Great garage/estate sale by me last weekend. Guy was selling off stuff his brother had, who apparently had been something of an accomplished amateur gunsmith:



As you would imagine, being rather obscure gunsmithing tools, this stuff does NOT come up used very often. Brownells barrel vise for $70 (usually about $150 new), action wench for $25 (usually a hundred more), no name on it other than "action wrench 1". The #6 bushings were in it, got #4, #5, and #11 aluminum bushings for $15 each.

After years of reading about rifle designs, I have come to really love the features of the 98 Mauser action.  And, I have two of them to experiment on, a VZ 24 I mean to make into a thutty-aught-six (that's an extended mag box, to take the longer round):



And a Yugo 24/47 that, since it's a bit shorter than a standard 98 action, I mean to make into a .308:



Thing is, I've never done this before, and some 50,000 PSI a couple of inches from your face is not the place I want to do the job badly.  Got both thutty-aught and .308 go & no-go headspace gauges, .308 finishing reamer, still need thutty-aught reamers.  I assume that you lathe off a bit of material from the shoulder on the back of the barrel until it indexes correctly (calculating thread pitch to get you in the neighborhood), but just how tight do you crank it?  Tight as you can, or is there some torque rating?  Then, do you ream to make headspace once it's cranked, or before you torque it down?  Read a description of the process in the first Brownell's Gunsmith Kinks, but it didn't touch on a lot of issues.  Got Jerry Kuhnhausens' book on the Mauser actions, but I expect that'll just have info on the various models, not how to gunsmith them.  Any pointers?  Any books you can recommend on the subject?  This one looks good, and it has good reviews:

Sounds like a nice hobby to esp after the ETWAWKI

I'll admit, that did occur to me.  Mostly, tho, it's a hobby, tho I would like being able to chamber for obscure calibers.  Want to make a Savage (which is A LOT easier to headspace!) into my favorite oddball caliber, the .221 Fireball, b/c it seems like you never see them for under $1,000.  Also got a '92 action that would work great for making up one of those .45 ACP suppressor hosts fed by a 1911 mag.

It is a fun hobby, and I like obscure cartridges.  It lets me do lathework and barrel fitting with cheap Green Mountain blanks.

I like Newton cartridges, and put a 30 Newton on a M1917, a 256 Newton on a double heat treated Springfield with Lyman 48 sight and on a M70.  Cut a 223 improved on a factory Howa.

I put a 30 Luger on a Beretta 92, and will make a 9mm barrel for a Steyr M1911 stamped P '08 as soon as I can find all the parts for it.

I"ve done a few barrels for the AR, too.  That got me started.  I"ve done a couple midlength barrels in 223 (yes...), 6.8 barrels, and am working on a 8mm kurz and a Rimless 357 Max (sitting in a lathe tray for 18 years while I tried to work out magazine problems).

Been a few other projects, too.  Forgot some of them, like the 223 improved short on a new barrel for a 22 TCM rifle.

Got a good pile of barrels and blanks.  I will run out of time before I run out of projects.


Aw hell, gunsmithing and lathework are both fun.

Answering your question, how tight?

That is an overrated question.  Handtight (double fisted) works for a range trip.  I understand some benchresters do this with switch rifle barrels, and yeah, it works.

For a permanent install, I tighten a barrel one handed-hand tight with a barrel wrench, and a couple taps with a bar on my barrel wrench seats it, and then I finish ream it.  If you want to get pedantic, look at the machinist's handbook for typical  torque specs for a bolt size on your rifle, like 1"
1" x 0.01625"pitch threads.    Jerry Kuhnhausen probably mentions a defensible torque spec in his Mauser gunsmithing book.

Good score OP!

I love being able to rebarrel rifles. Mausers have an internal “C” ring, I set mine up to tighten on the C ring and kiss the face of the receiver, and got good results.

Here’s a link to my Mauser build thread, steep learning curve for me!

Mauser Thread