Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunting Rifles light weight mausers?

how light have you mausers guys got your rifles? i would really love to get mine to around 7lbs or lighter scoped and loaded.

plans are for a new stock and to screw on a 20-22" fluted barrel. then top it with any of the fixed compact 4x or 2-7x scopes

as of right now my rifle sits at 7.5lbs scoped. 22" barrel in 30-06 with wood stock that is trimmed down to remington mountain rifle contour.

Go with a blind mag to cut off 6 or 7 oz.


ddj

already had that thought going through my head

I built one below your target weight (hard to do with a Mauser), by using a Small Ring M98, blind mag w/aluminum Remmy TG, 20" featherweight bbl, and drilling out voids under the barrel channel & buttplate (rubber bumpers are too heavy).

The sides of the action can be fluted under the stockline, and the bolt handle skeletonized.

I used 2-piece Weaver lightweight bases/rings for a 7oz Simmons 4x scope.

If a receiver peep sight is used ILO a scope, even more weight can be saved.

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Small ring mausers help a bunch toward hitting that goal. As does large holes in the barrel. Mcmillan edge would also be your friend. I've got a large ring that goes 8 on the nose with a 24" 9.3x62 barrel in a standard Mcmillan. Edge would have put it about 8 oz. less and dead on your goal and that was with 1909 bottom metal, 4x Leupold and Talley ultralights. I'm banking I can get to 6.5 with an edge on one in the works, but it's a variation of the small ring and will get a blind mag. Edge.

My French walnut stocked rifle, 22" Fwt barrel, With steel buttplate, grip cap, hinged steel bottom metal, steel mounts and Leupold 4x, mine Oberndorf M98 is 7.5# on the nose.

A 799 Remington could be rebarreled to several big game cartridges.

yea i did alot of drilling to the butt of the stock (behind the pad) and alot of trimming tot he forend of the stock.

it sits with leupold mounts and rings, and a redfield tracker 4x40mm scope.

i would just buy a whole new rifle, which i plan on anyway. but this action is starting to grow on me and it feeds slicker then snot. i just need to get rid of the barrel and stock (they are crap)

bankwalker;
This parts gun was built on a military 98 action with a take off Parker Hale featherweight 22" barrel in .270 installed.

Also added along the way was a modified Husqvarna trigger guard/ floorplate assembly, Wolf spring, Timney trigger, Timney/Beuhler safety and an FN commercial extractor.

The stock is from Wildcat Composites, the lighter model.

Here it is complete with sling and 5 rounds of 130gr GMX inside the magazine.



For interest sake, here are the weights on the HVA steel guard before I spent an hour Swiss cheesing it to lose less than 1 oz. .


And an aluminum alloy guard that Parker Hale installed on their rifles.


Hopefully that was some use to you and good luck on your project.

Regards,
Dwayne

Why not go with a Blaser R8 and be done with it?

Possibly because the Blaser R8 costs $3000+!!!

scoutman;
In case that query was directed to me, I'll toss out my thought process on building that particular rifle.

I'm not a gunsmith by any means, but do like to tinker with rifles as a hobby.

That rifle started life at our house as a $35 action that had a free FN military '06 barrel screwed onto it soon after. It was then bolted into a much modified Model 70 stock that I had $15 into.

One spring day I was doing some pruning for a now deceased friend when he decided my life would be incomplete without shooting something with a .270. He'd traded something for an as new Parker Hale featherweight barrel and insisted we screw it into the 98 action - that I'd bought from him years earlier by the way. So we went into his garage where he had a barrel vice and I had my first .270 in about 10 minutes.

Anyway, as they say - in the fullness of time - after adding some parts and doing most of the work myself, I've ended up with a rifle that works very well for me.

When one buys parts slowly, it does have the illusion of having less of an impact on the family budget, but I fully understand that logically the same amount of money can be put aside over time and spent in a lump sum with the same result.

In this case, I most certainly could have ended up with a tool of equal quality for less money. If I had done so though, I would have missed out on the fun and learning that went into making this rifle.

For me the planning and then the work that goes into building a rifle are the fun part of the process.

Hopefully that made some sense. Good luck on any upcoming builds and hunts.

Regards,
Dwayne

BC30cal

Half of the fun of a build is the anticipation and accumilation of parts. I had a friend (I am all thumbs with machining) put together a 308 target rifle that I took four years to assemble all the parts. Everything was a major sale and the parts cost me about $600.00 but had a Shilen air guaged 30" barrel, Timney target trigger, mauser action and stock blank for a bench rest build. Rifle ready to shoot with scope, rings, mounts new bottom metal etc for a total cost of $1000. My first three groups were .3", .27" and .15". So much for load development.

This rifle did not make the OP parameters obviously, it was 16 lbs.

I am just agreeing with BC30cal that the journey is sometimes the point of the excercise.

BW,

Back in the day when custom building a rifle meant starting with a Mauser, the light weight goal came to be seen as something from the too hard box (meaning too expensive). I always thought of Mausers as the platform for a big game rifle where weight could be a friend to help handle recoil.

Good luck with your project...jim

But it isn't a Mauser.

Bruce

Perhaps Swampy was thinking of the Rem 798 which is already in big game chamberings.

7.36# g33/40 with a blind mag, 24" barrel (which is not a FW contour) and a Lupy VX3 3-10 for glass. Stock goes 1.29# with "pad". Seven pounds is in the cards with a FW 22" provided you get the right blind mag stock to do it with--that's the hard part.

The mauser ring spacing ain't short so do your due diligence on the scope as to its length and ER with your chosen LOP.

The easiest way to a light rifle is the 700 TI...

Bruce, the 799 is a mini-mauser. It can handle some fine close range deer cartridges like the 6.5 Grendel. I believe Brown Precision and MPI make lightweight stocks for it. Following that route you could end up with a 5.5lb rifle (sans scope).

The Brno 21H is a great little rifle - small ring M98 - and mine weighed 6.5lbs as it left the factory -w/o scope.

Nope 799 rifle doesnt use a true mauser action.
It doesn,t have a Mauser pattern full length extractor.
It is not controlled round feed and has a recessed bolt face.
MINI MAUSER well er uh not exactly !

Search for a S&W branded Husqvarna Model B, Swedish small ring mauser that weighs in at 6lb 8oz without scope.