I once saw and add for a firm that was making a titanium mauser action that was a copy the Mexican mauser action. Does anyone know/have information on this action? Any help would be gretly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Chris

If you ever get any info, PLEASE post it back on this thread. Sounds like a neat, but very unprofitable idea.

Terry

I have examined a rifle built on one of these actons and although it was lightweight it felt like someone had spread sand in the action. It was rough !!! the owner claimed that was just how titanium was and the more lubricant you put on it the rougher it got. It seemed strange to me but as it was his rifle, I believe what I saw and had no reason to dis-believe him.

Empire Rifles offers a titanium rifle on a Mauser action. It's listed on their website. I saw one at SCI, like Phil says the action was rough.

I have to agree with you Phil. I have seen and worked a Remington titanium action and if felt awfully rough also.

I did some web surfing and found a refrence to a titanium mauser made by Satterlee Arms. Does anyone know of them?

Chris March

quote:

Originally posted by biggy big:
I once saw and add for a firm that was making a titanium mauser action that was a copy the Mexican mauser action. Does anyone know/have information on this action? Any help would be gretly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Chris

I remember the company you're thinking of, but haven't seen anything from them in years. Seems like that was 10-years ago that i saw them advertised.

My bet is that they are long gone.

Taconic Firearms Ltd.
Cambridge, NY
Don Schneider and Ed Dillon.
Stuart Satterlee, I was told was their gunsmith who as of 2001 was on his own and had Saterlee Arms in Deadwood, SD. He was making M98 actions of all sizes from magnun to kurtz length. In 2001 he had about 30 titanium actions for sale going for about $3500 @. Also made them in CM.

Guns and Ammo ran a test article on this "new" mauser in Jan 1998 issue. Looked good, classic style , 3 position M70 safety, straddle fp, oct. bbl, and you could get any option you could think of. Wt. was 6lb. 5oz with scope and 22" bbl.The price was the kicker- $6,985.00.

My understanding was that they did not have a desire in making the actions for the long term and the market was limited for buyers. Mr. Saterlee bought them out and moved to SD.


Bob

Hi!

Domoulin makes the M98 action in titanium!

It cost about $9500.oo for a standard length!

The chap that did this was Ed Dillon of Cambridge Machine Works, but, the rifle company had another name which I cannot recall. I talked to him at length on the phone a couple of times, circa 1995, but his rifles were about ten Gs Canuck and I did not have enough cash available at the time. He was/is a VERY nice guy and most enjoyable to talk rifles with; the concept is rather interesting although costly for most of we normal gunaholics.....maybe nitride coating the inner action surfaces would alleviate the roughness????

Titanium bottom metal would be helpful enough.

MANHASSET
you are spot on....at present stuart satterlee is making or just about finished making a batch of magnum length nausers mine being one of them .....stuart s work is great but he is VERY busy ...the titanium mausers i think are nearly all gone , there are a few titanium mausers being sold under the EMPIRE name but they are stuarts titanium mausers
i think they are going for about $3-3500 and they are really well made
if you want stuarts number drop me a PM
as i dont have the number on me i have it at home...at present he lives in Dead Wood South Dakots Dakota
regards daniel

M 98

Very Interesting. I have been in Deadwood many many times and never ever knew there was a custom action builder working there amidst all of those Gambling Saloons. Do you have an adress for the firm.

ADDRESS IS
STUART SATTERLEE
21593 PAHKAMAA RD
DEAD WOOD SOUTH DAKOTA
57732
2ND WORK SHOP
20835 ECHO MOUNTAIN PLACE
DEAD WOOD SOUTH DAKOTA
57732

I WILL POST STUARTS PHONE NUMBER LATER ON IN THE WEEK AS I DONT HAVE IT ON ME HERE AT WORK

REGARDS DANIEL

Hello Daniel,

How are you ? We spoke about these actions about four yrs ago. I new if you were around , you would jump in on this thread. You were having a CM action made by Stuart back then, is this be the same one ?? He was posting on Hunt Chat back then but I don't see he any more. Also his web site is no longer functioning. Nice to see you still posting.
Be well
Bob

I had some communication with Stuart Satterlee and he was selling the small ring mausers in titanium along with magnum actions in steel. I have sent him an e-mail with a link to this thread and hope that he would reply.

Best wishes and good hunting!

One way of reducing the binding of Ti when you build an action from it is to coat all the parts in TiN (that gold color you see on drill bits). I have heard that in full Ti actions, doing this reduces friction and binding a great amount.

ya'll do know that titanium is ALUMINUM with 'dust" in it... over simplification, but yeah, it's a pretty neat matrix (it's not a true alloy, at an atomic level)

jeffe

Jeffe,
Titanium (Ti) is an element. It may be made into an alloy but it is not aluminum. Or were you referring to it being Al with some "electron" dust?

Chic,
thanks for posting that.. is shows explicitely that Ti is a transition metal.. or "metaloid" rather than a true metel ("d" block or series iv) as those have 4 valence electrons, and can go + or - in ION.. behaving as a metal (giving up electron) or non-metal (taking electron) in the valence shell..

shesh, and I remember this stuff?

perhaps what i meant to say is the metal we see, 99% of the time, is an aluminum/titanium alloy, though it's NOT alloyed, as the would be Ti5Al4 , rather than the matrix of titanium refining the grain structure of Al.. which is also why it's such a bugger to weld titanium (still under patented process, that used to involve EXPLOSIVES) as it basically has to be reforged when welded.

jeffe

Jeffe, you are confusing titanium (atomic number #22, TI) with Thallium (TL, #81).

Titanium is a true metal, as is thallium. The semi-metals (metalloids) are #5, (not 13), 14, 32, 33, 51, 52, and 84...

not that it matters in this discussion much.

Jeffe, you remember it a lot better than I do. I see what you were talking about, or kinda.

manhasset /bob
cant remember talking to you 4 years ago but ...but i wont hold that against you!
stuart is busy, real busy but he is nearly finished that M 98 its going to end up being a . 375 and from the photos he sent me it appears the action turned out pretty good ...i will post some photos when its all finished for the gunnuts on this board
the action was made from c/m 4140 it was heat treated before it was machined so there was no need to get the hammer and straigten it out so to speak ,also i got stuart to make the bolt and handle as one integeral unit and he still HATES ME FOR THIS TILL THIS DAY !!!!apparentley it was real hard to make all the jigs etc etc
any way its done now and just waiting for the finishing touches to be put on it
regards daniel

I like Tomk's idea of titan bottom metal. Would be a good material for scope mounts & rings.

The M98 as designed and built by Paul Mauser is absolute perfection, and can't be improved, different metals are inferior to the heat treated steel of the orginals.

Now you can post messages to the gunmaker formerly known as Stuart. His handle here is "Timan".

Here's a little list of facts about "Taconic Firearms Ltd."

Don Schneider owns a large machine shop in Cambridge, NY called Cambridge Valley Machining Inc. (CVMI) In the late 90's he wanted to start a gun company and had one of his machinists build a proto TI action. During the building of this Don spent a lot of time chewing the fat on the phone with Ed Dillon. Dillon stocked the prototype before he moved to Cambridge. It is the one you see on the cover and in the G&A-Rifle Shooter article. Does anyone remember reading how well it shot??????

Don acquired a firearms manufacturing license for the new gun company Taconic Firearms Ltd.

Ed moved to Cambridge to be the salesman for Taconic Firearms, and soon after 3 gunmakers from a semi-custom rifle company somewhere West of the Missouri River and East of Devil's tower moved everything they could stuff in a big Uhaul and drug it 2000 miles East. Stuart "Timan" Satterlee had the ultimate pleasure of driving the Uhaul with his car towed behind. I drove my truck pulling my boat and another gunmaker drove his truck with my 442 towed behind. It was the most pleasant trip I've ever been on. No stress no problems.......NOT!!!

When we arrived there we were under the impression that we would have the machined parts for 40 Ti actions waiting for us ready to fit, stock & finish. The Machine shop at CVMI had been busy machining job shop parts that actually paid the bills. The three gunmakers from the wild west ended up helping with some non gun machining and put the guns on hold for a while. Eventually we built 10 actions, 6 or so were stocked and sent to the SHOT and SCI show in 1998. We were sure that customers would be lining up throwing money at us like a Democrat during an election year. Boy were we wrong. The starting price of $5995 and the "gritty" feel of the action was enough to keep the customers from being the first on the block with a TI Mauser. I think if the prices were the same and the actions were steel we would have taken at least some orders. The only guns from that first batch that sold were to friends of Don Schneider and his family. I think Don gave an action to the machinist that made the origional prototype. Three months later with no real sales, the three gunmakers were out of work.

Stu and the other gunmaker moved back West. I stayed long enough to convince my new fiancee to head West.

I'll let Timan take it from here.

gunmaker

p.s. Stu has the gritty feel worked out now much better than we did with the origional 10 actions.

There was a member that used to post here that told a story similar to yours who claimed to work for Dakota for a while after Ti mausers proved non-economical. Might be the third guy...

Or am I thinking of someone else?

Hello,
I am timan all you have been reading by the gunmaker is true. After buying the action inventory,mfg fixtures,and prints, I took the time to really work on the function of the titanium m-98 Mex. I chamfered all cuts in the action that are perpendicular to the bolt travel. I polish the bolts out 400gt and do not b-blast the bolt body inself prior to coating. With the action at this level the function is decent. One thing we ran into at Taconic was that when you lubed the bolt with a petro-base product it would kind of bead up and not spread like it would on steel.The coating, is a vapor deposition process, it is not gold titanium nitride, it is WCC and it is awesome,and expensive $400 for all the parts in the action, although one can get by just coating the bolt and reciever, but I like to do the whole action, the color is a dark grey. This year I've been hunting with a titanium 7x57, and again one never quits learning in this field. This action I lapped the bore of the action to 400gt with a mandrel and did not allow the b-blast to change that finish, I polished the bolt to 400gt as well and did not allow the b-blast to change that finish, I polished the lugways with mold stones and after coating it's slick I mean mauser slick, with the bolt open I can point the muzzel up and the bolt just drops back to it's stop, just like on my 1909 Argentine 338-06. In December 1997 we at Taconic were at the bottom of a learning curve, at the time the titanium Remington was not in production, 8 years later and about 3500 man hours later I've got the feel and function of these things nailed down. This little 7x57 is right at 7lbs fully loaded with scope and sling. I am shooting a handload, 140gr nosler accubond, 51 grains RL 19, fed 215, from Reminton brass and grouping .6 to .9 as long as I can do my part. I really like this one. I think any person who is familiar with bolt rifles would be quite happy owning this rifle. Currently there's 12 of the actions to be assembled. After that demand will dictate production.
Best Regards
Timan

Tex21

I used to post here under a different name until they changed servers or something and we all had to resubscribe. I haven't posted for a while because I figured people were tired of me flaming about one of my previous employers.

The third gunmaker from Taconic has an allergy to computers and I doubt he has posted here. He is however very good at starting with small part of a rifle, like a screw or firing pin, and building a complete origional well made rifle around it.

I returned to South Dakota after the Titanium didn't sell it self. Then I worked for Miller Arms for about a year.

gunmaker

Well welcome back!

I for one always enjoyed reading your posts. I actually picked up a thing or two as well. I was kinda wondering where you went...

What a great story.

And well told, SDH and SS.

I expect I'm not the only one hoping that after all the work, and expense, and passion, you'll be able to pull victory from the jaws of defeat, Mr. Satterlee.

And make a success of your titanium action.

Also, I was interested in your load for the 7x57. This looks pretty hot to me.

Is it appropriate only for titanium actions?

flaco

quote:

And well told, SDH and SS.

flaco,
I'm not sure "gunmaker"'s name, but SDH is "gnmkr" here on the forum. I can see there's going to be some confusion!

The primers are good and flat. There is no ejector flow. The bolt handle comes up real easy. The accuracy is right in there. I read pressure by what i see in the case head. What does Quik Load say about it? The barrel is a 1-10 lothar at 22". I have no real reason to shoot this load on a hot day. I have rifle fever so bad today it's sick.

Thanks for your correction Stu C.

It's not the first time I've been confused, and won't be the last, I guess.

My apologies to all.

Expect I'll just stick to usernames from now on.

Thanks, Timan-

Both of my books list it as max load, but the one that lists pressure suggests it's within the limited range for old 7x57s, and thus probably not too hot.

Compressed, though.

And I didn't know there was a name for it.

"Rifle Fever," huh?

Seems to be going around.

LOL.

flaco