I recently bought a Brno action, Large ring with an unusual bolt. The bolt is like those found on some Brno 21/22 rifles with no bolt guide rib. This action has a bolt guide rib slot on the rear bridge but the bolt has no bolt guide. What is up with this? The left hand action flat reads;ceskoslovenska zbrojvka, a.s., brno
This is a little wierd. Has a custom bolt handle on it. Looks a lot like one of my custom rifles with a Brno 22 action.

IIRC, some of the late war production bolts had no guide rib. Mauser historians should chime in...

I have one as described. It also has a square machined area for the standoff of the screw for the bolt stop assembly. The bottom of the trigger for the spring well is also machined square.

Seems to indicate simplified machining which could also mean late war production.

Just curious, why would they produce a bolt with no guide rib when the machining was already set for one with guide rib and so many parts readily available to swap out?

quote:

Originally posted by lb404:
Just curious, why would they produce a bolt with no guide rib when the machining was already set for one with guide rib and so many parts readily available to swap out?

Men carrying guns, banging on the factory door and speaking Russian may have been the reason.

I have a couple of late war/post war Vz 24's with the same type bolt w/o the guide rib and the action it cut for the rib. Also have the bolt stop with the screw pedestal and the square trigger spring housing. My guess is that all these parts came from the same bins and the commercial Brnos were using up available military parts that fit.
Do the bolts have the oval or round gas relief holes in the bolt body. Mine are the round ones.
Bob

mine are round also.

quote:

Originally posted by lb404:
Just curious, why would they produce a bolt with no guide rib when the machining was already set for one with guide rib and so many parts readily available to swap out?

The guide rib on the bolt body is integral. Think of it like an intergral rear sight base or quarter rib would be on a barrel.

It takes less machine time to simply turn a round object in a lathe than it does to leave extra materail behind and then form the integral component in subsequent machining operations.

My bolt also has the round gas relief holes. My action in front of the recoil lug was machined pretty rough as well. A lot of work to clean it up - but it was good for 7x57 build.

Even without the guide rib - the bolt is pretty smooth.

There is one over on AuctionArms http://www.auctionarms.com/sea....cfm?itemnum=9015362 that has Mod 98 dou 45 on the receiver.

What you have is post war production actions and bolts. These were made for export and a lot went to Israel. Barreled actions were available from Samco for a while. The bolts were machined without the guide rib and had round gas holes. This was started late in WWll to save time. I have a complete post war rifle in my collection.

Rad

Turning the bolt body round on a lathe without the rib probably saved 10 to 15 minutes production time over leaving the guide rib integral.

The M98 Mauser was not designed to be easy to manufacture. That is why it is no longer around.