After my wife used my Vickers .318 to get her Impala, it got confiscated. Either I have to quit letting her use my guns or hit her arm when she shoots 'cause if she kills with it, it's hers and she rarely misses!
I kinda miss "owning" the old gun, so I decided to build one along the lines of the Vickers, that is, prewar English style. I ordered the barrel from Lothar Walther precontoured to the Mauser sporter pattern that they offer. It should be here in early April. I will put express sights and barrel band on. The idea is to come as close to duplicating the "look" as possible. I'm still trying to decide which Mauser action to use, I have several large ring prospects, commercial FN(never seen one used on a prewar), 1909 Argentine, Brno and FN military. Most of the English sporters I have seen were on military type actions that I suppose had been surface ground to remove all markings. I know that I read that they used surplus actions between wars, but I have never seen one that had any crests or other military and/or country markings left on them. I will leave the stripper guide intact as most did, but I will drill and tap for top mount rings as a concession to practicality. Any advice on which action to use and why. As to the stock, I will try for a pattern that has a bit less drop at the heel than my original, but enough to retain the styling of that era. I think GAG has one called the British Stalker that may fit the bill for a pattern, unless anyone knows who has a pattern along these lines that I can send my wood to. This project is early enough in the development stage, that I am open for suggestions, so let's hear them! Thanks, Lee.

I was rummaging through a Ludwig Olson article from the July - August issue (#154) of Rifle magazine. He included the list of Mauser Sporting Actions published by Stoeger. Number 16 corresponded to the .318 Westly Richards. He mentioned that commercial rifle makers had no objection to using military actions that were made in peacetime because the quality was high enough to get a good end result without an inordinate amount of work to bring the action up to snuff.

Shoot me a PM with your e-mail address and I'll send you some more information about that.

LD

PM sent!

Have you considered that Heinz 57:
Portuguese Model 1904 Mauser-Vergueiro
It has the 1909 style bottom metal and magazine and the Mannlicher receiver and bolt.

It would accept a scope ala Mannlicher-Schoneauer.

quote:

ireload2: Have you considered that Heinz 57: Portuguese Model 1904 Mauser-Vergueiro

That's a very interesting idea. I've just about finished sporterizing a Greek Mannlicher. Might do one of these next.