scott63 Posted November 2, 2007 Report Share Posted November 2, 2007 My best friend called me today to tell me he picked up a Remington 1903, 1942 dated barrel, supposedly 95%. He is not into milsurps and I'm not into 03's although I do appreciate them and will one day buy one. I haven't seen it so I don't know if it really is an 03 or an 03A3. Here's the thing: He tells me he wants to make it into a repro sniper cause he knows another guy that is doing this. It gets worse.....The other guy took his rifle to a local gunsmith, to have it drilled and tapped. The "smith" drilled it but it was too hard to tap, so he used an oxy-acetelene torch to heat the receiver "dull red" then let it cool and tapped it. My friend actually witnessed this and I told him it seemed like a bad idea to me because of the heat treating, to which he replied, "No, he packed it in wet saw dust so it would be ok." Wow, that hardly seems like a precise way of doing things. My questions are as follows: Won't drilling and tapping (even in a historically correct method) destroy the collector value? Are 1903 Sniper rifles marked any differently? Doesn't the tapping method this smith used seem dangerous? The rifle my best friend has is his to do with as he pleases, but I am trying to help him see that the real value in it is "as is", and that there are plenty of screwed up rifles out there to drill and tap to hearts content. I may be making some progress in this, because he was really impressed with how accurate it was with iron sights. Thanks for your thoughts.......Scott Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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