This is a classic 98 Mauser military rifle like the American GIs would have brought back from
World War 2 and like what would have been imported by the thousands and thousands in the 50s and 60s.
Great firms like Griffin & Howell in the late 20s and 1930s thought maybe they had perfected
the concept of sporterizing rifles in the 1903 Springfield so it wasn't like that customization
of military rifles was new after World War 2, but there were just thousands and thousands of guns
and returning GIs that liked them maybe their first exposure to a bolt-action rifle and so
here we now have these guns and we have inventive GIs and we have the concept down and people start
sporterizing military rifles. Sometimes as basic it's just taking off the extra wood
and shorten the barrel and sometimes then by creating a beautiful sporter like what we've got here.
When we think of custom gunsmithing in America it really is custom rifle smithing in America
So I think people build sporters out of military guns because they want to.
A great deal of satisfaction from doing the work from converting something like this
especially if it's all beat up and a lot of war dings in it and converting it into some
modern sporting rifle that you can go hunt elk or deer with very very satisfying for people.
So the first thing you have to do whenever you're going to build a sporting rifle like this from a
military gun is you have to completely disassemble the military rifle that you're working with.
There are really three components there's the lock, the stock, and the barrel.
So after disassembly, you've got the barrel attached to the receiver of the lock so you have to pull that off you've
already taken the stock off and now you can see the three components lock, stock, and barrel.
The only thing you really keep for the sporting rifle is the lock itself for the action
so the wood is of no value to us the old barrel is of no value to us, but it's this
lock or the action in the middle that is the basis of a modern sporting rifle whether it be
a Mauser as we have here or a Springfield, or even a 1917 Enfield.
So lock, stock, and barrel and those are the three parts and now we're going to start to work on the lock or the action.
Now some of the work that we do on the action the bulk of it is for function that is we want
the gun to work like a modern sporting rifle some of it though is just for the eyes to make it look
better so let's talk about function first and then we'll talk about the cosmetics if you would.
You can see that we've put on a new bolt handle so we had to cut the old bolt handle off which
would have stuck straight out to the side and so we welded a new one on and we've got it bent and
we've got it swept back so that now we can pick it up and operate the bolt with it
but that's the first piece for us in this project is putting on a new bolt handle. The Mauser comes with a three
position safety but the safety is up on top of the bolt and for a sporting rifle you want the safety
on the side so that you can catch it with the thumb so this is called a three position safety
not too terribly much work to put it on but an aftermarket part so we've got a safety
on it now we've got a bolt handle, of course, the military guns aren't drilled in tapped for scopes,
so we had to drill and tap this one 6x48 for the scope basis that's a pretty simple job.
What a great challenge the floor plate is, they have what we call a detachable floor plate on the original
Mauser and now we have converted a detachable floor plate to a hinge floor plate design.
So we had to of course put a tab on the front of it that we could use as the hinge and then we
needed to latch on the back and so we've built this latch into it that allows the the hinge
floor plate then to go down. A lot of work here to do this you've got to do some work back in the
back here too for the locking apparatus a lot of contour work to do on the trigger guard
as well as cutting in the latch itself then. The original trigger of course is a two-stage military trigger
we wouldn't prefer that so we put a modern Timney trigger in this one a single-stage trigger what
you might not be able to see the tang the rear Tang on the action of a Mauser 98 is all be about
an eighth of an inch higher than this so in order to get this shape that you'd like to have for the
guard or for the top of the pistol grip you really have to cut down the rear end of that Tang and you
just do that with a grinder so we were able to do that we've reshaped the top of the bolt release
here just a little bit and then checkered it and that really is kind of cosmetics if you would and
then you can see that we've jeweled the bolt and we've nighter blued the the extractor so that's
more cosmetics than anything else and of course the whole thing then we rust blued so we've got
a very attractive receiver if you would a very functional receiver with a good bolt handle in it,
three position safety, a good trigger in it, and a modern hinge type magazine. Lots and lots and
lots of hours of time in the work itself and then polishing out the receiver afterwards so I don't
don't necessarily recommend you try to make living doing that because it's a lot of work and not much reward
but that's what you do to the lock or the action. Pretty standard for all sporting rifles
is to do those things to bring it up to what we call modern standards for a sporting rifle.
Now the stock, the stock on a rifle of modern bolt-action sporting rifle is probably the most
visible piece of it the piece you see first it a can be the most attractive or the most
unattractive part of it. For this particular stock, we've got English Walnut and that would
be the wood that most people would say would be the premier wood for a modern sporting rifle.
You can see what the shape is how it looks it's what we call a modern classic design there's no
cheek piece on it. It's made interestingly enough to fit me so the grip is designed to fit my hand,
the forend, is designed to fit my hand. So some of the features that we've done on it, of course,
it's very nicely finished with a rubbed in sanded in finish we've cut the flutes into the forend or
into the point of the comb here you can see that we've got a steel grip cap on it here
steel butt plate on it here called a neidner style we've put in two screws swivel studs
so that you never have to worry about a swivel stud turning on you we've got an ebony forend tip on it.
You can see the checkering on it is all hand-cut checkering 20 lines per inch we've got a
wraparound pattern on the front and a standard two-panel design here on the rear doesn't wrap
over the top I don't prefer that and a standard three-point design. I like borders on checkering,
so we've got the border on the checkering we've also glass bedded it which you can't see but it
would be a modern sporting stock that's designed to really please the eye designed to please your
body as you fit it. We have radiused off the top of the forend because I don't like that to
be squared up I like that to be radiused on top so this is a sporting rifle stock that
is designed to fit the owner in this case me and to satisfy the owners desire to have
a beautiful beautiful stock, nice straight grain in it, just a beautiful beautiful piece of wood.
Now the barrel. Certainly, the barrel is one of the most important parts of the gun because
you're looking for an accurate rifle and the barrel is a key piece of that. Let me tell you
some of the stuff we did to the receiver though it's part of the re-barreling project we re-tapped
the threads the barrel threads in the receiver we trued up the face then of the bolt in relation to those threads
we lapped the lugs we lapped the bolt race ways but we really got the receiver
all trued up to take the barrel before we ever put the barrel on and then we selected just a modern
sporting weight barrel this one is 24 inches we wanted either 7x57 or 257 Roberts because that is
the 7x57 case and since I already had a pretty good 7x57 this one is in 257 Roberts and so we
had to mark the receiver for that as part of the overall process. So and then of course the whole
treatment on everything here is just a slow-rust blue which would be a traditional sporting rifle
finish it's kind of a matte color that isn't very shiny to you just a very pleasing appearance to
the barrel so that's the barrel project that's the most straightforward of all the parts were
said had to be polished had to be crowned we had to chamber it and we had to fit it and that
finishes up the barrel and there you have it the lock stock and barrel on a sporting rifle a whole
bunch of work here in the stock in the barrel but what you get is a very very pleasing rifle that
is designed to fit its owner and designed to satisfy them literally for a lifetime