RemAge barrel for Mauser?

[MuzzleBlast]

Just curious: Since barrels exist that convert Remington 700 actions to use Savage-style barrel nuts, is it possible to do the same thing with Mauser 98 actions?

[Scorch]

Remage barrels are mass-produced, and as such are cheaper than fitting a barrel to a receiver. Screw it in, tighten it down with a nut. Damn poor workmanship, if you ask me. But it works.

I know of no one who is making that type of barrel ing system for Mausers. And it's a good thing, they look atrocious.

[taylorce1]

Pretty easy to buy a short chambered threaded Mauser barrel. If you buy an action wrench and barrel vice you can change out a Mauser barrel yourself. Then with a T-handle, rented finish reamer, rented gauges and cutting fluid you can properly head spacing the barrel without a lathe. Time consuming but perfectly within the realm of a hobbyist.

Barrel Install Video

[T. O'Heir]

Buy an action wrench, barrel vise, a 4" machinists vise to hold the barrel vise, a solid work bench for the machinists vise and great big mallet. Although a 4 foot, 2", Al bar works as a mallet too. Plus all the assorted headspace gauges, etc. Gets expensive if it's a one time thing.

[FrankenMauser]

There are so many different bolt face depths for 'Mauser' actions, and minor variations of thread dimensions, that it wouldn't be a very viable endeavor.**

But, in theory, it would work just fine for actions that have the same bolt face depth and don't require an extractor cut.
Most Mauser style actions don't have square receiver ring faces, however. So truing that up would be necessary, which would add cost and time to any RemAge type barrel on a Mauser.

But, there's still the elephant in the room:

**Bolt face depth is already an issue in the pre-fit barrel world.
Savage barrels on a Marlin X7, for example, often bottom on the bolt face before touching even a 'No-Go' gauge, because the Marlin breech face is recessed 0.020" deeper than a Savage.

Same threads. Same type of nut. Same style of attachment. Seems straightforward and simple. But to avoid head space issues, a Savage-spec barrel must have 0.020" faced off the chamber end*. Bubba can do such poorly and quickly with a file, easily enough (I've done it). But the better answer is added cost - or time, if you have a lathe - to face the and re-chamfer the chamber face (which I've done for the last two, and went back and re-faced the Bubba chamber face).

And it's the same story with dozens of other brands. Bergara actions, for example, use threads that match Remington barrels. The bolts are different, however. So, Remington/RemAge barrels must be modified and rechambered to be used on a Bergara action.

Even Stiller, Shilen, Nucleus, and other actions advertised for Savage 'pre-fit' barrels have some dimensional disparities that can require barrel modification.

Pre-fit barrels sound amazing and so simple to work with!
But when you actually take a deeper look into the world of pre-fit barrels, you find that only the application-specific barrels are working as intended. Everyone on the fringe, or drawing outside the lines even the tiniest bit, is modifying those "pre-fit" barrels, in order to use them properly and safely.

The Mauser style family of actions is huge. And they're all different. Making viable pre-fit barrels for the Mauser family would require targeting ONE specific action, that never changed during production, and dimensioning only for that action. The Ruger 77 Mk II comes to mind as an example. The important dimensions never changed, and still live on in the Hawkeye. ...But the barrels wouldn't work on many other 'Mauser' style actions.



*(With the Marlin X7 and some other designs, long but in-spec head space can sometimes be achieved by setting the barrel snugly against the bolt. HOWEVER, this 'seals' the gas escape routes, except for the firing pin channel. I know I'm not the only person that considers that a bad idea.)

[reynolds357]

Originally Posted by Scorch

Remage barrels are mass-produced, and as such are cheaper than fitting a barrel to a receiver. Screw it in, tighten it down with a nut. Damn poor workmanship, if you ask me. But it works.

I know of no one who is making that type of barrel ing system for Mausers. And it's a good thing, they look atrocious.

Poor workmanship? That would make Savage equally poor workmanship. Both shoot lights out. When I built my Savage bench rest action 6.5x284, I did it like a Remington without the nut. Rebarreled it the same way. When time to re-barrel it again I was in a mood, so I did it with the nut. The nut shoots as goid as no nut.

I am thinking about using a nut next time I re-barrel my Bat just to listen to people gripe.

[Jim Watson]

Calling a Ruger 77 a "Mauser" is a real stretch.
In the Golden Age of Surplus, 1950s and 1960s, you could buy a ready to shoot barrel for a real 1898 Mauser. Reportedly their receiver ring dimensions were held surprisingly close for a very long time.
If you wanted a dead on installation, you got a LONG chambered barrel because any gunsmith worthy of the name back then had a lathe and headspace gauges were cheaper than reamers.

[Nodak1858]

Rhineland Arms does nut style barrels for small and large rings. I have used them and made a 45ACP and 7.62X39 rifle form a couple of Spanish 1916 rifles. The 45 uses a mag adapter for 1911 mags. The 7.62 I used a mag block to make the smaller rounds feed. There's a bit of tinkering to get the 45 to run decent but it's fun to shoot and the donor rifles were worn out Samco ones converted to 308. The barrels I got looked very nice as far as workmanship.

[FrankenMauser]

In the Golden Age of Surplus, 1950s and 1960s(...)

Harkening back to the 'golden days' is quite a stretch, too. That time is past. That was then, and this is now. We're in now, now. We can't go back to then. We've already passed it. We're in the future. We're looking at now, now.

This is 2020. There are no longer barrels of surplus rifles priced at $5, crates for $20, or pallets of stocks and parts in every country store.
In the world we currently live in,I believe there are more non-Mauser, Mauser family rifles (Rugers, Winchesters, Interarms, Dumoulins, Whitworths, Springfields, etc...) with commercial brand names on them, than actual Mauser rifles.
(And that's giving quite the cold shoulder to Remington, Marlin, Mossberg, TC, Bergara, Sauer, and dozens of other brands that are definitively Mauser-descendants, but get lumped under umbrellas like "Savage style", "Remington type", or "Browning like".)

(...) you could buy a ready to shoot barrel for a real 1898 Mauser.

You still can. (I bought two from SARCO a couple years ago.) Just don't expect head space to be within SAAMI spec. It might be safe enough for Bubba to not lose an eye. But don't expect perfection.

[Scorch]

Many barrel makers sell profiled, crowned, threaded short chambered and polished barrels for Mauser 98s.

Poor workmanship? That would make Savage equally poor workmanship.

I agree. But they shoot.

[Dufus]

I do not deny that a Mauser 98k is a very strong action. I have three of them.

BUT, the Mauser 98k actions flex quite a bit.

If you take a look at it and compare to a more modern action, it is easy to see that the Mauser 98k action has no support on the upper half, thus allowing this flex. It was designed to be fed from stripper clips for fast loading which called for the top part of the receiver to be open and access to the magazine to be unrestricted.

[reynolds357]

Originally Posted by FrankenMauser

Harkening back to the 'golden days' is quite a stretch, too. That time is past. That was then, and this is now. We're in now, now. We can't go back to then. We've already passed it. We're in the future. We're looking at now, now.

This is 2020. There are no longer barrels of surplus rifles priced at $5, crates for $20, or pallets of stocks and parts in every country store.
In the world we currently live in,I believe there are more non-Mauser, Mauser family rifles (Rugers, Winchesters, Interarms, Dumoulins, Whitworths, Springfields, etc...) with commercial brand names on them, than actual Mauser rifles.
(And that's giving quite the cold shoulder to Remington, Marlin, Mossberg, TC, Bergara, Sauer, and dozens of other brands that are definitively Mauser-descendants, but get lumped under umbrellas like "Savage style", "Remington type", or "Browning like".)


You still can. (I bought two from SARCO a couple years ago.) Just don't expect head space to be within SAAMI spec. It might be safe enough for Bubba to not lose an eye. But don't expect perfection.

If you handload, you can adjust for it. You really have to have super long chambers to incur catastrophic failure. I know, you can overwork the brass and make it happen quick, but thats another discussion.