Was surfing Numrich website as they just picked up the Gentry safety recently and I wanted to see if anything else new was added. Came across this new blued steel hinged Mauser 98 floorplate. Looks basically like argentine bottom metal with the button added already.

Ordered one on Thursday to check it out. For $80, I'm not expecting much - will likely need contouring on the bow and blending at the release lever from the look of it in the picture.

It doesn;t say it's blued steel on the website, but I called and their customer support people told me it's definitely blued steel and not Aluminum, so hopefully it will work out OK.

Should be cheaper to contour and finish this bottom metal than to shell out for a Blackburn - assuming it's decently made.

Anyone else tried these yet?

Link to part at Numrich

Yes,
I have.. had a couple.. they are ALL bent from the rear box to the end of the trigger guard. Other than that, 80 bucks is fairly worth while

Hi Jeff,

I'm not sure I get your meaning - where are they bent? Do you mean from the latch to the kingscrew, or from the latch back to the end of the bow? It is tortional bending, or lateral bowing down the length of the guard? Is the bending generally correctable?

I don't mind reworking it - I was going to anyhow since the bow looks too blocky like a military configuration Argentine bow. But I do need it to be dimensionally correct and usable, or at least made in such a way as I can get it bent back into useable form.

How are they made? Cast? Machined? MIM?

Lastly, do you not have them anymore? Were they so bad they needed changing to start over?

bent right behind the box (up), I found out the hardway.........lol.

floorplate is milled, reset is cast, seems all over, and you will have tor striaghten it out

j

I bought one of their Springfield 1903 assemblies a few years ago and it sounds similar. They work, but they do need a bunch of tweaking to be right. I had to machine the mating area for the floor plate quite a bit to get a good flush fit between the plate and the box with no gaps showing.

Well that doesn't seem too bad then. A little applied heat and some bending. I'm surprised they're not correcting the geometry though if it's a recurring issue???

I'm not concerned about the seams as I was planning on having to file and finish the thing anyhow.

How is the mag box length? Is it the same as a 1909, or is it a bit longer?

To add to the list:

I ordered one. It also was bent right behind the magazine stack.

Poorly finished too.

I wish mine would have been bent a little more, I might have noticed it

I just tell people I like stocks with skinny grips

What is the length of the magazine box on these ? Sounds like a usuable unit.........

I asked that earlier in the thread - no-one has answered me yet, but worst case, I'll post the length here once mine arrives so I can measure it.

For my purposes it only needs to hold 7x57, but I suspect it's at least .30-06 length.

iirc, it is right at 3.4.. i think

jeffe

I have one I'll gladly sell for $65 shipped if anyone wants it. Too rough for what I am in the middle of but plenty usable for a budget sporter. First PM gets it.

quote:

Too rough for what I am in the middle of but plenty usable for a budget sporter. First PM gets it.

There's no amount of steel roughness that can;t be fixed with a good set of files and varying grits of emery paper, except metal voids - but that's fixable with a soft-wire MIG.

quote:

Originally posted by Claven2:

quote:

Too rough for what I am in the middle of but plenty usable for a budget sporter. First PM gets it.

There's no amount of steel roughness that can;t be fixed with a good set of files and varying grits of emery paper, except metal voids - but that's fixable with a soft-wire MIG.

Yeah, you are right.. anything CAN be fixed, but is it cost effective, is the other end of things...

if you have a value on your time, device the next best thing by that and see how fast dorking with something on the lowend runs out of value to do it yourself

jeffe

In fairness Jeff, even Argentine 1909 metal requires alot of work to get it useable on a nice rifle. The trigger bow needs to be filed into a crowned profile, you need to neck it down at the back, you need to pin the release lever and file it flush with the bow on both sides, silver solder on a button, draw file the floorplate, weld over the serial numbers and file out, etc.

I can;t see the Numrich bottom metal requiring much more effort than that, or am I missing something?

Claven,
i've tried 4 or 5 of these.. for what you pay, you get a decent piece to start from... but to assume you can get a really nice piece from it, well.. you can't.

the 1909 is a nicer piece, even to start from..

and the staddles I was selling at about 10x nice than the numrich.. not beating my own drum, as until i got them, i like th numrich... then found out how much work i could have saved
j

what are "staddles"? And what is the pricing like on them?

As I said, I've not seen the numrich in-hand, but I've seen lots of 1909 metal made very pretty.

It's a strong statement to say the Numrich stuff cannot be made really nice. Can you please elaborate for me why it can't be made up to par? Is there something about it I'm not aware of preventing it to be made nice with some metalworking effort?

I'm not being curt, I really want to know before I drop too much time into this metal only to find out something you can tell me up front

you don't necessarily have to file a number off the bottom of an 09 Argentine. I have about 7 of them here that are in New condition and they don't have numbers on the bottom of them (although they do have that little Argentine Emblem on them)

claven,
in the scale of these things, i would rank the atractiveness of the various metals that are sometimes available
oberndorf orginals
Blackburn/Sunnyhill
legacy
mark X in the bow
1909
mark X push button



then numrich.


The item is bent behind the mag box, 100% of the time, this is a pain to fix without bending it worse in other places. it has seam lines down it, call it an hour or 2 to clean up properly, the spring MAY be too weak, and it looks like "just" a reworked milsurp.

if you had asked me 6 months ago, i would have had zero issue with them, btw.

At no point did I say you could NOT make on nicce.. i said it wasn't worthwhile to start with one to make it nice, time to money.

a straddle floorplate has a notch cut from teh middle, that close down with the trigger bow between the edges, and teh floor plate both extends back a little, and a little wider than the box, to make a neat clean install. think commerical oberndorf.


the numrich is a nice enough box.. but if you are planning on a 1 hour polish up, they aren't.

jeffe

Hi Jeff,

I was thinking "at least as much work as a 1909, plus the bend job" for a clean up. Call it 3 hours or so?

This would include filing off cast lines, bending the metal back to shame, pinning and filing the lever flush, filing the bow surface convex and waisting it, emery polish, etc.

Of the listed types, Balckburn is the only one besides Numrich that's readily available and it costs 5x as much.

I knew what a straddle floorplate was, but that's not what you typed - "staddle". I figured it was some kind of new brand.

I'm surprised you rate the MkX/C.D. push-button metal better. I really dislike that metal and the undersized retention tab it uses, but that's just me.

My biggest dislike about the Numrich is that the release in the trigger guard is undersized in all dimensions. It is a sloppy fit side to side, undercut inside the bow and big visible gaps from the outside. You would have to make and hand-fit a new latch from scratch to make it look worthy of a good receiver job or to