I'm sitting on way to many old, rusty, unusable mauser actions, what kind of steel did the folks use?, all are of German mfr. 1916-1940, Ive tryed pounding out a barrel, that went well, but thats as much as i've gotten around to do, wanted some advise before anymore work, danke, ..G
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Mausers
- Thread starter galen59
- Start date
if nobody can answer you, lemme redirect you to a site that has very knowledgeable gunsmiths and such. It's free to join and I know for a fact that they would be able to answer your question. From what I can recall in past discussion it depends on the year, some of them did not have a good blend of steel in em and folks were having problems getting the steel hardened and they had bolt lug setback. How does that help you know if the stuff will take an edge? Well maybe it doesn't.
http://forums.accuratereloading.com/eve/forums/a/frm/f/9411043
http://forums.accuratereloading.com/eve/forums/a/frm/f/9411043
The consensus (if there is one) is that virtually all (if not all pre0war and wartime manufacture) are case hardened and simple low carbon steel core. Wartime manufacture gets progressively worse as the date approaches 1945. Metallurgy was just not that consistent at that time so anything you see precise would probably only apply to that production block anyway.
With that said, a Mauser action would have to be awfully bad to be totally unusable. Lots of guys surface grind and then and re-case harden them...I tried messing with a couple and gave it up as too expensive, but they also make a dandy truck gun if they are not rusted to unsafe levels. Are they really that bad?
With that said, a Mauser action would have to be awfully bad to be totally unusable. Lots of guys surface grind and then and re-case harden them...I tried messing with a couple and gave it up as too expensive, but they also make a dandy truck gun if they are not rusted to unsafe levels. Are they really that bad?
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- Jun 10, 2003
- Messages
- 15,288
They always used low carbon steels about a 1020 and case hardened them. No fancy alloys like 4140 which is the common gun steel today. When I was in gunsmithing school I reworked a M98 which I've used for years .Since the surface hardness was spotty I had it re-heat treated.This is a 1943 Oberndorf with all matching part numbers. Quality had already gone down and more rapidly after that time.
I've been in a number of Mauser discussions on accuratereloading and I always suggest re-heat treating for safety.
I've been in a number of Mauser discussions on accuratereloading and I always suggest re-heat treating for safety.