Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Swiss K31 question

NIH syndrome (Not Invented Here).

i do remember when the swedes first hit here, they were about 69bucks too.
Having J&G sales ten minutes from your house, and having friends there helps a lot too. Sort of.
it is coming to an end in the sense after the early 50's select fire weapons came into vogue. and those are not going to come in.
what has generally happened was the really good mil/surp hit first with lesser quality as the supply dries up.
ammo is the same way.
at one time i could get a mosin in good shape for about 49bucks, and 1200rounds of ammo for about 70bucks. The turkish mausers i think were at 39bucks and ammo about the same.

just to tempt you a little, i got to shoot one of these:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmidt-Rubin#/media/File:Zfk55.JPG

I think the expression of envy here is "you suck!"

The K31 is very well made. I read that in around the late 1990s a person could still order a brand new K31 from the Hammerli factory for about $1200.

In 2002 I bought my K31 in near new condition from Big 5 Sporting Goods for $159. plus tax and fees. My rifle was made in 1951. There was no butt name-tag, unfortunately.

I ordered a case of Swiss surplus ammo (480 rounds)from AIM Inc. in Middletown, OH for $193 including shipping. At .40 per round that case cost me more than the rifle. The ammo is near-Match quality.

A friend of mine, a retired gunsmith, was recuperating from open heart surgery. He asked me for a gun project to work on at his own pace as he recovered.

I ordered a fancy black walnut stock blank from Great American Gunstock in Yuba City, CA, a Decelerator pad, an Acraglas kit, sling swivels, and a grip cap. I handed the rifle and everything over to my friend and said, "Make me a nice K31 Sporter. I have never seen one."

As the project came along, providing therapy and extra cash for needed prescriptions for my friend, he said a nice sporter should have a prettier bolt handle, and he asked if he could modify the ugly-but-functional finger-ring on the cocking-piece. I said yes, and put some thought into a replacement bolt handle knob. The barrel was cut and crowned behind the original front sight. The present barrel length is 25", and the twist rate as close as I can measure it is 1:10.5".

I have always preferred perfectly round bolt knobs, but this rifle needed something larger than the normal bolt-action rifle knob and something prettier than the factory two-finger pull-knob creation. I wound up ordering an authentic, black DC-3 throttle knob from Tradewinds Aircraft Supply in San Antonio, Texas.

Since my dusty logbooks show almost 700 hours in DC-3s a long time ago in a far away land, I knew that the throttle knob was the size I was seeking, and made a unique and meaningful feature for my personal K31.

The cocking-piece ring was filled with a shaped walnut plug that is even easier to use than the bare ring was. The straight-up ejection of the K31 requires an offset scope or a scout scope set-up. We made a scout-scope base that anchored into the rear sight base. A Tasco 2x30mm illuminated-reticule pistol scope works quite well and just clears the ejecting cases.

The final results are unique, and are about as attractive as a K31 can be made, I believe. No effort was made to lighten anything, and the stock measurements are on the large size with a thick wrist. With the scope the weight is right at 9 lbs, making the rifle pleasant to shoot, but less so to carry very far.

I have only shot the high-quality surplus ammo in the rifle and with the 2x scope I get consistent, round, 1" avg. five-shot groups at 100 yards. Half inch groups at 50 yards are easy. (If the curious spectators leave me alone long enough to shoot a group).

Here is what she looks like.

,

The DC-3 throttle knob turned out to be a good size to palm back and forth while working the straight-pull action. The round aircraft engine control knobs is where the aviation term "Balls to the wall" came from, meaning all knobs full forward to provide maximum emergency power and RPMs and full-rich mixture to help climb or accelerate out of trouble. With two engines on the DC-3, that was six knobs in the throttle quadrant, a large handful, going forward at once. Two more knobs down on the side controlled cowl flaps.



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That really cool N250! The nicest sporterized Swiss I have seen to date.

PennDog

That is one cool sporter off of a rifle I wouldn't have thought of. Thanks for sharing. Makes me want one even more now.

Very nice!

nifty-two-fifty;
Good morning to you sir, hopefully this cool Good Friday has been that for you and yours.

Thanks so much for sharing the photos and story behind your unique K31 sporter with us. That is, as others have said, about as nice an example as I've laid eyes on.

My goodness though, the local gun show is coming up and now there's another possible project rifle on the list.

Thanks again sir and Happy Easter to you.

Dwayne

That is a really neat conversion and about as pretty as one can make that action look.

I want to ask if the bullets go faster by pushing that throttle forward harder...

Thank you, gentlemen.

For anyone unfamiliar with the K31, in the pictures the cocking piece is in the full-cocked position. To put the rifle on safe, the cocking piece is pulled back slightly further and turned 90 degrees. It is a rather awkward safety arrangement.

If I had thought of it I should have uncocked it so it didn't stick out so far, just to make it look a little more attractive in the pictures.

My friend also carved out a slip-in single-shot follower out of a scrap piece of nylon plastic that works well when shooting from the bench. This provides straight-line feeding into the chamber without the bullet touching anything on the way in.

The fired cases eject straight up and back behind the shooter, with the force controlled by the speed of the shooters hand cycling the bolt. With some practice, a K31 shooter can direct his fired brass into a properly positioned 5-gallon bucket for scrap brass. The excellent Swiss mil-surp cases are Berdan primed, so are not easily reloadable, unfortunately.

I heard about an old Swiss rifleman that would entertain onlookers by catching his fired brass in the crown of his felt fedora as he continued to shoot, acting as if he didn't notice.

Jim,

Almost. The last portion of forward travel causes the lugs to rotate into the locked position. If the bolt is closed too gently the rotation may be incomplete and the rifle won't fire, even though everything looks correct visually.

A smart rap on the back of the bolt knob with the heel of the hand acts exactly like the bolt assist on an M-16 in insuring that the bolt is fully locked and firing is assured.

The K31 action is designed very strong and intended to be operated quite forcefully. This is proper design philosophy for a combat arm intended for rugged use.

My throttle knob is epoxied on, so I think it is as strong as the rest of the mechanism.

As a kid, even though I didn't know what it meant, I always liked the expression, "Balls to the wall." I guess I thought it had a dirty connotation, or something. Shame on me.

I had 2 k31's sold one and kept the nicest one. both came with 3# triggers that are actually better than most worked over hunting rifle triggers. both guns would shoot 1 moa at 100 yards with my st marie graphics clamp on scope mount and weaver k6. gp11 surplus ammo. its kinda surprising these haven't went up more in value. I paid under 100 for them 10 or 11 years ago, but they aren't available that much anymore. then again back then yugo sks rifles were under $100 too.

that is a very well done rifle.
Cheapest by the way i think i ever paid, if not mentioned before, was about 69bucks.
Just so you know how bad it gets, at one time i had a vision of getting a k31 in every year they were made. My wife would have used one of them to shoot me probably.
Some of those yugo mausers you mentioned are pretty good deals. At first they were using surplus german K98 recievers, later their own. But the SKS and AK came in after the big war, so a lot of the mausers went into reserve. I think from memory about every seven years they were degunked from the cosmo as a test, then put back. Tearing some of them apart i have seen some that all parts are numbered to the gun. They would come with a leather ammo pouch, cleaning kit, bayonet, oiler and sling. Basically brand new rifles.
The earlier K31's had oak stocks as i remember, the later ones birch. You can steam the dents out, and refinish them with the right colors. I would have to look but rather than reforming brass from another caliber i think i got a couple of sacks from starline. I do have a friend that has saved the berdan primed brass with the idea of reloading it sometime

i should mention if you should see one of those engineers K31 bayonets around with the sawback at a reasonable price, grab it.
They are quite pricy these days.