I had a Mauser 98 fall into my hands. It has a clean barrel and is in excellent condition except that the fella who had it before did a bit of a mod job on this thing and screwed it up. He cut the front of the magazine away, supposedly to seat longer bullets. He also did a poor job of grinding down the rails not only to shorten them to take the new longer rounds, but to try and get it to feed I guess. It does not work well right now. The only reason why I am interested in fixing this thing is because it is in such good condition. It also shoots really well as a single shot. Any advice would be great. It is in 280 and I am thinking 280AI. Anyway, either ideas on how to fix it or the name of someone who can.

Thanks,
Jake

Jake,

Depending on how much metal he removed, you may have a write off. If he didn't remove too much, you may be best off going with a larger dia case, like the 7mm mag. You can get replacement bottom metal.

Your best bet is to have a competent gunsmith look at it, and give you an assessment about whether it can be saved, and what it'll take to clean it up. You then need to figure whether it is worth putting any $ into it.

If worst comes to worst, and you have to shoot single-shot, buy a ScoreHigh benchrest follower and inlet the stock to fit it and then glass it in.

CAL

Some people shouldn't be allowed to get anywhere near a gun with a dremel tool just like children shouldn't be allowed to play with matches.

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NRA Life member

AWWWWW, now Bear Claw, you can't mean that. The dremel is a wonderful tool. With my Dremel I can mess something up big time in a matter of minutes, whereas with a file it would take days, and I'm a busy man!! BTW I'll get that action sent out to you asap.

Big Jake, What kind of mauser is it? I would think if it's a relatively common inexpensive action I would just junk it, and start with another. On the other hand if its really something special, a good gunsmith could make it work. It all depends on how bad its been doctored.

Sooner

Another way to look at it is to install a box magazine...I think the German company Voere makes it still.

I know it's not the classc way to fix it but if you cant fix the feeding rails (damn that dremel) this loos nmagazine makes no use of the Mauser feedingrails...

Just a thought.

S

[This message has been edited by Shadrek (edited 03-02-2002).]

ROFLMAO @ Sooner. You better hold on to that dremel! It might get away & knock your noggin!

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NRA Life member

BigJake, if all he did was cut away the front of the magazine box, you can replace that. Mauser TG/mag. boxes are not hard to find. But if he enlarged the receiver rails too much, you might indeed have to rechamber to a larger diameter case to keep the rounds from popping out of the magazine prematurely.

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Larry

I had a similar problem. I found a company that made a removable magazine for military mauser bottom metal. It replaced the original floor plate and snapped in. It was ugly, very ugly. So I removed the bottom metal snapped in the magazine, threw it on the drill press and made some holes so I could pin the two together. I then cut the bottom off of the detachable mag trimmed it up and re-installed the original floor plate. It only holds three rounds now but who needs more. It is a center feed and the rounds slip right under the extractor. The original feed rails are not even used. It works wonderfully and there are no ugly external mods. It took about an hour to do and cost me about 35 dollars. Good luck.