My 92 year old friend proudly showed me the M1903 Springfield sporter he built back in the early 60's. Its very pretty pre-war style sporter stock made me do a double take. But then I saw the serial number and thought "uh oh". It's a low number job. Then he told me the chambering: 8mm-06. I asked him why and he said because he thought 8mm was a wiser choice than anything else. (Remember this was 60 years ago and 8mm bullet selection then was abysmal.) Oh well. He said if I want it it'll be mine someday soon. I figure the wood will look good on something else....
Guys routinely re-chambered war surplus 8mm Mausers to 8mm-06 back in the post-war era because it was a way to make the guns go bang in an era when 8x57 factory ammo was nigh nonexistent. But to purposely choose that chambering for a custom gun would've made no sense when there were like, maybe, three or four dodgy bullets for it on the market.
Gnoahhh,
You may well be smarter than me about low number Springfields but there are some very interesting things to be learnt in
THIS article. Since it might be yours one day!
BL, all low number receivers are not the same, and any that were going to fail have probably failed by about 80 years ago.
Cheers,
Rex
