Why to people butcher and rape milsurps?

most of them(at least the P17s and 03s) were done in the 50s and 60s long before collecting became a thing.

amadeus76 said:

People chop them up for their actions and slap them into sporting stocks and for what?

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To end up with a lighter sporting rifle, maybe?

When there were a bazillion of these in every LGS at stupid low prices, it was a "What the heck, might as well" type of project.

My brother was gifted three nice milsurps from his FIL, back in the early 90's; an SMLE, a Norinco SKS, and a 98 Mauser. They might not have cost over $100 apiece back then, and since he wasn't that into guns at the time and didn't end up shooting them much at all, he decided to turn them into something that he wanted and liked.

I wish he hadn't, but they are his guns and he likes the way they are now, and therefore, he shoots them way more than he would have otherwise. He hunts elk with me using the 8mm.

My kids' great-grandad sporterized an Enfield and hunted a bunch of deer with it in New Mexico and Colorado. His son, who is my FIL, glorified that rifle like it was Excalibur. It's now in my safe and I do like shooting it and it's old original Weaver.

The same reason many people customize their cars or motorcycles. Not always do these modifications look good or work well.

It's about 2 things: weight, and the unavailability of high quality CRF actions commercially.

I fully support people doing whatever safe things they want to their guns. Want to turn a heavy, awkward milsurp into a sporter? Go to town. Customizing and modifying things is where most of the good ideas in firearms tend to come from.

I look at it a little differently.

Unless we're talking about a genuine antique, military surplus rifles were mass produced tools that were often rode hard before making it to the civilian market. I see nothing wrong with a competent gunsmith stripping down a dinged up old clunker to its basics and making something a little nicer and ergonomic out if.

That said, it's no longer cost effective to modify military surplus guns into sporters, unless you can do all the work yourself. I've heard a lot of milsup guns used to be sold out of barrels in gunshops for next to nothing.

Chances are that the rifle they have has zero historical significance other than being of a particular style. Museums are full of the good rifles in original shape. Who cares what a person does with their own personal property. If they modify it to better suit their needs, more power to them.

If you worried about some run of the mill, cheap military surplus being desperately needed in the future for some reason to save the world, donate yours to the NRA or other organization upon your death with the stipulation it will never be modified and preserved for all eternity...............................if you can get them to do that.



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It's exactly like swimming.

Different strokes for different folks.

If we all must have the same likes and dislikes, whose standards should we have?

How can anyone "rape" anything other than an animal?

Milsurp = Cheap and plentiful.........until they aren't

1903A3 back in the 50's -60's were cheap and plentiful and more valuable for those that bought them as a platform to make a sporting rife for hunting. I see no reason to over moralize it. People have been doing this kind of stuff for ever.

Model A, Model T, '32 3 window roadsters......cheap.....plentiful....great platforms for hot rodding. It's not butchery, it's the American way!

It's also worth noting that the people who buy one milsurp to make a hunting rifle are NOT the reason milsurp prices have gone up. You have the collectors with 10+ rifles to thank for that - for example, the people that forced the CMP to institute an 8 rifles per year limit on Garands!!!

Amadaeus, if you wanted to really make this case, you're going to need a time machine. When military surplus rifles were "take your pick out of the barrel - $15" down at the hardware store, sporterizing one was a great way for Joe Average to get something like one of those glorious Winchester Model 70s for his modest hunting needs. So, they were cut down and altered in the millions.

In 2017 that sort of thing is a faint shadow of what it once was. Very little of that stuff going on because military surplus firearms are often more expensive than a new "MOA-guaranteed" bolt action hunting rifle. The incentive isn't there.

Sure, a few bozos still do it, but so what? It's their junk and them junking up their junk is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to what happened before.

If the government authorized demilled triggers, and started selling their old A2's and beat to hell m4 no one would blink at modification. Millions of rifles were made from the 1890's until ww2. Most had no real collector value. Most people want a sporting rifle more than a prewar novelty. Seems like as good a reason as any. I personally don't understand the distaste for them. Putting a mauser action in a sporter stock, and putting a tapered barrel on it seem much nicer than a 10lb beat up battle rifle.

At times it was much cheaper to strategically mutalate milsurps...To a point. Buy a cheap Springfield and throw a sporter on it and have a nice hunting rifle, or buy a chump change SKS and spend more on a stock than the rifle is worth.

I don't consider this rifle raped, butchered, molested, violated, soiled or any other pejorative you could think of.



It's my dad's (in his 80's) project that he started back in the 50's and I finished last year. I'm more proud of it than any other rifle I have because its got some of him and me in it now.

With my hand loads it shoots 10 shots at 200 yards into a 1.25 MOA group.

A LOT of 1917 Enfields were sporterized into large bore rifles - that action was long & strong enough for cartridges like the .416 Rigby, and entire rifles could be had for less than $20, a fraction of the price of a Magnum Mauser or any other suitable action. The now defunct (?) A-Square rifle company used Enfield actions as the basis for some of their African rifles, with cartridges up to .500 A-Square - a .460 Weatherby necked up, for people wanting more power than the parent round. I spoke to the owner once at an SCI convention, and he said he bought the rifles "by the truckload" since they were so cheap.

1917 Enfields are not so cheap any more.

Military surplus rifles are by nature not very expensive guns. Why not modify them? Unless you (and many others agree) assign a high historical value to it the gun really isn't worth much, hence the low price to start with. Cut it, hack it for the fun. One man's glory prize is another man's junk. Ok with me.

Project are more fun and feel more "personal" to me than an over the counter anything. Even my over the counter stuff gets modified, but milsurps are much more fun as they are generally rougher than new mans.

Also I agree with the opinion that 90% of them are just tools to be repurposed as needed.

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I like the butcher job done on this one.

Military surplus rifles are by nature not very expensive guns. Why not modify them? Unless you (and many others agree) assign a high historical value to it the gun really isn't worth much, hence the low price to start with.

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Expensive is certainly a variable factor. Military surplus, as a term, indicates equipment being sold off as no longer needed, and thus at a deep discount below original purchase cost. And at one point, that's what these rifles all were. Hence our dads, uncles, and grandpas all telling us about how the local hardware store kept an old nail keg by the counter, stuffed full of Springfields and Mausers for $15 each. They were very, very inexpensive.

THEN.

Now, getting one in original, greasy, dinged and dusty condition would be a major selling point! And many of those $15 rifles would now sell quickly for $700-1,000. The relative scarcity both makes them harder to get, and makes them seem more exclusive as well. The historic provenance of a particular rifle may really drive the price up, but most of the guys buying one aren't insanely dedicated historians willing to spend a paycheck for a bit of gear from the Great War.

But everyone can go on GunBroker and see that a real original K98 might run $900, and can look at the CMP website and see that they're out of Garands, even for the many hundreds of dollars they were charging before.

And when someone touches something like that with a saw or file, others can almost visibly see the dollar signs floating away on the breeze.

It isn't absolute value worth, it is all about the worth the market (society) puts on that original condition item.

And the truth is, for every beautiful flamed, glossy stock, deep bluing job, gracefully turned down bolt handle, or tight group off the bench, there's a rifle that (no matter how much it cost to make it so) couldn't be sold for half the price it would command if it wasn't altered from the heavier, less accurate, dull original.


Some folks like having money. Some folks swear the cigar tastes SO MUCH BETTER when you light it with a flaming $100 bill.

It's all about which kind of value you care about, and how you choose to get there.

"...destroying a piece of history..." Dates from after W.W. I. Stuff like '03's, Lee-Enfields, etc. were sold by the pound out of sam1911's barrel and nobody even thought about 'em being anything but cheap.
There was approximately 37,000,000 Mosin-Nagant's(that $400 is Stateside only too.) made between 1891 and 1965. Over 17 million Lee-Enfields of all types. Nobody ever thought any of 'em would ever be worth what they are now.

Well, if you need your milsurp fix on rifles in original condition, perhaps a bit more rough than usual conditions, head over the J&G Sales, and pick up one of the Spanish mausers they have before they too are all gone. Calibers are 7x57 and 308. They also have some Yugo sks's that are super nice, if not spendy.

Larry's dad's Springfield now has its own history which is valuable to him (though pretty much only to him, FWIW) and which stands in place of some of the potential value that rifle would have today if it had not been altered.
So does Nature Boy's.

When they were altered, it made sense to do so. Clearly and incontestably!

Today there are millions out there already altered beyond any historic value, or original condition value. And an already sporterized model, cut down in the '60s or '70s or whenever, can be picked up for far less than it would costs to build it again. Call it a "post-surplus milsurp"! Available at a deep bargain cost because it isn't wanted any more by the entity that paid for it, just as it was sold the first time as unwanted by the entity that had paid for it.