to hell is paved with good intentions!0 -
hitman#1 -
As I said, it can be done cheaper ... I could have bent the bolt myself or gotten one of the kits and saved over $150 ... infact I could have started with a Turkish Mauser for $50-$60 ... lots of things I could have done differently, the point was how easy it is to get carried away. One thing you might consider, depending on what your looking for is some of the stock makers are making a few replacement stocks for the Yugo's now that there is such a flood of them avaiable ... check with www.boydboys.com and www.rifle-stocks.com ... Its amazing how much just a commerical stock changes the look of a military weapon ... good luck on your quest!
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Chance favors the prepared mind
kimberkid@gunbroker.zzn.com0
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