Nelsdou

Oops, my book may not as old as I thought. The copyright is 1949, printings in 1975 and 1980. It reads like it is old, though, old chemical formulas and names, B&W photos. In one chapter the author talks about picking up 1917 Enfields new for $17.50 and the sporterizing of a Mauser w/ new sights, blueing, stock, and accessories tearing quite a hole in a fifty dollar bill! It's Donald Newell. He actually gives Alvin Linden the credit for the Suigi technique.

I've got an old (1940's) book on gunstock finishing that illustrates "Suigi" or wood torch flaming to bring out the grain and figure in plain or dull looking wood. The trick is not to burn or char, but just to ever so lightly brown the surface to increase the grain contrast. I've done it on beechwood and it works but I wouldn't recommend it for the faint of heart. You really need to have a steady hand and recognize when enough is enough. Speaking of birds-eye maple, this same book gives an example of wiping it with a thin stain of asphaltum (asphalt) and turpentine; it really gives the figure a 3D effect.

The wood grain on this Yugo k98 is also very open, but I believe it is elm. The barrel channel was very rough hewn and the wood fibers appear to be tough and stringy.

Yep Mausermeister, A lot of hedges of Osage Orange planted back in the dustbowl days have been bulldozed out; just too much labor to saw them except for salvaging 6" and smaller sections for fence posts. I have seen some really big mature Osage Orange trees in Kansas and Oklahoma but they are usually in inaccessible places and would be an awesome job to cut down. Once I got lucky when a rancher cleared an old pasture and bulldozed all the trees into piles to eventually burn. It was one tough job to cut and pull some Osage logs out of those piles!

for MorgansBoss, I've done a fair amount of working with "bois d' arc" or Osage orange in making indian style bows. It is very dense (48 lbs/cubic ft) and is hard on tools. Where I grew up the "hedge trees" trunks had a "twist" or "spin" their grain structure, so when you split a trunk (which was very tough) you'd end up with a gradual helical-shaped piece of wood. But because of that same grain twisting, a slab cut with a bandsaw would have a lot of beautiful tiger eye. However, when exposed to sunlight and air, the wood darkens and loses a lot of its bright color. It would make a beautiful gunstock, but difficult to work. I'd make sure too that the grain not be inline with the barrel in the area of the recoil lug to avoid splitting. Some people are very sensitive to the sawdust. If you do get a chance to get some logs or billets, seal the ends with wax to prevent checking as the wood cures.

I saw Mark's comments about the A&B barrels and decided to go for one on a turk project. Being a project and I'm not in a hurry, I'm considering to try handlapping the barrel. Fire-lapping certainly sounds quicker, but I'd like to try it the old-fashion way.

I only have one data point but it is this: I crept up within 40~50 yds on a big bull elk last year in a snow storm with my k98 mauser chambered in 308 Win using interbond Hornady bullets. When I put one behind his shoulder, he just turned and looked at me like "who are you?" I proceeded to put two more into the same spot before he finally turned and hit the ground. He was a 6x6 and measured 320. Now dead is dead and the 308 did its job, but frankly I felt a bit undergunned from this experience. My next elk mauser will be a 338-06 or a Whelen.

Yeah, when I bought a M38 short rifle in 6.5 to put an "Oswald" in my collection I initially thought it was pretty clunky too. After developing some reloads with the Hornady 160 grain .2675" bullets I found I could consistenly hit softball size groups at 100yds! And with a pitted barrel no less. Being pretty easy to handle, I could see why folks converted them to chase whitetails. But alas, the clips are a pain. The 7.35 can be made from the 6.5x52 brass and Buffalo sells the .300 bullets. 7.35 dies show up now and then - gunshow or ebay. Over on the Carcano webpage D. Emary of Hornady has a white paper on both the 6.5 and 7.35 that's interesting reading. The drawback I see rechambering to another cartridge is the clip system. Whatever you go to you'd have to modifiy the clips and ensure the round feed accordingly. The 7.62x39 sounds fun but don't know if a shorter round would feed forward and make it to the lead in to the chamber. Maybe the follower could be reworked or the clip shimmed forward??? The carcano is also an odd case head diameter, a cousin being the 6.5x54 schoenauer, not real common either. Although Carcanos are of good steel, there's no third lug on that carcano bolt, so I wouldn't want to try pushing anything in the higher pressures. For example, some of the wartime carcanos were rechambered to 8mm but you won't catch me behind them. Be safe!

From a thread in the Restoration section BobVZ gave me an idea to make a sporter much like the Oberndorf Mauser Special Range rifle. Described in the "Mauser Bolt Rifles" by Olsen, it was a Model 98 in 30-06, 24 inch barrel in a mannlicher type stock, complete with black horn muzzle cap and wood hardguard. Although the barrel is a little long for a mannlicher stock for my tastes, it's a pretty handsome looking devil. I alway thought a hardguard would be pretty useful for a hunting rifle that is carried much and seldom shot. I've got a '38 K. Kale Turk with a poor barrel and stock that is looking for a purpose and this could be it. If I go with a Swede barrel it will be an easy fit for the receiver, hardguard, and original rear sight. I'd use a Williams or similar ramped front sight and black horn muzzle cap, pretty similar to the M.D. Waite article in the old NRA "Mauser Rifle" reprint. Question is, does anyone know of any pictures of the Oberndorf Mauser Special Range rifle other than in the Olsen book? I'm not out to make an exact duplicate, but would want to see some more details of it. Oops, if I'd use a better search engine I'd answer my own question sooner. I found a pretty good pic here: http://www.mauserwaffen.de/uploads/pics/9_03.jpg Mauserwaffen has some pretty good sporter history on display there too. Certainly worth looking at.

We recently had a guy here go after his ex-wife in a WalMart stabbing her with a knife. A gentleman in his 70's happened to be on the spot and shot the knife-wielding dude dead, saving the gal's life. The elderly gentleman was a licensed concealed carry, and I believe this is the 1st shooting by a concealed carry since it was enacted here, and it saved a life. I was curious what kind of editorials would wail in the local paper, but none came. Just water cooler chat.

Dagnagit, I & the Mrs were in Prescott in the summer of '03 and we missed whiskey row! At the time my highlite was J&G. My favorite scene in Billy Jack was the girl in the convertible. WOW; I'll have to go back now. We were really there for a weekend get-away at Sedonna (what a new-age tourist trap!) and I convinced my honey a trip to J&G was necessary. It was worth it!

A buddy of mine had a bow-kill muley buck mounted still in the velvet. He told me the fellow that did the work for him "freeze-dried" the rack to preserve the velvet. How he freeze dried it I have not a clue. Pretty awkward to fit in a freezer, unless he went with a spray down of cyrogenic CO2 or helium. Anyway, I think it looks like hell. Dead velvet looks like dead velvet, not at all like it looks a live muley buck.

When I was 14 until the time I graduated from high school I worked summers as a tractor/combine jockey and working cattle on farmland in the Wellington area. It amazes me to think back that as a kid I cound not be trusted to drive a car unrestricted or enter a bar, but I could be turned loose in the countryside with a tractor rig and machinery worth a small fortune! Those hard summers certainly reinforced the drive in me for higher education, that's for sure. I believe those old Chisolm Trail signposts are still there.

The topic reminds me of a engineering presentation I attended where the speaker (a Phd from Michigan) had done through extensive data gathering and predictive modeling, predicted that world demand for oil would exceed world production at about 2010, give or take a couple of years. At that point in time, oil prices would soar because demand would never again be satisfied. The wildcard in his prediction was the rate of economic growth in in highly populated Asia, that could significantly influence the demand curve. Things like weather, occasional oil embargos, and brush wars were just bumps in the road. The speaker's main points in all this were: 1) This country needs a long term energy strategy, and 2) We gotta start moving to new technologies based on something other than the hydrocarbon-based cycle, be it hydrogen, nuclear, or whatever, and 3) Doing nothing is not an option. That presentation was 4 years ago. As for me personnally, I've gotten rid of my gas vehicles, and have gone to a turbo-diesel car and Jeep for transportation. Better milage, and I'm betting on bio-diesel as an option for the future. If oil stocks really go down the crapper, bicycles and public buses start becoming attractive. Who knows, the mo-peds might even come back.

I'm relatively new to the use of firearms. Ever since I was a teen I lived and breathed bowhunting. Since then I managed to feed my kids quite a few bambi burgers when we lived in Kansas, and one of the bucks I took there qualifed for the book. A few years ago I did a number on my rotator cuff and that put pulling a bow on ice. That and relocating to New Mexico with a new job I decided to cool it and let my shoulder heal; I just didn't want the surgery if I could avoid it. Any way, I got to tinkering with the mauser my dad had left me from his paratrooper days with the 82nd in Germany. After learning how to shoot it, I've come to appreciate it as a real gem. An all matching dou 44 with a mirror bore. So I took my first name and spliced dou to it. Now having come down with a severe case of mauseritis, I now have a number of them, including a few cousins. I took a nice bull elk in northern New Mexico this past season with an Israeli reworked 1940-147 chambered in 7.62. My bows continue to collect dust; I guess I'm getting lazy.

Some time ago I was considering building a 260 Remington or a 6.5x57 and some folks here gave me some sage advice about putting a swede barrel on a M98 small ring action (turk). It made sense in that you could push the "Twede" to higher pressures and get the same or better performance than going to the 260 or 6.5x57. But alas, my turk action and swede barrel haven't come back yet from the 'smith so hard data I have not. That '08 cartridge is mighty efficient; my Hornady book shows max loads in the 260 pushing the 160 grn bullet to 2600 fps whereas the max load on the same bullet in the 6.5x57 to 2500 fps. Both test barrels were 1 in 8" twist. Checking my M24/47 8mm loads my COLs are 3.100", so I would think you'd be OK on 6.5x57's in a similar action, but you'll have to check for yourself. The book shows the 6.5x57 max case length at 2.232" vs 2.244" for the 8x57. Actually, I don't think you'd be dissapointed with any of the above. I'd like to see results you get if you decide going with the 6.5x57.

Another way to do the OAL is to close the bolt and insert a cleaning rod in the barrel to the bolt face. Carefully mark or tape the rod at the edge of the muzzle. Open the bolt and insert your unloaded cartridge with the bullet out so it definitely contacts the lands squarely. Re-insert the cleaning rod in the barrel and mark/tape the rod again when you touch the bullet tip. The difference in marks/tape on the rod is the OAL. Sometime I use both methods to cross check.