I like the all of the Intermediate length M48 derivitives all great for building on. You are getting modern post war steels and heat treat. At this point the German machinery is perfected and tooling is post WWII. They seldom have any pitting to deal with at all. Bolt is already bent on most of them. People like Ken Farrell make scope bases out of steel that do not require the charging hump sanded down with up to 30 MOA off the shelf and if you want more can be custom machined for more. I have other Mauser actions but I liked the "newness" of my M48A I just replaced the stamped steel bottom metal with billet steel bottom metal. I added a $25 Swiss Machine Gun Barrel to it allong with a Ken Farrell 30MOA scope base. Waiting on stock. I did no machine work to the action outside of the drilling and tapping. I can put it back to stock with it's stock barrel. Last I checked the M48's have no collector value and are not at all rare.
I have a three VZ24's I plan to build as well but two of those where road hard and put away wet the other one is my truck gun they will need significant cosmetic work on top of a lot of other work like forging the handles down or wielding different bolt handles on. Mine are prewar and show heavy use so everything is suspect until I know it is not from hardness of the steel to levels of concentricity and precision of the machine work. Nothing wrong with them at all they are all fine rifles but lets face it the further back in time you go with rifles the more variability there is from part to part, lot to lot, and from one batch of steel tot he next batch. So if you are going to build off of antique military weapons it pays to inspect everything with a keen eye and to be prepared to need to do more machine work and finish work. This clearly also depends on the condition of the rifle you start with.
Now if we are talking commercial actions from finished rifles it does not matter. All of the European Commerical Actions post war that where finished and proofed rifles are all great to build off of. Clearly you want to shop for one that is in great shape and has as many modern features that you want already built into them.
If we are talking modern Mauser or Near Mauser clones again not going to matter. They will all work great. Some people poo-poo investment cast actions but I think all of the Mauser and Winchester Mod 70 clones even the investment cast ones work great. If done properly investment casting can produce a part that is as strong or stronger than a forged part. Since it creates a part that is far closer to the desired outcome it takes a lot less machine work or man and machine time to complete. In some cases this could allow for more time to be spent on gettingthings close to perfect as compared to just getting a usable part to kick out the door. In the case of the Ruger M77 MkII Ruger failed to take advantage of this and the finished machine work is rather crude. Nothing wrong with that almost a Mauser action just saying the machine work could be better. I think Montana and Kimber use investment cast actions and I have heard good things about them. The few I have encountered have been really nice rifles those are more like Mau-chester designs. Finding a nice CZ/Brno/Zastava modern rifle would be the cheapest way to go and they would need nothing.
A lot of use picked up Mausers of various military origins for $50 or less. My M48A brand new and unissued was $149 to $199 from Dunhams but I got mine on a Black Friday sale and I think I I paid $99 for it. I got an unissed Yugo SKS that same day for $99 I think regular price on that was also $199. Some guys on here picked up 1909's for $50 or less and gunsmithing rates and barrel prices where much friendly back then as well! So keep that in mind. When I was 12 my grandfather bought me an M1 Carbine from a pawn shop in Ft. Benning Ga for $50. There used to be a ton of parts from a lot of suppliers for sportirizing Mausers and Springfields.
Last edited by JohnLittleTree; 01/14/24.
