The classic 98 Mauser military rifle is what the American GIs would have brought back from World War 2 and what would have been imported by the thousands in the 50s and 60s. Great firms like Griffin & Howell in the late 20s and 1930s thought they had perfected the concept of sporterizing rifles with the 1903 Springfield, so it wasn't like the customization of military rifles was new after World War 2. Still, there were thousands of guns and returning GIs who liked them—maybe it was their first exposure to a bolt-action rifle. So we had these guns, we had inventive GIs, we had the concept down, and this led people to begin sporterizing military rifles. Sometimes it was as basic as taking off the extra wood and shortening the barrel. When we think of custom gunsmithing in America, it's really custom rifle smithing in America. I think people build sporters out of military guns because they want to. There is a great deal of satisfaction from doing the work, from converting a military rifle, especially if it's all beat up with a lot of war dings in it, and converting it into a modern sporting rifle that you can go hunt elk or deer with. It's very satisfying for people.
What is the Base of a Modern Sporting Rifle?
The first thing to do whenever you're building a sporting rifle from a military gun is to disassemble the military rifle that you're working with completely. There are three components: the lock, the stock, and the barrel. After disassembly, you've got the barrel attached to the receiver of the lock so you have to pull that off, you've already taken the stock off, and now you can see the three components: the lock, stock, and barrel.
The only thing you really keep for the sporting rifle is the lock itself or the action. The wood is of no value to us and the old barrel is of no value to us, but it's the lock or the action in the middle that is the basis of a modern sporting rifle—whether it be a Mauser, a Springfield, or even a 1917 Enfield.

What was Done to Bring this Gun to Modern Standards?
The bulk of the work done on the action is for function. We want the gun to work like a modern sporting rifle. Some of it, however, is just to make it look better. So, let's talk about function first and then we'll talk about the cosmetics.
First, we put on a new bolt handle. We had to cut the old bolt handle off, which would have stuck straight out to the side, and welded a new one on. We also had the new handle bent and swept back so we could pick it up and operate the bolt with it.

The Mauser comes with a three-position safety, but the safety is up on top of the bolt and for a sporting rifle, you want the safety on the side so that you can catch it with the thumb. It's not too much work to put it on, but it is an aftermarket part. Of course, the military guns aren't drilled and tapped for scopes, so we had to drill and tap our military rifle for the scope base (6x48), but that's a pretty simple job.

What a great challenge the floor plate is. The original Mauser has what we call a "detachable floor plate" that we then converted into a hinge floor plate design. We put a tab on the front of it where we could use as the hinge and then we needed to latch on the back, so we built a latch into it that allows the hinge floor plate to go down.

There's a lot of work here. You've got to do some work in the back for the locking apparatus, a lot of contour work to do on the trigger guard, as well as cutting in the latch itself. The original trigger is a two-stage military trigger. We wouldn't prefer that, so we put a modern Timney single-stage trigger in the rifle.

The rear tang on the action of a Mauser 98 is going to be about an eighth of an inch higher. So to get the shape that you'd like to have for the guard or the top of the pistol grip, you have to cut down the rear end of the tang and you can do so with a grinder.

We reshaped the top of the bolt release just a little bit and then checkered it. We also jeweled the bolt, nitre blued the extractor, and rust-blued the whole thing—these are all purely cosmetic changes. So now, we have an attractive and functional receiver with a good bolt handle, a three-position safety, a good trigger, and a modern hinge-type magazine. It takes lots of hours in the work itself and with polishing out the receiver afterwards, I don't necessarily recommend you try to make a living doing this. It's a lot of work and not much reward, but it's pretty standard to do those things in order to bring it up to what we call the "modern standards" for a sporting rifle.
Tell us about the Features of the Mauser Stock.
The stock on a modern bolt-action sporting rifle is probably the most visible piece of it. It's the piece you see first, and it can be the most attractive or the most unattractive part of it. For this particular stock, we got English Walnut—which most people would consider the premier wood for a modern sporting rifle. You can see what the shape is and how it looks, it's what we call a modern classic design and there's no cheekpiece on it. It's made interestingly enough to fit me, the grip is designed to fit my hand, and the forend is designed to fit my hand.

Some of the features that we've done on it, of course, are very nicely finished with a rubbed-in or sanded-in finish. We cut the flutes into the forend or the point of the comb, we got a steel grip cap on it, a steel butt plate called a Neidner style, we put in two screw swivel studs so that you never have to worry about a swivel stud turning on you, and we got an ebony forend tip on it. The checkering is all hand-cut checkering with 20 lines per inch. We have a wraparound pattern on the front, a standard two-panel design on the rear, and a standard three-point design. We also glass-bedded it, which you can't see, and we radiused off the top of the forend because I don't like that to be squared up. So this is a sporting rifle stock that is designed to fit the owner, in this case me, and to satisfy the owner's desire to have a beautiful stock and a nice straight grain in it. It's a beautiful piece of wood.
What was Done During the Rebarreling Project?
The barrel is one of the most important parts of the gun because you're looking for an accurate rifle and the barrel is a key piece of that. Let me tell you some of the stuff we did to the receiver though, as it's part of the rebarreling project. We re-tapped the barrel threads in the receiver, trued up the face of the bolt in relation to those threads, and lapped the lugs and the bolt raceways. We got the receiver all trued up to take the barrel before we ever put the barrel on.

We then selected a modern sporting weight barrel, the one I have is 24 inches. We wanted either 7x57 or 257 Roberts because that is the 7x57 case and since I already had a pretty good 7x57, this one is in 257 Roberts so we had to mark the receiver for that as part of the overall process. The whole treatment on everything is a slow-rust blue which would be a traditional sporting rifle finish. It's kind of a matte color that isn't very shiny, but makes a pleasing appearance to the barrel. That's the barrel project, it's the most straightforward of all the parts. Of course, it had to be polished, crowned, chambered, and we had to fit it.
There you have it, the lock, stock, and barrel on a sporting rifle. It's a whole bunch of work, but what you get is a very pleasing rifle that is designed to fit its owner and satisfy them for a lifetime.
-- Larry Potterfield