I did not want to call any attention to the action prior to the auction ending, but I am very curious, what is this action?

It looks cast by the tang? Anyone have the history/make/report? Any good?

http://www.gunbroker.com/Aucti....aspx?Item=394415040

All you had to do was ask. I remember these from the 80s; they were made like Mausers, but were made for 1903 Springfield bolts as they were dirt cheap then. Investment cast receivers. I think it might have been Sarco or Century, ... I can't remember who sold these, but I definitely remember them.
Any good? I never owned one.

It's a Parker Hale Midland 2100. Not the old PH but the Navy Arms/Gibbs PH.
They probably had a couple of boat loads of 03 bolts and designed a hybrid 98 around them.
I had a barreled action until recently. Unable to find parts for the odd bolt release/ejector.
Yes they were cast.
The bolt on the one in the auction is not original to the receiver as Navy Arms did a very crude low scope bolt handle alteration. And the cocking piece alteration was a jacked up affair.
I don't know if good or not, but definitely on the lower end of the purchase price scale in the 80s/early 90s.

Possibly a nylon purse could be made out of this sow's ear.

...

Yep, the answer came to me at 3am; Parker Hale Midland, which was used by Navy Arms. They were made in England as I believe they had bnp proofs on them.

Thanks guys!

A bit of background to the above. Parker Hale were offered, either free, or dirt cheap, these Springfield bolts by the British Government. So the story goes.

The other version is that P-Hale found them, and that means lots of them, in a premises that they took over after the WWII when they moved to a new location.

Anyway point of the thing is they got them for nothing or next to nothing. But the bolts only and nothing else.

But waste not want not and as making a cast receiver was cheap they hade said receivers made.

And they became the Midland Gun sold by P-Hale.

Now Midland Gun were at one time a good maker but eventually P-Hale took over the name. So poor old Midland Gun got chosen as the name for these pile of junk rifles cobbled by P-Hale from war surplus Springfield bolts and made up recievers.

But...now we come to the "and then what...."

Well...and then what? P-Hale folded in the 1990s or 2000s and two things happened. Or one thing.

Navy Arms acquired these things literally lock stock and barrel. But, more interesting, then Bremmer Arms used them to make not these Midland Gun rifles.

Why bother? Competing with a cheap rifle in the USA against Savage and the Remington Model 7 etc. No!

But those Springfield '03 reproductions that sold for a lot, lot more and also, I understand, those SNIPER Springfield '03 reproductions.

So that, I am sincerely told by those that now in the British gun trade, is where those Springfield '03 reproduction bolts came from. Ex Parker Hale via Bremmer Arms and Navy Arms.

I'll stand corrected if anyone knows that is wrong. But not from what is said here in Britain by those close to the final years of P-Hale.