Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Gunsmithing VZ 24 Mauser barrel

Picked up an VZ-24 Mauser with all the furniture on it. An old relic just the way I want it. The barrel has some rust but I'll give it a cleaning out and see what it looks like and shoot it.

If the barrel is washed out and my old relic doesn't hit the side of a barn what is the best course of action to keep this old rifle shooting well or even great while keeping the original appearance? Or Maybe leave it alone, but it's not 100% matching.

Open to suggestions.

rebore to .35 Whelen

Mike

Well, the woods are full of take-off VZ-24 barrels but the trick is in finding a nice one. They were usually pulled off for a reason. I would start by haunting ebay and Gunbroker, and also spread a bunch of want ads in appropriate classifieds around the internet. Perseverance, luck, and time should land you one eventually. But, then you have to have it installed and pray headspace is hunky-dory afterward. Boring it out to 9mm is an option, but then you'll have money in an admittedly neat conversion and you'll start to plot for a new stock, scope, reblue, etc. and that trip down the rabbit hole will leave you questioning your sanity.

I still look upon old battle scarred VZ-24's as a basis for custom builds and nothing more, but that's me. I like to build them and don't care if its cost effective, but not many guys feel that way anymore.

Lothar Walther used to make a dandy Mauser drop-in barrel, complete with proper steps in it. I don't know if they still do, and if they do it's likely that the cost of one plus installation would probably be more than you have in the gun and certainly make the end cost of the rig a lot more than it's worth.

When buddies call me to ask my opinion on "bargain" cheap milsurps and such my first question is "do you plan to shoot it, and if so what's the bore like?" A cheap bargain is still wasted money if it won't shoot worth a hoot.

Well, there's at least two of us.

If you want to keep it original, you can order a replacement barrel from Lothar Walther. Or, a competent smith can duplicate yours.

My real goal is to have an historical Mauser that is shootable for recreation and something under 1k or much less in cost.

One good development is I had another old cz24 that had an cut up stock that was missing the top furniture sitting in the closet. This reciever was marked 1937 and the barrel is in excellent condition.

I'm wondering if I could just take the better barreled action from the 1937 and swap it into the furniture of the complete rifle. I know it wouldn't be matching serial numbers and an exact parts correct project, but would this still be acceptable an historical type of war rifle if I swapped in the barreled action.

Finding this barreled action has potentially saved a lot of money and time and gives me an Mauser I can shoot against my American 1903's and M1917's.

Any thoughts?

Unless you are an anal retentive collector, go for it. "All matching " is great, but stop to think about it. Many, many rifles in bothh WWI and WWII were repaired in the field under adverse/battlefield conditions. All matching could/might indicate that the rifle never "saw action". If they could only talk ...

If only they could talk? Oh my, that would be incredible.

My goal is historical shooter. I'm not any real type of collector, just need an example to have with my American battle rifles, and I'm also a believer the Mauser was the best bolt action made. I just like them.

I think that since I came across another excellent barreled action I'll trade out the furniture. It's just great to keep these old things on the road and working, and it's only the cost of an new plastic bolt rifle

As long as the crown is fine, it will shoot well regardless of the condition of the bore otherwise. If by some chance it doesn’t, you can find scads of barrels at Numrich.

Sarco has new production stepped barrels for $95, the sights on a take off probably won't line up anyway, so just reuse the ones you have on the new barrel. Not sure who makes these, should be either Green Mountain or Shaw.

Numrich sells them for about $120, there's are made by Small Arms Man.(Shaw). Last one i got from Numrich was NICE.

I'll guess that by "swapping out the furniture" you mean swapping out the stocks. In that case, why not? (But strictly speaking the "furniture" of a rifle denotes the attachments on the stock: buttplates, swivels, escutcheons, etc. The stock is, well, a stock.)

Re-line?

How do you re-line something that never had a liner in the first place ?

Barrel lining is not inexpensive.

I wanted a barrel lined "relined" and couldn't find any person that would do a centerfire cartridge. Rebore and chamber, yes.

One thing you might consider is going for 308 instead of 8x57. I think there are stepped barrels available in that size, I have been thinking about doing that (although I have two good K98 take-offs still in the stash -- wherever that stash happens to be, been a while).

3 of us

Some Brazilian 7mm VZ24s coming into my shop.


Some 8mm VZ24s after I forged over the bolt handles.

Between 2000 and 2013 I bought VZ24s.
Some have shiny bores.
But after a while I gave up on surplus barrels, surplus ammo, surplus stocks, etc.

The conversion to 7mmRemMag and 300WinMag is what I have done with the most hunting success with VZ24s. Open the lips, bolt face, extractor, and either mill out the magazine or buy a magazine that feeds 3.34" ammo.