I bought a Mexican barreled action months ago (there's a thread from a while ago about it) and I finally got around to messing with it.
I had a hell of a time finding a scope mount for the holes that were already drilled in the receiver. The front screw holes are 0.75" apart and every Mauser scope mount I could find had spacing of 0.86". I went to the only gunsmith within 50 miles who knows much about mausers with the intention of having him plug and redrill the holes but as luck would have it, he had an old Redfield mount that fit. It's for a FN Short Action or Browning 243. I would have never figured out the right scope mount on my own.
My plan was/is to make a nice walnut stock for it but I decided that I want to shoot it first and make sure the barrel and everything is in good order before I go pouring money into the project. And I've only inletted one rifle stock before, and never did much in the way of shaping one, so I wanted something to practice with and experiment with before I go buying a $200-300 piece of walnut. So I bought this POS birch stock off ebay and did a quick inletting job. The stock was about 98% inletted when I got it but the machine semi-inletting or whatever they did was pretty poorly done. The action screw holes were actually off by a little bit and the bottom metal inletting was slightly crooked and off center. So the whole action and barrel ended up twisted to the left just a little bit, and the barrel channel gap is noticeably wider on the right. And the bottom metal inletting is not very tight since I had to remove wood to shift the whole thing a little bit. Whatever, though, now I can go shoot it!
I put 20 rounds of cheap Partisan through it. Just wanted to see if the barrel was remotely decent since I'm not expert enough to deduce anything by just looking at it. I shot a few 2-2.5" groups at 100 yards which means with a more ideal load and a better shooter this thing might be capable of 1" groups. Right now I left the barrel in contact with the stock at the end of teh barrel channel. It's only touching wood at the last couple inches of the stock. I was told that light barrels like this often shoot better with a little bit of upward pressure applied. I will be bedding this stock next since I've never bedded a rifle before, and I figure at that point I can play around with free floating the barrel or not.
What I didn't think about before, though, is that the barrel might never have been shot before. I wish I would have thought about it and at least taken some good photos before shooting it but too late now. When I got the action it looked like it was put together and then left to sit for years. I couldn't find any signs of use, and the lands in the barrel looked like they were blued. They definitely weren't bare steel which I assume means the barrel has either never had a round through it or it was just re-blued and hasn't been shot since. I attached a pic of the muzzle after I shot it. The copper/brass color on the lands was not there before shooting. Is there any way to tell if this barrel is new? And if so should I put it through a break-in procedure where I clean the barrel after each round for the first 10 shots, then clean it after every 3 shots for the next 15, etc.?
Breaking in a barrel isn't going to get you much on a sporter and I question if it is even worthwhile to bother with a breakin procedure on a BR rifle.
Agreed. I suggest you clean it down to bare metal. then soak the bore wet with EezOx, let dry. Then just run a bore snake with more EezOx every 20rds. Shoot the devil out of it!
