Winter Project: A Mauser-based 1911-magfed Bolt Action

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Originally Posted by HeavyDuty

Called it.

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It was sufficiently loud is made my ears ring for a few moments afterwards.

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I should have figured it out before. This is a 1913-built gun, but it's built to 1916-specs (curved bolt handle, gas ports on the side of the chamber area and bolt, in case of a pierced primer). Which means, of course it was rebarreled/refurbed at the arsenal at some point in time. That's probably when it was serialized as well (since the serials match on the receiver and barrel, but are different font and stamping depth than the cartouche).

Anyways, none of that really matters - except to say when the probably two big Spanish dudes torqued the new barrel on, it would have been nice if they'd chased the threads before hand. In their defense, Spanish '93 Mausers saw a lot of action over the first half of the 20th century and presumably the arsenal rebuilds weren't exactly focused on fixing every little problem. If it was close enough, it was close enough.

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Originally Posted by RevolverRob

And just when I thought it wouldn't go one more little nudge and it popped loose with a BANG!

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I witnessed a 1917 Enfield barrel have the same thing happen, and the big guy manning the bar a bit too casually fell rather awkwardly, though luckily did not bust his head wide open.

This is a day late and a dollar short, but IIRC one of the more common "last resorts" was to stick the barreled action into an adequate lathe and then use a thin parting tool to cut a slot in the barrel's shoulder immediately (as in a "kiss cut") in front of the receiver... down to the nominal major diameter of the threads. This was to relieve any actual compression at that point and so reduce the effort to only fighting the threads. In your 93's case, someone at Oviedo apparently helped add some custom "interference" fitting.

As you are finding, the Spanish Mausers can be a mixed bag when you dig into them... but if a guy isn't freaked out about the lack of the '98-style "insurance lug," they make a neat, trim little rifle or carbine. In the original 7x57, they were - and probably still are - vastly underrated by Americans as handy hunting tools.

Hey, Rob - is this one DOA?

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Originally Posted by HeavyDuty

Hey, Rob - is this one DOA?

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Oh man, I missed this post. No. It has been sitting moribund in my basement for the past bit.

So let's have an update:

The biggest challenge I ran into and what made me shelve this for a bit was the ejector. Rhineland Arms came up with a rather goofy solution - intended for a 98k that has a thumb cut out for stripper clip loading. Basically, their ejector goes on the outside of the receiver into that thumb cut and hits the brass.

Rhineland Arms Ejector:
Attachment 116130

'93-96 Mauser ejector:

Attachment 116131

My receiver doesn't have a thumb cut so the RAI ejector wouldn't work. The stock '93-96 ejector was too short, not kicking brass out until the bolt was nearly all the way back. So, I considered a few options...I could cut the thumb notch into the receiver and use the RAI ejector. That was probably the easiest choice, but I was loathe to cut hard on a 110yo receiver. Also, the whole thing looks like shit, if I'm honest. The ejector box sticks out from the receiver, it just looks...half-assed.

I finally figured that I needed to make my own elongated ejector and I wanted it inside the receiver as God and Paul Mauser intended.

Step one...I had to Dremel a chunk of the receiver rail out, so my new ejector would fit in this spot when the bolt was closed. I used a carbide burr and went after it. Here you can see the rough out.

Attachment 116132

Then, I sat around and drew a few configurations, before I figured out I could flip the Rhineland ejector over, chop the goofy head of, thin it carefully down and then fit it to the ejector box:

Attachment 116133

Installed:

Attachment 116134

A bit of fitting to get it to move freely, but it fits great and is completely invisible from the exterior of the receiver.

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Now I turned my attention back to the bottom metal-receiver gap. I got things mostly fit up and realized I needed about 0.05" of a spacer. Again I debated: I could lay on some TIG weld beads, make a cork/rubber/plastic gasket/spacer, CAD and have something machined...or find a scrap chunk of 16-gauge mild from building the Sunbeam floorpans and grind it out...the last one seemed simplest:

Attachment 116136

And now everything fits, feeds, and ejects...

Attachment 116137

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Next Steps:

1) Drill and pin the mag adapter into place.
2) Finally rent that tap from 4D Reamers and clean up the barrel threads and fit the barrel.
3) Stock it.

And here is a couple of shit vid from a couple of days ago when I was making the ejector:

http://instagram.com/p/C4WioBOL55d/