I am looking for some information on installing steel recoil lug crosspins in stocks. I have built several stocks but never figured out how to accuratly locate where the pin hole should first be drilled. I would like to install a couple in my own stocks. Also I would like to know if it would be feasable to reuse the ones removed from old military stocks?

Get the Bsquare installation jig from Brownells. It makes the work childs play.

Ditto the B-square jig. Before I got it, I installed a few by carefully measuring and lining up, and they turned out ok, but honestly I think I just got lucky. It is child's play with this jig.

Jig does not work, as far as I can figure out (didn't spend much time on it though )with a round bottomed action, or for putting in a rear crossbolt. Those I still do by careful measuring, with a drill press (but using the counterbore from the B-square jig) and they come out ok.

Give up the notion of using the Mauser crossbolt. No way in hell you will ever get that thing lined up and installed correctly. If you were even to attempt it, you would need a hollow chisel mortiser. I have one, and still couldn't get it right. The only way I can think of it working out easily is if you installed it after the action was inlet into the stock blank, BEFORE the stock blank was machined (i.e. an unshaped, flat, parallel sided blank). Then you would have a flat surface to lay it on and get the square hole perpendicular to the barrel channel like it should be. For all I know, that's how they did it at the Mauser factory; or they had a nice jig for it.

Good luck,
Todd