dirtyjim said:
you obviously don't know anything about military weapons or sporterizing them.
It's hilarious, you talk as if knowing a lot about sporterizing military weapons is somehow a good thing. It's not. It's knowing a lot about gun butchery. How is that something to be proud of? Sporterizing is the cheap fuck way of getting a sporter. I'm not talking here about Theodore Roosevelt's Sporterized Springfield or a Rigby .275 Mauser. Rather, I'm talking about rifles like the one Sven just inherited. It's the cheap fuck way of getting a sporter.
Yeah, I know nothing about military rifles and sporterizing them. You see, I'm of the school that says if you want a sporter, buy a sporter. Don't buy a $100 surplus rifle and then butcher it to try to make it into a sporter. Just buy a sporter if you want a sporter. A Winchester Model 70 is hardly expensive.
dirtyjim said:
if the barrel is still stepped it could very easily be returned to millitary condition. remove the barrel band front sight & repalce with an original military front sight, they are soldered on & would cover where the barrel band was. add a military rear sight, its on a sleeve that is soldered onto the barrel.
Yeah, I'm a real idiot when it comes to sporterizing military weapons. But at least I know when to give up. So if the barrel hasn't been reprofiled/tapered, the rear sight and front sight barrelbands can be soldered back on. If you went this route, you would have to buy the rear sight and front sight barrelbands, and then buy the rear and front sights. Then you would have to have a gunsmith solder on the barrelbands. Let me qualify that: you would have to find a gunsmith who was willing to do the job and not tell you that you're wasting your money because you're going to spend more on the rifle than the rifle is worth. He's also going to tell you that the rifle will never be back to military condition because it has already been refinished once and the rifle will have to be refinished again after the soldering job.
dirtyjim said:
replace the sportered bolt with a military bolt.replace the trigger with a military trigger.
OK, so if you want to burn more money on returning this weapon to military condition, we can add the cost of a bolt and installation. Unless by some miracle of coincidence the headspace was perfect, the rifle would have to be breeched all over again. And if all the planets aligned and a replacement bolt went right in, the numbers wouldn't match anyway.
Note that I'm not collector-frenzied with matching numbers and whatnot. But I do know that returning a sporterized rifle to "military condition" is a waste of time when the rifle isn't collectable and the numbers aren't going to match any way.
dirtyjim said:
plug the holes fron the reciver sight, browells sells them.
Yeah, that would look great. Just imagine a military Mauser with four plugs screwed into receiver rings. I suppose you think that if all of the screws were timed, that would be a classy touch.
No. No matter how you slice it, this rifle is what it is. It's a beater plinker and it should remain that way. For that purpose, it's a very good rifle (assuming it's in shootable condition). It can never be returned to military condition, no matter how much money is poured into the project.
Even if a master gunsmith were to weld in the holes drilled into the receiver rings, those built-up areas would not match action material once the rifle was refinished. Also, the tooling marks surrounding the holes would necessarily have to smoothed as the welding is filed down and the rifle is refinished yet again.
I'm also guessing that whoever sporterized that rifle lapped the locking lugs, bolt raceways, camming surfaces, and the extractor loop. I'm sure this is all the rage in the sporterizing world, but it's butchery on a military rifle and the rifle can never really be returned to its original state. What are you going to do, add the tooling marks back on? How on earth would you do that?
Even if a master gunsmith were to weld on a new bolt handle and bolt knob that perfectly mimics the original in every way, the bolt would still have been refinished two separate times. If the jeweling on the bolt body is thick enough, it might even require re-hardening the bolt after the jeweling has been removed fully.
Even if a master gunsmith were to restore the original sights, the barrel will have been refinished two separate times.
And even if all of the foregoing could be done (it can't), why spend that kind of time and money on a $100 rifle? Why not just shoot it and enjoy it a as a hand-me-down from your father, who got it from his father? In that way, this Mauser ain't all that bad. However, it is what it is. It's not collectable enough to do any kind of restoration. Even if it were restored, it still wouldn't be worth anything as any kind of restoration work on military weapons, no matter how skillfully and artfully done, makes them worth less, not more. Just treat this rifle for what it is: a beater plinker/shooter.
Your "i could have it all in the mail by the end of the day" is hilarious. I can only imagine what this rifle would look like after it was sporterized and then "restored" by you. It would look way worse than it does now. Just leave well enough alone. The damage is done. Just shoot the rifle and enjoy it.
