The ribs were perfect, the beer was cold, and tolorance stacking is a bitch.



The barrel was ordered short chambered, and we had to face the receiver and trim the outer shoulder back a bit for a good fit. I had hoped ( and planned) to simply ream the short chamber out to the Ackley Improved and go shoot it.

But apparently the .006 that I lapped off the bolt face to clean up the pitting was enough to give mea YEPPERS, perfectly fitted 6.5 X 55 Swede, with no reaming. It guaged perfectly on the swede go guage, and chambered a factory cartridge nicely.(no firing pin)

Unfortunatally I'm building a 6.5 X 55 Ackley Improved, which is .004 shorter than the swede. The swede Go guage is the NO-GO for the Ackley. Now a smart guy might have considered the lucky coincidence and gone off to the range to shoot his new 6.5 X 55 Swedish Mauser.

I am not that guy. I have invested $50 to rent an Ackley Improved Reamer, and I AM GOING TO USE IT!

So off with the barrel, and off to the lathe! .008 off the barrel, so now NEiTHER GUAGE will fit! Now I can use the reamer!

So barrel is re attached, and the reaming is started and there is no turning back. But we were tired, and full of ribs, and had no womenz or childrens about, and a brand new bottle of Kentucky Whisky that needed testing, so reaming stopped until tommorrow..........

I am now the PROUD OWNER of a 6.5 X 55 BJ Ackley Improved Mauser 98!

(Lost photo of fired case)



Then test shot is in the middle. Hardly worth doing I know, but it's EGO, and a little bit of real advantage.

I'm 52, have tinkered with Rifles my whole life, and I want to have something I did myself, that is unique. By sharpening the shoulder to a 40 degree , and slightly increasing the case capacity, as well as removing the taper from the case, you are supposed to get : increased accuracy, reduced brass growth( less trimming), and up to  13% increase in velocity, pushing close to the 6.5 X .284.

I'm, very pleased with the chambering process, I finished it out with 320 and a dowel, cross hatched, and the newly formed case looks fantastic, and mics exactly to spec.

Unfortunately, all the lathe and barrel vice work fubared the barrel bluing, so back to the boiling tank with it. I have a little stock work left, so I'm expecting final assembly next week and a trip to the range!

Awesome work.  I have a question about how you're chucking your barrel.  Does that collar you're using to hold it help you eliminate runout with the 3 jaw chuck, or is it just to keep the barrel from being marred?  I have a barrel I need to ream the chamber a little deeper and I figured I would use my 4 jaw.  Or is the small amount of runout from a 3 jaw not a big deal when chambering?

The bushing is the same one we use for the barrel vice, and is machined to fit the barrel. It was mainly a failed attempt to protect the bluing. Getting the runout gone was a pain.

We only had it chucked up to face off .008 to get the chamber depth set, all the reaming was done by hand, since it was only finishing. The barrel came short chambered, just not short enough.

Gotcha.  I've heard of using aluminum shims (cut from a soda can) to adjust runout on a 3 jaw chuck.  I've used that method to help prevent marring, but I use my 4 jaw if I'm worried about runout.  I think pretty much anything is going to rub the blueing off, though.

Yep, next time I will do all the fitting and chambering before I finish the rifle.

I had the cart ahead of the horse as it were this time

Barrels hanging up right now geting it's rust on.

sweet

Looks great!  Looking forward to your range reports.  Very curious to see how your Shaw barrel performs.

Well, I have a RIFLE!

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I boogered the finish on the barrel pretty good whenI had to break it down to set it back. I spent a couple days trying to patch the bluing back, but just never got it right. I knew every time I looked at it in sunlight I'd be pissed, So back in the lathe it went and down to bare metal again.Once I got the bluing off, I could see that it was microscopically pitted, giving it a light, matte look. I ended up using 100 grit to cut down to clean metal and taking it all the way back up to 600.

Thank God for Lathes.......

Then back from the top with the bluing Finally finished up tonight and got it together.
Pretty satisfied with the results.

Ready for the range, I'm on shift tommorrow and the Wife Unit is expecting Floor tile to appear on her durarock kitchen floor in the next couple of days, so looks like Monday will be the earliet range day, and that will be fireforming for the AI cases.

I'll try to do some detailed photos and post them Tuesday or Wednsday.

A few more pics, really hard to get the whole gun Attached File


On shift tommorrow, Monday is Range day for fireforming

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Round one.

Let me plug in my excuse algorithm first;

Crappy Bushnell 3-9 X40 out of the junk drawer until I buy something for this rifle.

Wobbly bench, somebody beat me to the good one.

Cramped for time, had two guests shooting, a buddy sighting in his new AR build and checking zero on his hunting Rifle, so I was shooting in between, and I let my neighbor who did the machine work do a lot of the shooting.

Fire forming cases from the Swede cases, 35 grains of Varget was only giving me about 2450. The factory Swedish rounds were hitting 2850-2900.

That said, the firs two out of the barrel at 25 yards went in the same hole.

At 100, I shot about 1 1/4 " groups, not bad wobbling around and barely able to see the center of the bench rest target.

I'm happy, I think it has potential!

Next up, some actual Ackley loads!

( Lost Target Photos )

I have read through this whole tread. Great job sir!!!!

1.25" groups would be respectable for a hunting rifle even under good conditions.  You have some serious potential there.

Sigh


Took it apart to try to cast the chamber( which hasn't turned out well) and I dropped the trigger guard. It was already weak since I had previously drilled the hole off center and had to get neighbor to straighten it out on the mill, which resulted in almost no meat left around the screw hole.
It bent at the weakest spot, and at the range, it broke. So now that the wifes Floor Tile project is mostley complete, I'm making a new trigger guard before I can get to tyhe next range session.

It's always something.......

Very inspiring build.  Thank you for the submission!

Finally got the new trigger guard shaped and finished. Going to the range Wednsday with some good AI loads and high hopes!

Thank You!

I think I've got something here!

( Lost Target photo )

100 yards, 46. 5-47 grains of IMR 4831 SC, 140  grain AMAX. The best group is 46.5, 3/4 of an inch with a called pulled shot. 5 shots.4 of five into less than 1/2 inch I can't shoot any better than that!

Very pleased with the results, my first time out with the AI cases, first powder, first bullet, lots of room to experiment with powder, bullets, seating depth, etc.

ER Shaw 26 inch 1-8 twist barrel. The report and muzzle blast are minimal, recoil nonexistant.

A final word on my Mauser Project;

Went to the range today, and the results were stunning. I couldn't be happier with the way it turned out. I am at what I consider a very early stage in load development. I have tried exactly one powder, and one bullet. All of my loads have been a variation of a 140 grain AMAX over  IMR 4831 SC. Today's final load was 48.5 grains, at the top for the 6.5 X 55 Swede, but well below the max for the Ackley Improved version. It's running about 2810 with a SD of less than 10. The rifle is capable of 1 hole groups, I am not. You can see in the photo that I managed to put four of five in a single hole with one premature ejaculation of the just under 2lb trigger the next group is two groups

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I had four of those left, so I moved down to the "good" concrete bench at 300 yards. When I went down to collect the target, I about sh** myself!

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.75 inch four shot group at 300 yards.

That is the best group I have ever fired in my life. So I am HAPPY with the way my Mauser turned out. And for those that were curious about E.R. Shaw Barrels, I think you can buy with confidence and rest easy.
That barrel was on my front doorstep contoured, crowned, and short chambered for just under $200.They are available from Brownells for Remingtond for about $150 short chambered too.

I added up the Rifle, a rough estimate. The Receiver was a trade with my friend, as was the Fajen Stock, I'm building an AR for him. I bought the Receiver for $ 60, some miscellaneous parts, gas block, tube, a stock, he bought the upper receiver, barrel, I'm custom making the free float tube and barrel nut, so I bought materials.  And I picked up a wood stock for his M-77 on eBay for $75
Call it $200 for the receiver
ER Shaw Barrel, $200
Brownells supplies$100, this included two bottles of bluing solution, heat paste, sling swivels, etc
$500 so far
$45  for the Boyds trigger
$45 for the reamer rental. $30 for the tap rental to clean up the receiver/barrel threads
$620
$50 for the two replacement trigger guards one I melted with the mig, the other cracked from cold hammering
$100 guestimate for miscellaneous supplies, sandpaper, metal for making the tools, epoxy, tung oil, etc.
$80 for the custom dies.
So somewhere around $850 total investment, plus untold hours sanding, polishing, fitting parts and inleting the stock.And dozens of hours of free machine work and shop help from my neighbor.

But in the end, a TRULY custom rifle that SHOOTS!

It is no where near perfect, plenty of little screw ups and things I'd do differently, but all in all it was a great learning experience that vastly expanded my gunsmithing skills and gave me a much better understanding of what it takes to make a good rifle.

Thanks to all who encouraged me along the way and offered helpful hints, and those like Fat Ncnasty who offer to do some of the bluing for me. Hopefully I put up a post in a year or so of the Antelope that I shot with it at some ungodly distance, in the meantime, I'm going to spend some time finding good loads for it and learning how to shoot out past 300 yards. I may post over in the reloading forum a thread about developing a load for the Ackley improved cartridge if I have time.

Off to the Archives with ya!

very nice looks good shoots good you got your self a winner there

Awesome job on the rifle and the group.

Great job and thanks for the last range report.

Very nice job and a great rifle to boot! They should tack this thread for others.

The Jerry Kuhnhausen book on Mausers may lead some to make cuts on the Mauser bolt face or to have a Mauser heat treated.

Not good ideas.

Probably been asked already, but what flavor of Mauser did that action begin its life as?  German-Anberg? German-other? Czech? Argentine?

A true officionado of Mauser actions might be able to tell from the pics, but I can't make that claim... I just have a bucket of old actions for projects...

Gewher 1898?

The Germans made alot of Mausers for other countries.

*hit quote instead of edit*

Tagging for ideas for some single shot 22's my son is working on.

oberndorf

But It has just been an action for at least the last 30 years, riding around in my friends box good intentions until I traded him for it.

Neato, my hog killer is an Anberg, but I have a Czech, an Argentine (maybe 2), and a Siamese in the closet in various states of disrepair.  My old man (retired gunsmith) has a soft spot for poorly Bubba-ed Mauser actions...

One of these days I'm going to get around to rebuilding all of them...

None of them are particularly valuable, nor interesting to anyone but me, but I like them.

I had never messed with them prior to this one, now I'm a big fan and definitely want to do another, just have too many things on my plate right now.

I really enjoyed building that rifle. Good luck with yours.

Kinda want to get a Mauser now to make a 6.5X47 lapua outta it

The Argentine Mausers are the best Mausers made in Germany.

My Siamese is chambered in 45-70.

For snakes and such...

Freakin' awesome thread!

agreed. quite a fantastic build.  Gives me hopes for an old hand-me-down sporterized and abused mauser I was given...

How do you boil a whole barrel?  Do you have a tank for that?

How do the AI cartridges feed from the magazine?


EDIT:
Necro thread!  

Cool that this threads still around, and popped up in my topics!

I have a stainless tank that was once a griddle grease trap I think, my neighbor picked it up for me at an auction.

Brownell and Midway sell bluing tanks.

Ebay has some.

The AI cartridge feeds fine, it’s 4 thousandth shorter case, a little sharper shoulder.

Thanks for creating this thread way back when, OP!  I greatly enjoyed reading it & seeing the step by step progress.

If others were wondering about the Mauser “C” ring, (and were considering looking it up like I had to), here is what I found on the web:






And here is the description they provided: “Mauser action as viewed from the front, with the barrel removed.

C-Ring - An internal web machined in the front receiver ring of a Mauser Model 98 and of all the proper copies of this famous action. Not only does this internal ring provide additional strength to the receiver at its most stress-bearing point, this essential part of the design provides a stop for the barrel when screwed into the receiver, allowing positive control of headspace. Because there is a cut-out for the bolt's claw extractor, it appears in the form of a "C" when viewed from the loading ramp. Being difficult to machine, lesser actions' front receiver rings are simply bored straight through.     The Hallowell & Co. Illustrated Firearms Dictionary is for informational purposes only. We do not necessarily offer the items described above for sale.

Brownells makes tanks, but if youre handy with a welder you can make your own.

Old school 4ft  fluorescent light fixtures work well if you come across one.

One I found only had a few mounting screw holes, unwelded holes in the corners and the conduit hole.

Easier than making one from scratch if you come across one.

Steel ones. Not aluminum. Bluing salts do interesting, but bad, things to aluminum.

Neat post.

No bluing salts used in proper rust bluing.