VERY nice rifle there! It reminds me a lot, in profile etc, to my Brno ZKW465 22 K-hornet. Also a miniaturized true Mauser action.
Question of the century here..... How come they could do Mauser actions to actually FIT various classes of cartridges back then, but not today? Why, when one buys a rifle in 223 for example, do you have to lug around an action built for the 308 classes of cartidges that is merely blocked and otherwise poorly adapted to diminutive rounds? As far as I know, only CZ now has a bolt action rifle that is truly of a correct size for the smaller cartridges. Savage has a new budget rifle in 22 Hornet, but how about a couple of nice rifles like the Model 1920, small Brno's and Sakos of yesteryear, and we have better machining and technology with CNC etc.
Rant over, sorry for the rabbit trail
Not a Mauser or even a 1920 expert, but I would judge it has to do with tooling costs. Forging dies, and all the other related tooling probably cost somewhat less back then, and in addition, when the Mauser was a military weapon they'd get orders for tens of thousands of them, which made it easy to justify the setup cost for special action sizes. CZ may still have a bit of advantage, getting things made in Eastern Europe.
Today if say, Ruger, decides to make a super-short action, then they'd probably be amortizing the tooling over only a few thousand rifles, which is a tough sell. The same is true of The Number One - it would be cool if they'd make a smaller, lighter action, but it ain't likely.
