What would you do with this rifle?

[TaperPin]

Oh, another thing to check on old receivers is the condition of the firing pin spring - very weak primer strike can cause wonky accuracy. If fired primer dimples look shallow compared to other rifles I’d suspect that. Many old bolts are also full of dried grease and gunk.

 

[SDHNTR]

Can you explain further? I think you are correct, but I would love to know more.


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Have you ever taken the action out of the stock? How’s the fit? Any binding? There’s either too much slop or the footprint is bottomed out unevenly somewhere, binding once the screws are tightened. Barrel could be making forend contact too.


Stand the rifle on its recoil pad. Put your fingertip under the barrel at the end of the forend, touching the junction of the stock and barrel with light pressure. Loosen the front action screw while holding your fingertip in place. If you feel the barrel move, especially if it backs off as if under tension, there’s stress to your stock/action fit.

Also, with the recoil lug abutted against the stock recess, are the screws making contact with the holes in the wood?

 

[solarshooter]

I've personally seen 2 older rifles get much worse after free floating the barrel. I think a lot of the old designs tolerated/relied on barrel contact to create a solid action/barrel/stock mount. The action inlets are always super rough and ill fitting, and once you remove the barrel channel contact, it exposes this weakness, and bedding/pillars are needed to correct it. I know you haven't clearanced this one, but the moral of the story is the same.

Also with regards to heat, I don't think these older barrels ever went through stress relieving like modern barrels do, and the profiles tend to be EXTRA thin compared to what anyone would make today. So I think managing heat is paramount with these old guns, literally 1 shot every 5-10 mins to avoid heat effects.

 

[North of 60]

Interesting and thx for the input on both concepts (bedding/heat).

 

[Cdnance]

I should have been more careful about marking them with the app. Shots 3 and 4 are out of order.

If I had bothered to take pictures of earlier groups, they all looked pretty much the same. There was no consistent pattern to which shot “blew up” the group.


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Seems kinda strange. Three of those are pretty dang good. Since it isn’t a specific shot out of the five, makes me wonder if it’s the gunner the shooter? I’m assuming you’re using bags and what not?
Great looking gun. If you can’t narrow it down, I would keep it even if it’s just a safe queen.

 

[Taudisio]

I voted other. If there is no sentimental value, I would just sell it and move on. If you want to keep it, I would glass bed the action, free float the barrel, and double-check every screw to make sure they’re torqued to spec. Work on load development after that.

This is the way. If not sentimental, send her down the road. If it does have value to you, do what you can.
I have one rifle that is sentimental to me. It has undergone A LOT of work to make it also functional for me, but the action, serial number, and memories are all the same.
If it’s not sentimental, give it (or sell it) to someone who will love it and pass it down to be sentimental to that family as “the old rifle grandad bought for a song and passed it down”. At least, that’s what I tell myself when a rifle has no use being in my safe.

 

[Q_Sertorius]

Seems kinda strange. Three of those are pretty dang good. Since it isn’t a specific shot out of the five, makes me wonder if it’s the gunner the shooter? I’m assuming you’re using bags and what not?
Great looking gun. If you can’t narrow it down, I would keep it even if it’s just a safe queen.

I was convinced that the error had to be me. That’s why my brother shot that last group. But his group was about the same as all mine. We were shooting off a stable table with front and rear bags.

I tried the rifle with a Lyman aperture sight, a Bausch & Lomb scope, and the above Leupold, but never got a 5-shot group better than that. Each set was five shots in two to three minutes.

It basically shot six 5-shot groups like that. Sometimes it would put the first three really tight, but not always. It just consistently put all the shots in a 2.5” group. A classic case of a rifle that might put three shots under an inch, but with repetitions showed it was a 2.5” rifle.

I would have tried it with another scope as well (a more modern one), but I was down to only 10 shots when my brother showed up. I told him I wasn’t happy with how the rifle was shooting and that I was going to sell it. He offered to shoot a group for me. He shot that group, then offered to buy it. So, I sold it to him, pending final approval from his boss (She Who Must be Obeyed).


____________________
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[Q_Sertorius]

This is the way. If not sentimental, send her down the road. If it does have value to you, do what you can.
I have one rifle that is sentimental to me. It has undergone A LOT of work to make it also functional for me, but the action, serial number, and memories are all the same.
If it’s not sentimental, give it (or sell it) to someone who will love it and pass it down to be sentimental to that family as “the old rifle grandad bought for a song and passed it down”. At least, that’s what I tell myself when a rifle has no use being in my safe.

It doesn’t have sentimental value to me, yet. That’s why I was able to part with it. I have an FN .30-06 that was similarly disappointing for sale up on GunBroker.


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[Q_Sertorius]

I've personally seen 2 older rifles get much worse after free floating the barrel. I think a lot of the old designs tolerated/relied on barrel contact to create a solid action/barrel/stock mount. The action inlets are always super rough and ill fitting, and once you remove the barrel channel contact, it exposes this weakness, and bedding/pillars are needed to correct it. I know you haven't clearanced this one, but the moral of the story is the same.

Also with regards to heat, I don't think these older barrels ever went through stress relieving like modern barrels do, and the profiles tend to be EXTRA thin compared to what anyone would make today. So I think managing heat is paramount with these old guns, literally 1 shot every 5-10 mins to avoid heat effects.

I will not be free-floating this rifle or putting any more time, effort, or money into it. I like traditional rifles, like this one, but I greatly prefer shooting suppressed rifles these days. So, unless I can justify keeping it on the grounds of supreme precision capability, I am selling anything that feels like a project.

It’s one of nine Mauser action rifles I own(ed). I have another five bolt action hunting rifles, so some just have to go. I don’t need enough hunting rifles to use a different one each day of the 2-week rifle season. I sold the .270 to my brother, am selling the .30-06 on GunBroker, have the 9.3x62 for sale on RokSlide, and am trying to make up my mind about the .257 Roberts (which does have some sentimental value to me since I shot a very nice buck with it back in 2022). All the rifles I am keeping are high on the sentimental value or the utility value (or both).

From left to right, 9.3x62, .30-06, .270, .257 Roberts.

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[North of 60]

Same here...since i got a suppressor i much prefer shooting suppressed and I'm having a sentimental old .300 Win Mag (from my long deceased dad) threaded by Karl Feldkamp for a can that i really hope doesn't go flying down range in pieces (a SiCo Scythe)