GEW88 with double stack magazine

[grsjax]

Saw this really nice looking Gew88 sporter that had a double stack magazine flush with the bottom of the stock rather than the normal single stack magazine sticking down below the stock.

How was this done? Is it a straight forward conversion or does it take major surgery?

 

[rcmodel]

No idea how they did it, but it would take major surgery for sure.

Most likely they cut, chopped, and grafted on a later Mauser trigger guard & box magazine to fit.

In all, I can't imagine why anyone would put that much effort into a basically inferior obsolete rifle with an undersized bore and related safety issues.

rc

 

[wlewisiii]

Are you sure it was a GEW88 and not a GEW 98/40? That was a Hungarian rifle that derived from the GEW 88 but with a Mauser type magazine rather than the original Mannlicher type though it still had the split rear receiver rather than the solid Mauser bridge. The best info I've seen on them is in "Bolt Action Rifles" by Frank De Haas.

If it really was a GEW 88 based rifle that more like a brain transplant than even "only" major surgery.

William

 

[Jim Watson]

Haenel built sporting rifles on the '88 action with a flush magazine of their own design, not a grafted on Mauser box. Cabelas has one advertised at
http://www.cabelas.com/gun-inventory---scarborough---fine-rifle---1009385-haenel-sca.shtml

And there is one shown with the very complicated Haenel magazine disassembled at:http://parallaxscurioandrelicfirear...Haenel-Model-1909-Sporting-Rifle.html?page=-1
along with period catalog cuts of the various models.

I once looked hard at a 9x57 of that type but concluded that I did not know what I would do with it once I had it, no matter how intriguing it was as a piece of machinery.

They are cataloged as the 1909 sporter, offered with the '98 already 11 years on the market. Haenel was a contractor for the G88 military rifle, I guess they figured that a flush magazine was enough modernization for them to keep cranking out the same action for sporting rifles long after the army adopted the '98.

 

[grsjax]

Gew88 may be an obsolete rifle but it is hard to beat these pre-WWI sporters for elegance.

 

[adrians]

+1 to grsjax ,, i have a steyr 1894 mod gew 88 and i think its a work of art for its time in history great rifle!!!.

 

[dirtyjim]

if you was going to try and convert a 88 to a double stack magazine i would start out with a rifle that was converted by the turks to use stripper clips. the turk conversions are already modified to hold the round in the receiver without the enbloc clip.
you can use a modified lr mauser triggerguard. line up the triggerguard using the rear hole as your baseline & work forward from there. the receiver lug right in front of magwell will have to be removed & the magwell on the triggerguard will need to be reshaped to the receiver & end up with the same stock height as the original 88 bottom metal.
now the front screw holes are going to be way off. there are several ways to correct this. on most of the haenel rifles the new front triggerguard screw is screwd into the recoil lug that is mounted in the stock & its only purpose is to hold the triggerguard on the stock. the front of the rifle is held in the stock with a fore end wedge. the rifle at cabelas is done this way along with most haenel sporters.
another would be to have a threaded boss on the bottom of the front sight sleeve like the rifle in the link to parralaxes site. the action screw in the front of the triggerguard on it works the same way as the one at cabelas but around 2" forward it would have a bushing inletted into the stock for the screw that goes into the boss on the rear sight sleeve.
if you tried to extend the front of a standard lr mouser triggerguatd to work with the 88's screrw spacing you would have to extended it about 1 3/4" & it just wouldn't look right.

you will also notice the haenel sporting rifles have a washer around the cockingpiece to deflect gasses like a 98, 88 military rifles do not have it.

i have two 88 sporter project rifles. one in 6.5x55 & another thats in 8x57 but i'm going to rebarrel it to either 9x57 or 10,75x57

 

[Jim K]

Well, that would be the only 88 around with a thousand or so bucks worth of gunsmithing done on it. Clips are scarce, but not that scarce!

FWIW, the magazine conversion mentioned still works only with a single column magazine. Making it work with a double stack would be difficult, though probably not impossible. Because it would be double column single feed, I doubt it would hold five rounds, but might work with 3 or 4.

Jim

 

[dirtyjim]

the turk conversions don't use enblock clips.
i wouldn't do the double stack mag conversion to one of my 88's because i think the magazine is one of the things that gives the rifle its character.
i also don't think it would be all that difficult to do the conversion & if if it did end up costing you $1000 to have it done i realy don't see the problem. people spend that on their rem700's & 1911's all the time.

i think the main problem is most peoples gunsmithing skills consist of writing a check.