Allow me to post my understanding of Milsurp Mausers.....
I divide them into WWI and WWII mausers....
While there are a large number of them made and a lot of very good ones I'll further divide them into German made, Czech made and the others...
Again...there's a lot of excellent Mausers made in Mexico, Poland, and Yugoslavia.....but the ones I look for are Czech and German large rings.....
There are a few superb small ring mausers too.....
That said, I do not want nor will have anything top do with Mausers of the model prior to 1898.....and a lot of folks will disagree with this too!
WWI Mausers often didn't have the luxury of good heat treating and often none at all.....the result was receivers that allowed the bolt lugs to push against them so hard with high pressure cartridges such as the .270 that the lugs were actually embedded in the metal of the receiver. Mr. Burgess worked a process with a Washington company to heat treat these actions.....the company is Pacific Metallurgical in Kent WA and if you send them your 1909 etc (WWI) actions and merely ask for the "Burgess treatment" you'll get your action heat treated professionally to the specs Mr Burgess worked out with them. This amounts to about .015 deep carburization and harden and draw to roughly 37 Rc.....
37 Rc isn't hard at all....but Burgess discovered it was sufficient to prevent the setback associated with some Mauser receivers.
IMO WWII receivers had the advantage of the heat treating just described and don't really need the "fix"....WWII receivers start IMO 1924 with the VZ-24 in Czechlosvakia.....German made receivers of that era and after should also be good to go!
Many gunsmiths check for hardness but don't have the right equipment to check for superficial hardness...(case hardening) and they misrepresent the action for that reason.....One should only trust hardness testing and heat treating like this to professionals.....simply heating the action and quenching might be a serious error and actually be damaging to the metallurgical structure.
I never allow the bolts to be re-treated as the problem with Mausers is almost exclusively in the receiver and the fewer times the bolt is heated and quenched the better I like it...
I have 13 Mausers so treated and have no problems with any of them.....from 6mm Remington to .375 H&H...
Today I shy away from WWI Mausers....and I must agree with JB when he says to just avoid the entire issue by buying a commercial Mauser.....(post WWII)....mostly by FN and Zastava
I understand many of the Husqvarna Mausers are excekllent too but I have no experience with them.
