I have a tuned M70 in 9.3x62. New barrel and adjustments. Very accurate.
The bolt will not close on a round dropped in the chamber. It chambers great when the rounds are picked up out of the magazine.
Is there any downside to having the bolt modified to close on a round dropped in the chamber thus giving me (1) more round available ?

For now you might be able to close the bolt on a chambered round by pushing with your thumb on the middle of the extractor while the bolt is forward against the round. It will bend the extractor away some from the rim.

Yes you want to get the extractor modified or changed to close on a chambered round.

I load one round from the magazine then drop the rest into the magazine box through the floorplate.

Model 70s should always snap over a chambered round; if it won't, you need to stone the extractor hook a bit. Not only is there no down side, it is supposed to do it. It isn't a Mauser, which are not designed to snap over a loaded round.

Just a question for the OP....are we talking M70 as in Winchester or M70 as in Zastava ??

quote:

Originally posted by Duane Wiebe (CG&R):
This suggestion that 98's were meant to feed from the magazine only is not supported by the 1MM cleanance in the R. side of the bridge. That clearance is there specifically to allow the room for extractor "snap over"

...Most 98's will slip over...

I've always wondered where this Mauser "feeds from the magazine only" conventional wisdom came from. I was tinkering with one of my Springfields a few weeks ago, and comparing the visual appearance of the 1903 extractor that is supposed to snap over the rim, against the M98 that is not supposed to.

I know they are similar, but couldn't see a dramatic difference so I tried push feeding a couple of my Mausers. 4 to be exact, and three of the four closed on a chambered round with only the slightest click as the bolt closed. I have no idea if any were modified at some point in the past, but they all came off milsurps. I cannot visually distinguish the one that only fed from the magazine from any of the others.

Not the largest sample size, but 3 out of 4 bucked the conventional wisdom. So, anybody that claims a Mauser is designed to feed only from the magazine please justify your position. I would like to know where this comes from.

Thanks guys.
Win M70

It would seem illogical for a round not to be able to be fed in from atop a loaded magazine. Those Mauser brothers were pretty smart...

quote:

Originally posted by Idaho Sharpshooter:
It would seem illogical for a round not to be able to be fed in from atop a loaded magazine. Those Mauser brothers were pretty smart...

Why did the old Mauser not have a beveled extractor?

quote:

Originally posted by Savage_99:

quote:

Originally posted by Idaho Sharpshooter:
It would seem illogical for a round not to be able to be fed in from atop a loaded magazine. Those Mauser brothers were pretty smart...

Why did the old Mauser not have a beveled extractor?

Which "old Mauser" is not beveled? All my 98 extractors are beveled just like a 1903 or M70. I've also looked at plenty of Mausers that I don't own and have never seen an extractor that wasn't beveled.

And how do you explain my 75% success rate achieving that which is supposedly not possible?

montea6b and also texaskillartist: I'm not a gunsmith. Yet, I wonder if the outer edge of the tip could be hitting the inside of the cut in the ring. I'd take a look at Mr. Weibe's MAKING IT FEED and see how your Mauser CRF type tips differ from his suggested tip flex of .005". I tweaked my first extractor tip a few months ago using his principles. (thanks again Duane). It blew away a lot of smoke for me.

Mausers are not designed to snap over a single loaded cartridge but sometimes will and European soldiers were trained to load only from clips. Springfields were designed to do so; with a magazine cutoff it has to be able to take single rounds; a dubious feature wanted only by American military thinkers.

Thanks dpcd: I enjoy your posts and others. I've learned much about the Mauser design and history. So, the snap-over performance of the extractor tip M98 design if successful is happenstance. I get that. My interest is peaked as to what the actual difference is between the 98 tip and the Springfield tip. It can't be seen, can it be measured? The line of demarcation has to be in the thousandths of an inch. Would you agree? I have no Springfield to compare to. I'd appreciate any information to help satisfy my curiosity. Thanks.

Here are three Mausers and a Springfield. Which ones snap over the rim and which ones do not? Can you tell from the photo?

I've had a number of mausers with no bevel. I thought the trick was to squeeze the extractor behind the collar to allow it to slip over the rim.

The idea that 98's won't snap over has always perplexed me, from my experience they do. I've never had to modify the extractor to make this happen, maybe I'm just lucky????

montea6b. The two Mausers on the left might have the most potential to have a no-go on a dropped in round. The top of the bevel on the extractor seems to need to continue all the way to the top. Thanks for the visual. P.S. I'd be tempted to put a little more radius on the bottom of tip 2 from left.

A couple of serious issues come into play here, and they are argueable, but having hunted quite a bit of dangerous game it is my opinnion that no change should be made for several reasons:

1. Removal of metal naturally weakens the extractor and it original design according to some fine gunsmiths?? I tend to agree.

2. Its faster but more importantly, your less likey to fumble, believe it or not, to push a round down into the magazine and close the bolt than to drop a round down the barrel and close the bolt, not by much but I witnessed a couple of guys timing that test some years ago and came to that conclusion and if your moving its even more noticeable.

3. changing Paul Mausers design by much is usually a mistake because he did everything with a reason..

4. I have lost rounds by trying to drop them in the barrel while running after an animal. and when running with a rifle you may have it pointed up or down and up complicates the drop in procedure..I have witnessed others do the same thing.

5. For a DGR, I strongly suggest you load to the magazine, for a deer rifle or whatever it may not make a lot of difference.

Just my opinnion, and like I said its argueable, but not to me, my head is made up!

To make things more clear, or equally as likely, muddy them more; I just checked a dozen 98k Mausers (all 8mm) and a 4 03s for ability to snap over a rim. Remember, the Mauser is not designed to do this; if the extractor tongue is snugly fit into it's groove, it will not snap over. If it fits more loosely, allowing the tongue to come out of it's slot, then it will. Of course, on the Springfields, since it has no angled tongue groove, it can spring back and forth all day, as it is designed to do. I didn't want to force too much, as I do not want to break extractors, but only 4 out of 12 would snap over with the same force as required on the Springfield. I can now tell by looking at how tightly the extractor fits into the tongue groove whether it will snap over or not. All hooks were original and not modified. So, it is not the hook that you need to consider; it is how loose your extractor tongue is in the slot. I bet if you ground off the angle on the tongue, it would snap over every time.

My view of the conventional wisdom on this issue has definitely been reshaped by this thread, and the personal experiment it prompted. Just a couple points to summarize:

1. Mausers are designed to feed from the magazine - No arguments there, and they do it quite well for the most part…

2. Mausers are not designed to close on a chambered round - Although no evidence has been presented that this was an intentional design omission, the fact that many rifles will not do so supports this statement. If they were designed to close on a chambered round the failure rate would be abysmal.

3. Mausers are designed to not close on a chambered round - Again, no evidence to support this, and since many do this would also be an abysmal failure if it were true.

So, what I am left to conclude is that the only statement undeniably true is #1 above. The fact that many rifles will close on a chambered round appears to be random chance based on the presence of a bevel which enables deflection of the hook to occur, and manufacturing tolerances that allow the extractor to be pulled out far enough to snap over.

Can we draw any other conclusions from this?

When rearwood pressure is applied to the extractor it moves back,lets say 20 thou or so. This allows the bevelled tongue to disengage the undercut and permits the claw to move out over the rim. There is about 40 thou clearance between the extractor and the receiver as Duane stated.
I reckon the Mauser brothers designed it so.

The reason Springfields were designed differently from Mausers has to do with the military requirements placed on the designers.

Springfields were designed with conical breeches to facilitate loading single rounds. Springfields even have a magazine cut off to allow single rounds to be loaded over a fully loaded magazine, so that magazine fire could be held in reserve for emergencies, while using the rifle otherwise as a single loader.

German military concepts of how an infantry weapon should be used did not contemplate single loading, or even accurate aimed fire, given the military Mauser's primitive sighting arrangements, with no provision for accurate elevation adjustment and no provision for windage adjustment at all.

The Springfield sighting system, although misguidedly designed, allowed for impressive scores on the rifle range. The Model 54 Winchester, and its successor the Model 70, both adopted the Springfield cone breech and were therefore well suited for single loading.

In my opinion, altering a Mauser extractor in a dangerous game rifle to allow single loading without changing the breech design accordingly is asking for trouble.

My dangerous game rifle was based on a P-14 Enfield action, also designed with a conical breech, therefore well suited for single loading.

I told you guys that this is not an easy phenomena to quantify. I just diid another test of extractor movement, done on 6 original 98k bolts in matching rifles which were in excellent to mint condition. Not the ones I tested yesterday. I found that axial extractor movement was not an indicator of whether it would snap over an 8mm rim. I thought it would be an indicator, but it was definitely not. All of the extractors had some movement (I didn't measure it but I could if someone wants that). Only two of the 6 rifles would snap over a rim with the same effort as on the Springfields. I didn't try to horse the bolts closed as I don't want to break any hooks off. So, my conclusion is that it is a random occurrance if your extractor snaps over without modification. Also as for the commonly recommended procedure of pinching the extractor, that does work most of the time but some extractors were very hard to spring inward.

Another interesting find; in the Operator's Manual for the FN Model 24, page 7 here is what it says; "The great length of the extractor gives it such flexibility that it can grasp a cartridge put by hand into the chamber. It's slightly curved form allows of its acting as a spring ensuring in this way its proper fastening upon the bolt."
I have not seen this verbiage in German manuals but I am looking.

IF I hunted with a Mauser I would want it to close over a round in the chamber, just in case it ever occured.

But I do agree with Atkinson, when reloading under stress, especially when moving, it is a much better plan to push the round into the magazine.

Even with a Remington 700, or an AI or other "modern" bolt rifle, when reloading in a moving vehicle or in a helicopter, it is best to put them in the magazine, even if you only have one round left...

quote:

Originally posted by dpcd:
Mausers are not designed to snap over a single loaded cartridge but sometimes will and European soldiers were trained to load only from clips. Springfields were designed to do so; with a magazine cutoff it has to be able to take single rounds; a dubious feature wanted only by American military thinkers.

A few additional comments regarding an otherwise pretty factual couple of statements.

The M98 Mauser was the culmination of the design issues that Paul Mauser identified in the M71 through M96 Mauser actions - everything from better handling gas due to case rupture, to short stroking of the bolt, to need for a stronger action to handle high cartridge pressure levels for both sporting and military usage. All of the Mauser actions were used in both military and civilian scenarios but the M98 Mauser was taken to a higher level by being offered in Kurt, Intermediate, Standard, Standard Long, and from a few factories the Long Magnum action lengths.

From a military standpoint the vast majority of the Mauser designed magazine fed bolt action rifles were used by military personal who had zero firearms experience outside of the military. Consequently the military variants were designed as PDH (in modern vernacular) as possible - hence the teaching of stripper clip recharging of the magazine without feeding an additional cartridge up the tube.

For civilian use the ability to single feed a cartridge would be an advantage. From my prospective it would not have been beyond Paul Mauser to institute a design modification to the extractor to facilitate single feeding rounds in the M98 action as commercially based rifles were released in chamberings whose rims wouldn't fit in stripper clips around the beginning of the 20th century. Throw WWI and later WWII into the mix along with many manufacturing facilities located in a number of countries and it's not surprising that individual M98 Mausers exist whose extractors both will and will not easily close over the rim of a single feed round into the chamber.

And least we forget, the 1903 Springfield lost a number of Mauser' patent infringement suits prior to WWI so it wasn't a clean slate design but rather an evolution of Mauser' M98 design.

Anyway, I have zero proof but this is my personal speculation to the situation.

All that said, and I sure won't argue with Duane Wiebbe, as he is one of the best of gunmakers, but some others of his ilk say different, so it may or may not be an issue..

For me, I soley base my opinnion, not on the rifle or a gunsmith approach to feed and function, but on the fact that I have hunted and/or observed more DG being shot than most and I want to push my rounds down in the magazine. like 450 said, its best to do that when running after a herd of Buffalo or elephant, flying in a helicopter, or bouncing across country in a PU truck after something thats been wounded. I have seen ammo fall out on the ground, in the back of a PU, and even sitting in a blind at an exciting moment, when it was dropped in the champer, and not held secure by a control feed rifle..user error? absolutly, but mistakes like that usually happen when your looking a mad buff at spitting distance, kicking dirt over his back and blood spewing out his nose, and he knows your the SOB that just hurt him..

Bottom line with me is that's the way I choose to do it and if one choses to do otherwise then more power to him.