I have a chance to get a Montana 1999 stainless action. Have any of you guys had any experance whith these and are they good? Would they make a good DGR action? Thanks for your response. Maddog

I had one in 458 Lott stainless. To my eyes it was finished better than a factory model 70 plus the bottom metal is better.
They are slightly heavier and are a better choice for larger calibers. Not a good choice if you are trying to make a light weight rifle.

i have used and sold several of them. all of the ones i got were pretty well finished. i built one up into a 458 lott. it took a little work to get it to feed right but it is reliable now. as snowwolf says , it is a little heavy but of no consequence on a big kicker.

Have had four Montana 1999 stainless actions - three in long magnum and one in short magnum.

One in long magnum had to be returned to Montana to make the safety and trigger function.


Hammer

do a search here and in the gunsmithing forum. You will find some people who like them, and a lot of MRC horror stories. As for how good they are, like everything else in life it depends on what level of quality you are willing to accept.

Since I only owned one and handled several more I do not have a lot of knowledge to base my opinion. That being said I think the earlier versions they produced were the ones that some thought were not up to par as far as finishing. Mine was sent to me with the wrong ejector installed and MRC quickly replaced it.
Not sure what level of finishing people are expecting for this priced action but I liked mine enough that I plan on ordering another.

Is there such a thing as a NEW mauser action??
If so where?

Hello MADDOG,
Yes indeed, Mauser will build you one and it is a 98 all the way. Can also have true magnum version as well. Believe they are a bit pricey and start in the area of 10,000 or so, but it is a true Mauser. Do a search for Mauser Rifles and you will find their site. Good luck!

;;;;I had one ,, I wanted to make up a nice light little 416 Taylor for my wife......In my ignorance I picked the wrong company to do bussiness with . .....I had asked for the lightest weight barrel they could put on it ....It was like a mid wt Varmit barrel .. The action was as heavy as a sledge hammer and is made from a whole bunch of bolted together cnc parts that are poured at Ruger .....The follower was cnc machined and thats it.....It wouldn,t feed anything execpt 270 winchester.. ........I paid more for it than I would have a 338 ruger and had to put another 300.00$ into it to get a working rifle......Then I ordered a 375 H&H short chambered ,,threaded barrel for it..........The shank was the wrong size.. It was too big in diameter........Perhaps they freeze one part and heat the other to put them together .. But even so the threads wern,t quite the same pitch.......I re cut the threads myself and turned down the diameter of the barrel and put it together ...........I had ordered a short chambered barrel ,,, what it was is a short shank barrel ,,It had Max ,plus, head space..........The only thing good about that rifle is I shot 6 deer with it 2 falls ago .It was very accurate ...I couldn,t get over my disgust with the company and was considering takeing an angle grinder to the thing when a much better idea poped into my head..so I gave it to a friend, Oh ya , the 416 Taylor is a standard length cartridge .. the action was a long action.....But they had cut the chamber with nearly the same length to the rifleing as a 416 Rem , but with the shoulder in the relatively correct place for the 416 Taylor only not a pc!!!..I was coing to ream the chamber to 416 Rem ....but that is a job for someone else.......They should have a gremlin of a guy kicking himself in the ass .....That is my experience with the Montana Rifle Company and their of 1999

....See above comments

I own two of their long actions. They made very nice 404 Jeffery rifles!

I have shot Rustys 404 and it is a nice rifle.

However to avoid all problems associated with custom and most factory rifles, just get a Blaser R 93.
Sight it in, practice with the "system", and take it on a hunt.

No muss, no fuss, work fine last long time.

.......Yes I think they could be made up into a nice rifle ...but I had it in my head that ordering a barreled act . would be like ordering a Sako ,,,,or ordering a Ruger barreled action from Brownells....NOPE....When I compared it to my Ruger or CZ ,,I felt it was lacking.....

I beleive they have new manegment and that those quality issues and inventory issues are the top two priorities, don't think you would have that experience now. Gunboot, who did you talk to over there about that and what was their response?

Here's the post that I wrote in 2006 when I built my short action:

I just built the stainless steel, left handed Montana Rifle Co. action that I bought on the charter buy 3 years ago. My action has a single digit serial number so it was one of the very first actions made.

As received the action looked good, the upper half was polished lightly with no waves or rounded over lines. Below the stock line the action was as-cast but still didn’t look bad. The bottom metal showed a little roughness from the casting on the exterior but surprisingly the interior was very smooth and clean looking. The stainless mag box is just a folded piece of heavy stainless sheet metal but the lips fit closely under the bottom of the feed rails with even spaces on both sides.

My gunsmith said the front ring and threads were the best he had ever seen on a production gun. He barely skim-cut the front ring and it was dead flat, perpendicular to the threads and the threads were straight to the bore. The rear ring was not perfectly aligned with the front so he made a smoothing cut inside it to make the bolt travel easier.

The bolt he said was a major pain as the lugs were making 20% contact on the left and not touching at all on the right. The contact patch on the left lug was a high spot because as he lapped that down both lugs immediately started making contact and lapped to about 90% contact relatively easily. The bolt face was perpendicular to the bore after the lugs were lapped and the face was flat so he didn't have to touch that at all. The sliding surfaces of the lugs and the rails were rough as a cob but the rails were flat and straight.

I don’t like the looks or feel of the action screws as they feel rough and have regular flat screw heads. The scope mounting screws lined up well. I laid two steel yardsticks through the edges of the screw holes and they stayed parallel and equidistant from the barrel all the way to the muzzle. The screw holes themselves felt rough and some holes felt tighter than others. I ran a tap down each hole just to clean them up and they felt fine after that. The tap moved easily through the holes and didn’t feel like it was doing any cutting just cleaning the holes.

My gunsmith really liked the trigger. He’s a big fan of Winchester triggers and he thought that the components in this action were as nicely made as any Win trigger he had seen lately. He said that the engaging angles were cut correctly and the surfaces required minimum polishing. It adjusted easily and required no changes to the geometry of the mating surfaces. He did not have to reduce the sear engagement to any worrisome level to get it set at 2 Lbs, 4 oz with a crisp break. It actually feels lighter than that to me but we tested it 10 times on his electronic trigger scale and the highest reading we saw was 2 Lb, 6 oz, the lowest was 2 Lbs, 3 oz.

Overall I’m very pleased with this action.

Mine is in 6.5x284 and used for long range varminting so the CRF is wasted on me. But it will take prairie dogs out to 800 yards (so far) on a boringly regular basis and coyotes at over 700 yards.