Been reading this most interesting thread. Have a coupla things to add.
z1r......You seem to be overly impressed with your own intellect........
Vapodog.....I think you are on the right track, with your thoughts, that thousands have been sporterized with no problems. But I think you are a little light on your estimate.....I think MILLIONS have been used, without problems. Hell, my Grandad did a coupla hundred himself, on G.I. bringbacks, during the late forties.
Might be just my Germanic blood talking, but I can't believe those proud, precise, fanatical, anal-retentive, ancestors of mine, would overlook something as basic as common heat treating...........Never happen!!! Those stolid old black forest, sturdy-legged Germans, mastered the black arts of hardening, and tempering, centuries before Peter Paul designed the turnbolt, after studying a gate latch. No doubt, the mating surfaces of the gate latch, were properly hardened, and temper drawn, perfectly too, considering the thoroughlness of the Germans.
And, z1r, you must have a vast rifle repair facility, with dozens of experts in the heat treating field, and lots of cutting-edge technology hardness testing machines, to have found so many soft Mausers......
And not to be a name dropper; but if I were to invest, say 15,000-20,000 bucks, in an Echols, or a Miller custom, it damned well better be re-heat treated!!!!.......Grant.

quote:

Originally posted by Oldmodel70:
Been reading this most interesting thread. Have a coupla things to add.
z1r......You seem to be overly impressed with your own intellect........
Vapodog.....I think you are on the right track, with your thoughts, that thousands have been sporterized with no problems. But I think you are a little light on your estimate.....I think MILLIONS have been used, without problems. Hell, my Grandad did a coupla hundred himself, on G.I. bringbacks, during the late forties.
Might be just my Germanic blood talking, but I can't believe those proud, precise, fanatical, anal-retentive, ancestors of mine, would overlook something as basic as common heat treating...........Never happen!!! Those stolid old black forest, sturdy-legged Germans, mastered the black arts of hardening, and tempering, centuries before Peter Paul designed the turnbolt, after studying a gate latch. No doubt, the mating surfaces of the gate latch, were properly hardened, and temper drawn, perfectly too, considering the thoroughlness of the Germans.
And, z1r, you must have a vast rifle repair facility, with dozens of experts in the heat treating field, and lots of cutting-edge technology hardness testing machines, to have found so many soft Mausers......
And not to be a name dropper; but if I were to invest, say 15,000-20,000 bucks, in an Echols, or a Miller custom, it damned well better be re-heat treated!!!!.......Grant.

Oldmodel70 I was following this thread too and was confused by these statements as well. I've read a lot on this forum about heat treating and it seems Vapodog knows his stuff like few others. Your comments mirror mine perfectly.

quote:

Originally posted by vapodog:

I truly believe that lug setback has been the result of folks thinking their mauser will hold anything reloadable and have run a lot of ammo thru them at very high pressures.....maybe in excess of 75,000 PSI. If this was the case then an 18% increase in strength would be a welcome improvement.

yapo et al,

What you all fail to grasp is that mausers were built to different specs for each contract. Those specs were determined by, among other things, the cartridges fired in them.

You must also take into account the powders that were used when the actions were built. They burned much diffeently than modern powders do.

A histogram of a load may show as many as 5 temporary peaks in pressure starting near 100KPSI, dropping to zero, back up to 86K back to zero up to 72-75 K down to zero then up to 63-65 + - K and dropping off to 38-39 and then zero. It is the repeated series of shocks and the duration of the peaks that hammers the lugs and seats.

You could contact HP white for verification if you'd like.

quote:

Originally posted by Oldmodel70:
.... Peter Paul designed the turnbolt, after studying a gate latch.

The guy who studied the gate latch and designed the turnbolt was not Peter Paul. It was Niklauss von Dreyse. His Needle Gun (1868) was a bolt action breechloader that paved the way for every bolt action rifle that followed. Mauser refined and perfected the bolt action begining with the Model 1871.

quote:

Originally posted by Poleax:
that mausers were built to different specs for each contract. Those specs were determined by, among other things, the cartridges fired in them

And if you don't ask for more than they were designed and built for you should'nt have a problem.

Oldmodel70 you said it better than I could.

quote:

Originally posted by Poleax:

quote:

Originally posted by vapodog:

I truly believe that lug setback has been the result of folks thinking their mauser will hold anything reloadable and have run a lot of ammo thru them at very high pressures.....maybe in excess of 75,000 PSI. If this was the case then an 18% increase in strength would be a welcome improvement.

yapo et al,

What you all fail to grasp is that mausers were built to different specs for each contract. Those specs were determined by, among other things, the cartridges fired in them.

You must also take into account the powders that were used when the actions were built. They burned much diffeently than modern powders do.

A histogram of a load may show as many as 5 temporary peaks in pressure starting near 100KPSI, dropping to zero, back up to 86K back to zero up to 72-75 K down to zero then up to 63-65 + - K and dropping off to 38-39 and then zero. It is the repeated series of shocks and the duration of the peaks that hammers the lugs and seats.

You could contact HP white for verification if you'd like.

I doubt most people care how or why they get set back. All they care about is basically three things. Will it be safe, will it be accurate, and will I have to spend money on it to get it fixed.

quote:

Originally posted by darwinmauser:

quote:

Originally posted by Poleax:
that mausers were built to different specs for each contract. Those specs were determined by, among other things, the cartridges fired in them

And if you don't ask for more than they were designed and built for you should'nt have a problem.

Oldmodel70 you said it better than I could.

You seem to be missing the point, which is that modern powders do exactly that even when loaded to an indicated pressure of lets say 55,000 psi.

Many of those spikes that Poleax mentioned exceed the pressures that early mausers were case (pack) hardened to handle.

Oldmodel70,

Why, if millions of mausers never had issues, would it matter how much you spend on a rifle? By your reasoning none should need carbon augmentation. Yet, if you were to ask D'arcy, he'd recommend heat treating a Mauser no matter how much you were prepared to spend.

By the way, those crafty Germans did indeed, for the most part, properly harden the receivers, again, for the powders they were DESIGNED for.

But that process was by no means perfect and in fact they continued to improve the process as did others to this very day. Modern technology allows us to control the heat in the process much more closely than at the turn of last century. In addition, the processes themselves have advanced. The Germans, and I am one, were damn good but there is always room for improvement or refinement.

Anyway, we've been down this path before many times and as always, there will be nay sayers who will continue to doubt no matter what facts are brought to the cyber table.

over and out.

craigster, Perhaps I'm not quite the history buff you are......The Mauser story I read, told of Mauser as a lad, studying a gate latch. At the time he was neither a gun designer or even interested in guns. When he found his calling, he was supposed to have remembered the gate latch, he studied as a kid. Perhaps he hadn't yet met Mr. Dreyse, at that time, or seen any of his rifles.
z1r...Sure hard to get on your nerves....Thanks for being a good sport, and rebutting my points without getting nasty about it.......I may be out of my league, debating metallurgy with those on this forum.....But.....Here's where I'm coming from......I am a pre-64 Model 70 guy.(I have a bunch of them, and think it don't get any better than that.) I have been told on this forum, and others, that compared to Mausers, pre-64s are junk! And I never hear of Model 70s needing re-heat treating. I read where Mausers are in a class by themselves, compared to Remingtons, Savages, Brownings, Sakos, Springfields, Enfields, and so on. Don't think anyone would re-heat treat any of those either, save a low numbered Springfield. And my point about Mr. Echols, or Mr. Miller; I don't need hardly any of the other craftsmanship they lavish on a rifle, to be able to go out and shoot a deer......But if I had 20,000 to blow on a rifle, well, include the heat treating, if it keeps Mr. Echols happy...
Anyway, this thread is forcing me to go dig through a bunch of old books, to try and find an essay on the perfection attained by the metalsmiths of old. A remarkable chronicle of German ingenuity, in the 1800s. z1r, when I find it, even you will be shaken by it's lesson........Grant.

A low numbered sprigfield is not going to be saved by reheat treating otherwise the army wouldn't have recommended scraping them. Metallurgy in the old days was more an art than science ,our knowledge [at least of us metallurgists] and control is much better.Wartime Mausers like my '43 Oberndorf had poor quality which got worse as the war continued.Mine was spotty ,a very hard surface in some areas and very soft in others .Again $70 is cheap insurance.

Experts argue if either 15 Million, or 50 Million M98's were made. The point is no general statement as to their hardness can apply. Everyone has an opinion based on their own experience. Many were fired with hot loads.
I have fired Turk ammo that delivered over 3000 fps. Bolt lift was hard, pressure must have been damn high. The point is they issued it, and used it.
Good Luck!

On Mauser lug setback...
Looking at this, without a dog in the fight, I think there's two scatter plots here. Either

a: lug setback happens FAR more frequently that one would expect

or

b: lug setback only occurs under "freak" circumstance, but as with all failures, it receives more press.

I can hold both of these ideas in my mind, as there is what, 48,000,000 milsurp mausers out there, including FN, Oberndorfan, Santa Barbara, DWM, Ludwig (the parent company?) husqavarna, and probably 15 total plants, in various stages, like FN in mexico.

In fact, there is no possible way to provide an answer to the "mauser 98 lug setback" question without breaking the mausers by sourcing, dates, contracts, and then by intensity.

"What does that all mean, Jeffe? "

It means if I had a Oberndorfan 1909, made in 1910, and a Sears and Robucks FN made in the 50s, I would expect the Sears to be harder and of more consistant metalurgy. Nod to the new action.

but, ah HAH, what if I was facing a 1909 vs a m98 from 1910 and a german m98 with a Date code? Hard call, as the metalurgy would be close, but, in my case, I would take the date code due to "cool" factor and touch it with a hardness file to get a guess at the hardness.


But, if I was facing a german 98 of unknown herititage and a VZ24, (i would buy the both) but I would build vz


Mete,
the army did NOT recommend scraping the low numbered springfields. The placed them as B units, that is, available for service, but not preferred, and sold them to the public. This is not scraping. Less than 60/1,100,000 rifles blew, and more than 50% of those were DIRECTLY atributed to bad ammo. The myth of the exploding springfield (ackley disproved that one, too) was well known by 1955, about the time the NRA and the DCM were selling them.


I do agree that a 44 and a 45 mauser is probably best held in it's original condition, but heat treat alone isn't going to fix those, as the alloys spotty after the Oberndorf plant was blown to hell. My Uncle Earl was a pilot for one of those planes that smashed it.

Looking through " Hatcher's Notebook " again, it's a bit confusing and depends on who said what and when ! " The Board recommended that the receivers be withdrawn from service and scrapped ." "...no longer issue rifles with these questionable receivers..set aside and considered war reserve..."

Mete,
Perdactly ... the war reserve.. and national guard, and rotc rifle teams, and then for sale, through the DCM ... which as late as 2 years ago, was still selling them. I had a low number in my ROTC rifle team. We didn't shoot centerfires anymore, but I was the Team armouror, so I got to inspect everything.

The withdrawn part didn't exactly happen overnight. When they went in for depot work, they were pulled and replaced, over time. Until the Garand was general issue, and then the beloved, but short lived m14, there could POTENTIALLY be found 1903 rifles in service, until the general replacement by autoloaders. There was no pogrom (heh, i like word) to pull them in any specified time.

jeffe

quote:

Originally posted by redrover:

quote:

I sent a Chilean Mauser 95 in 7mm Mauser to Pac Nor in Washington state to have a .257 Roberts barrel installed. They checked the Rockwell hardness and said it was 6. They would not rebarrel anything less than 20. It may have been 4 on a couple parts of the receiver and maybe a taste higher in some other odd place. They returned it.

Curious indeed. The Rockwell 'C' scale STARTS at 20 and goes upwards from there, so how did they get a reading of 6?

Yes, I noticed this as well.....however the machines doing the testing actually start at "0" even though the charts usually start at 20.

I'd be far more interested in the method Pac Nor used to test the metal. From the post it seemed as though they tested directly on the Rc scale....however it wasn't stated.

We rarely discuss the treating of actions prior to the model of '98 and I'm not sure why.....maybe because they aren't sporterized as often??????

I wonder if Pacnor tested it on C, saw a zero, then tested it on B, and came up with 30b... and since 100B is roughly 20c... well, 30/100*20 = an effective 6.

But, WOW, a 6c material would be SOFT.. like just iron, copper alloy, mercury queched lead, and some of the softer aluminiums.


i mean WOW that's soft.

jeffe

quote:

Originally posted by vapodog:

This entire heat treating issue is full of opinion and old wives tales as far as I'm concerned. Many thousands of M98 actions have been converted to sporters with no benefit of heat treating at all and with no (apparant) trouble.

I have done ~75 amatuer gumsmithing on Mausers, and I am not tempted to re heat treat generally.

I am temped when some *&%$#@ welder doesn't use a heat sink and welding paste, and so gets a blue color to reach the cocking cam on the bolt body.