Originally Posted by
twb
I acquired a model 1896 Swedish Mauser hoping to make a shooter out of it. Unfortunately my gunsmith says that while it's perfectly safe to shoot, the bore is both pitted and worn out. The action seems tight to me and not worn and most of the parts are present. So I thought I pull apart the rifle and sell parts. Would there be any interest out there?
Buy a couple of boxes of factory ammo. Shoot it starting at 50 yds. Nice round groups? Try 100 yds. Still nice groups? You've got a shooter! No it is not a numbers matching pristine example of the breed, but it can be the workhorse you wanted even if it will never be a show horse. For the record, have had a number of older military rifles with less than perfect bores. With thorough cleaning and then use with compatible ammunition on target results were never worse than 3 inches for ten shots at 100 yds. Often the results were no different than same rifles/calibers that had fine to even perfect bores. Usually got better results using flat based bullets that were a bit heavy ... say 180 gr. in .30-06 and normal 196 gr. in the 7.92x57mm. In 6.5 Swed., always fired ball and Norma hunting ammo. HTH. Sincerely. bruce.
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