One more question from an inquisitive hack. Please don't find fault with me for asking this - I am trying to learn about guns and don't know enough about them compared to 90% of you. I have shot exactly 2 Mannlicher rifles, the last several years ago in India and I just loved the way they felt, handled and shot.

A number of members on these forums seem to like them a great deal. Why, then, is there no attempt at reviving the Mannlicher Schonauer action like there has been for the Mauser? Is the Mauser so superior that it makes every type of action instantly obsolete? Even if it does, there are even matchlocks being made these days for shooters and hunters with a nostalgic eye. Isn't there room for a modern Mannlicher made in a full length stocked version for some modern short rounds designed for shorter barreled rifles?

I keep hoping that calls from US shooters would result in these being made like the calls for a revival for the Mauser 98 that eventually got even mauser in Germany to revive their brilliant action. Is this just a silly daydream, or will such a chorus get Steyr to revive the M-S someday?

Please check http://discover-net.net/~kanotex/mannlicher/models.htm if you share my view.

Thanks for all opinions.

Good shooting!

PS This post was prompted by the enquiry a member made about buying a 30-06 Mannlicher Schonauer on these forums a couple of days ago.

Economics and culture.

Mannlicher-Schoenauers were not easy to build. Each part was was hand fitted, hand numbered and then hand polished. Tolerances were so tight that parts are usually not interchangeable between rifles. CNC machining could save forging costs, but duplicating the hands-on quality today would rival the best custom rifles, putting prices in the $5,000+ range.

Times have changed. Mannlichers were popular in an era when sportsmen wore neckties. Manufactures took pride in their products, shooters took care of the firearms, and hunting was considered a privledge. Today's hunters have replaced stalking skills with camouflage, and consider firearms care to be stainless/synthetic.

The really sad part is that 99% of today's shooting enthusiasts have never held a Mannlicher-Schoenauer and have no idea what we are babbling about.

Mannlicher-Schonauer actions are not convenient for scope mounting, making them less than first choice among the American public which is the largest market for sporting arms.

A well done M-S rifle would cost five times what a Dakota cost today and would soak up most of the good parts fitters from all over the world to do it.

It was the last of the double case hardened and lapped commercial actions to be built.

The economics of making a new M-S is about the same as recreating the inlayed and gold leafed coaches that British Royalty rides around in......not enough market and not enough skilled workers at poverty wages to do it.

One of the reasons I have heard as to why the M/S has not been revived is that a fire at Steyr/Daimler Puch AG destroyed all the plans and blueprints for the M/S rifles, and the company elected to stick with the Steyr/Mannlicher design, which is much cheaper and easier to produce. However, I see no reason why the components of a Mann./Schoenauer could not be measured and used to recreate the drawings and blueprints for making one! I guess if it would cost $5,000 to make one today, a used one in excellent condition for $1,200.00 is a real bargain!!

eldeguello

quote:

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I guess if it would cost $5,000 to make one today........

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Dream on!!! To make the magazine spindle would eat up a LOT of that budget.

Honestly folks, To take a M-S down into it's component parts and see how they engineered it is to look at a rifle made regardless of cost and difficulty........as lot like looking inside a Rolex watch. To think that ALL those parts were made and then heat-treated BEFORE they were fitted and polished is truly amazing.

To make an analogy, it would be like building a house by using all mortise and tenon joints with every stud, rafter, and joist hand sanded, sealed, and finished before being attached with tapered pegs and glue before going on to the next step.

They are truly a marvel of the gunmaking trade.

There is a M/S rifle in 458 Win Mag at a Ft. Worth Texas gunshop. I think it would be listed as Elk Castle Gun Store.

So how do the Greek military Mannlichers rate in terms of quality? Could you make up a nice sporter with this action if you stayed with the 6.5 MS cartridge?

Question to gunsmiths:

Could a suitable substitute for the M-S be constructed from plentiful/cheap Mosin-Nagant actions? I have in my minds eye a rifle that uses a M-N action, cocking piece modified to accept a leaf safety, bolt mid-section modified with Mannlicher style turned down butter knife bolt handle or Hannel style turned down leaf bolt handle, replacement/modified bolt head to accept rimless cartridges, Ruger style rotary detachable box magazine , new trigger guard of course and finally a nicely shaped synthetic or wood Manlicher stock. For scope users add a Williams side mount.

Would this be possible, practical and/or feasable?

Stu C

That was tried thousands of times, back when Mannlicher-Schoenauer were $200 and the military action was $20. I've yet to see one that the owner was proud of.

The actions are not the same, they only look similar. The military actions have all the loose tolerances that are needed to function in sand and mud. Polishing will make it look nicer, but it won't have nearly the fit of the commercial actions.

If you compare the two actions side by side you will see what I'm talking about.

I agree with KurtC, but didn't want to say so....some folks are real sensitive about their rifles. I am too.

A couple years ago I was ask to appraise three guns for a widow. One was a very early custom rifle by Simpert of Suhl using a M-S action. It was so neat it gave me the twitches!

It was a VERY slim half stocked carbine in 6.5x54 that was quickly disconnected from the barrelled action by way of one coin screw and a barrel wedge. It was a REALLY well done rifle with the fine detail and light-tight inletting only seen on the very finest rifles.

At times it's hard to be an honest appraiser. She'd have sold it for whatever I *said* it was worth. But I didn't have what it was *really* worth.

J Belk,

You're amoing the most knowledgeable people here, and, yes, as Carcano suggests, couldn't the labour costs be offset by using CNC technologies in the US/Europe? I am sure there are a number of brilliant tech brains in the US who could work a way out if needed - the Montana Mauser based action being a case in point. I guess I'm dreaming aloud...

It would be great if someone figured a way out, I think. I'm not sure I'd ever be able to own one in my country (a pre war one costs about Rs 200000 or US$ 4000 here) but there would be people to choose quality, especially in the US, I think.

mehulkamdar--

The M-S actions were made oversize from mild steel, then deeply case-hardened, and THEN fitted by hand and polished.

You can't do that by CNC machines. You have to have people reading the smears of the Prussian blue and stoning the appropriate places until that satin glide of very hard steel sliding against very hard steel is attained. It take skill and TIME.

And the really sad part, to me, is that in 1970 I was buying them at auction in England for 5-pounds sterling...which was about $8 Canadian in those days. Most were rifles stocked and sold by Gibbs in 6.5x54. Did buy some of the carbines for slightly more...like 20-pounds ($32 Canadian), for such cartridges as the 9,5 M/S.

Because they were so common in Blighty, I never really realized the supply would end, and blithely sold them for a bit more than I paid for them when I fancied something else.

Traded the last one, a rifle chambered in .270 Win, at the Calgary gun show in about '75 or '76 straight across for a pre-'64 M70 FW also in .270.

Gee, just to contemplate removing that really slick fitting magazine, and replacing it just one more time, gives me the shivers...kind of like sliding two greased diamond facets along each other...

AC

[ 03-31-2003, 23:45: Message edited by: Alberta Canuck ]

Actually, in trying to make an M.S. "substitute" from a Moisin/Nagant, I believe you'd come closer with the Gew 88 action, although neither would have the rotary magazine of the M.S. . When I was in Japan during the Korean War, there was a Japanese gunshop in Tachikawa that was making pretty nice sporters from captured Moisin 91/30's that were coming in from Korea. Since the barreled actions were "free", so to speak, it cost little to make such rifles.

M/S Nostalgia Buffs. I can not for the life of me believe anyone in this "Speedlock" day and age would want an action that had a fire pin fall of nearly 1" and a weight of all the strikeing system
approximating a "9 pound hammer", Oh, all right, that is a bit of a stretch, but there is a lot of weight there. That being said, they sure as hell WERE smooth operating actions. At one time I had 3 militaries in 6.5 to study. Door Knob bolt handle at 90 degrees. 1 Steyer in early production- "B" series, 2 ea Breda (Itallian) both "H" series. Carcano- You ever see a Breda -Saffat (sp?) 8m/m wing enclosed aircraft machine gun? Made carefully like a very top of the line Brit. Dbl. I was surprised that the sample I saw was not engine turned, frosted and, well it could have used a little engraving. Breda made all sorts of things including Locomotives. Perhaps in some dimlit archives the drawings and manufacturing book still exists at Breda or conglomerate successor and if not there perhaps then Greece the purchaser of these weapons in Military style. And then there is the Bulgarian version. The only one I saw of these was a little sad for condition, but the maker was none of the above, though Itallian. It was either a Berreta or an associated company. Some of Its parts had a little logo stamped in discrete places which were dead ringers for that used by Borletti, Itallian maker of artillery shell fuses and fine precision tools and gages( Like one of my 25-50 m/m micrometers)
True, the Breda's were not as well finished where the parts don't rub so well as the Steyers, and the Receiver ring mounted extracting cam though completed to be part of the re-inforce-"C" ring was a seperate piece made with a rivet stem and swaged in place from outside. Post-war Steyer versions made this entire complex machined "C" ring/extracting cam part of the rear end of barrel. Think 700 Rem barrel breech end gone nutzo. Some actions of the Mannlicher type, like commission '88 by contractors and some of the Verguiros, also had an insert piece extracting cam. Faint outlines of steel "stringers") on the Bulgarian when amplified with Metalurgical etchant indicated that forging seemed to be a simple hot blanking operation not for near net shape. Blank for receiver might even have been simply cut from plate stock using the pantograph -Oxy Acetylene burning torch method as used on removing Inside metal from Mauser Magazine boxes after 1914 ( Followed by one shot broaching at Mauser Works). The really neat manufacturing was that used at either end of the receiver for the circular milling to contain the ctg. bases in that section containing the magazine rotor frame.
Toolmarks were visible. The tool was much like a stock checkering (M&M or Dem-bart) handpiece but the cutter had teeth on the face as well as periphery. The machine used a bevel gear and drive line and cut both internal profiles in one setting, 2 operations. bullet end,base end.
If done in this day and age, the complex feed area and the final magazine rotor shapes would best be done using EDM procedures. What equates to a bullet feed ramp and the R-H side guide surface also EDM. It would be silly to not make a dedicated machine for machining the lug raceways. Something ought be done about a scope clearing bolt mounted safety or a variation of the Ruger lever type.I did modify a Blackburn
trigger to fit using an interesting attachment method not requiring receiver change on a 22-250 I got suckered in to doing. For all those who worry about a thin bolt head surround on a Mauser to 505 gibbs bolt face. M/S didn't use such a thing. Extractor and Stabilizer / ejector held the ctg in place preventing it from going right on up the bolt face and on the ground when released by the retainer.

Could it be made again, sure. Cost ? In the range of a Prechtel Mauser, perhaps.

Adding to the comments of JBelk and KurtC (I yet have to read and digest the very thorough article of Thos. Burgess, whose erudition and knowledge never ceases to amaze me - and even more his liberal willingness to share it with others so kindly !):

When Steyr-Mannlicher decide to produce a limited issue "jubilee rifle - 150th birthday of Ferdinand Ritter von Mannlicher" in 1999, they used the modern Steyr-Mannlicher SBS 96 action chambered for the old 6,5 x 54 MS (a run of 150 rifles), but did not revive the 1903 action. You can find a comparative juxtaposition of both, written by no-one less than G�nter Fr�res, in DWJ 1999, issue # 6, pp. 966-975.

Regards,
Carcano

[ 04-21-2003, 21:27: Message edited by: carcano91 ]

Waidmanns Dank, Carcano!!

I'd just love to have a little 1903 6.5x53 if anyone out there has one for sale....Even a nice shooter would suit me...

I'm told by reliable sources that Steyr did a cost analysis of the M-S and discovered that each rifle cost them over $2000 US more than what they were selling for when they discontinued them.
Sure do have a slick action.
I saw a Breda sporter the other day at the Lakeland show and it impressed me-and surprised me.

The best rifle ever made in my opinion!

I love my 1952 and I am looking or another, or maybe even an action, or a barreled action or or or

1903-2003 Mannlicher-Schoenauer

http://www.eschoder.com/

Click on the English flag in the upper right hand corner. I have not been able to find prices. If you have to ask, you can't afford it.

Here are pictures of my M-1910 in 9.5x57 MS:

http://gallery.sixshootercommunity.com/displayimage.php?album=69&pos=8

http://gallery.sixshootercommunity.com/displayimage.php?album=69&pos=9

http://gallery.sixshootercommunity.com/displayimage.php?album=69&pos=10