Swedish mauser...Is it me or is it anecdotal?

[Cliff Roberts]

I have 2 6.5mm swedish mausers: a Carl Gustav m96 and a Husqvarna m38. Both are rebuilds and came from different collection buyouts/estates. The m38 came to me as a barreled action (new barrel) with a timney trigger, and a scope - my brother (gunsmith) and I set back the barrel to fix a headspace issue, finished reamed it, and fit a stock and hardware to it. The Carl Gustav was one of those rifles you see here and there that had been chopped down behind the front sight post and had a pic rail mounted to the rear sight base (yes... I cried a little when I found it amongst the collection) - we just cleaned up the muzzle and re-crowned it. After a year or so I threaded the muzzle and turned a flash hider for it - good clearances.

Both barrels slug out to about .266-267 (even the new barrel... I thought that was weird) and the bore cam doesn't show super excessive wear outside the usual (I don't think the m38 had been shot before the old boy passed and the 96 was within tolerance, even if it is getting to the end of headspace)

I've tried to turn them into shooters but, no matter what I do, they just don't seem to want to play nice. Both of them are scoped (both vortex) have levels mouted to the scopes/rings, and are fairly consistent to each other (flinging lead pretty similarly when shot back to back) which makes me believe I'm doing something wrong. I hear guys, especially collectors (mausers are pretty popular in my neck of the woods), tell me that they're getting 1.5-2 moa fairly consistently out of a 96 with the odd lemon. I'm getting about 3-4moa between the two depending on the day and the load.

Neither rifle is particularly fond of the S&B or the PPU I've fed them. I've tried working up loads for them but no dice. I've tried different loads of imr4064, aa4064, imr3030, rl19, big game, hunter, h4350, aa4350, and aa2460 under a 160 interlock, 140 gr Speer Grand Slam, 140 gr Sierra hpbt, 120 gr SST, and even a ppu 139 gr fmj bt (.268 dia - measures at .2663 - modal average). I think I even tried some 120 gr speers in there at one point - they made me nervous... Best group I got was 3" with the Gustav using 36gr of hunter under the ppu.268 but it wasn't consistent over 3 10-shot groups across 2 days and the m38 flung those suckers about 4 inches to the left with about a 5.5 inch group.

I'm a pretty good reloader and a decent enough shot. My brother is a significantly better shot than I am. Neither of us are getting particularly good groups.

So... to the title of the post... is it me? Am I using bad load data? Is something out of spec with the rifle(s)? Did I just happen to get 2 lemons? Or is it anecdotal? Should I be calling BS on "consistently under 2moa" being the norm? In which case, what should I reasonably expect?

I don't think I've ever been so frustrated with a rifle/caliber. I would love some input.

 

[MutinousDoug]

I struggled with my Husky M38 Swede before I got it to shoot anywhere near 2 MoA, initially because I was losing my ability to see a Patridge sight. Eventually I bought a Swede stock from Numrich or somewhere, sweated the rear sight off the gun and had it D&T for a 2 3/4x Burris Scout scope and learned how to glass bed the receiver. Yes, I sporterized the gun! but this was back in 1996, before this behavior became a Cardinal sin. Except for the two tapped holes in the barrel, the gun can be returned to original configuration.
I shoot Nosler and Hornady 140gr bullets over IMR4831and H4350 to get 4.0-4.5" five shot groups at 200 yds off bags. Before bedding and scope, more like yours at 6-8"

 

[Cliff Roberts]

Did you just bed the receiver or the barrel as well? The m38 (furthermore affectionately referred to as the scout rifle given the scope placement) has already been bedded.

Have you slugged your bore?

What's your h4350 charge?

 

[Random 8]

I think you have exhausted the options. My BIL had a shot out M96. It just wouldn't group under 3" no matter what we did. I tried chasing the throat and that showed why. Even with a 160 gr cruise missile, I couldn't touch the rifling with a caliber or more still in the case neck. You should certainly be able to get into 2" with optics and even a decent Swede bore. My M96 will do this in spades with minimal load development and issue sights.

I'd consider both those rifles to be parts/donors for other builds, especially in light of the fact they've already been violated.

 

[Cliff Roberts]

@Random 8 I could see the chamber or throat being an issue on the dmr if I didn't just cut it down. Before I got the 38, I thought about casting the chamber of the scout just for that reason. Idk. The whole thing irks me. I think I may go on the hunt for a well shooting 6.5 Swiss just so I have a "control group" to take some measurements off of.

Those 160 gr cruise missiles are hilarious tho, aren't they lol

 

[Steel Horse Rider]

I don't know about the MOA on my Huskvarna M38 but I can hit a 24" x 30" steel plate at 600 yards with the original sights so I am happy. It is a beautiful and smooth rifle. It has the plate on the stock from being through the government armory and also came out of a collection without many signs of being fired much.

 

[MutinousDoug]

Did you just bed the receiver or the barrel as well? The m38 (furthermore affectionately referred to as the scout rifle given the scope placement) has already been bedded.

Have you slugged your bore?

What's your h4350 charge?

Did not slug the bore. I bought the gun with the intention of using it to learn how to glass bed a Mauser service rifle. The rifle was inexpensively bought for that purpose and had been "well used". I hesitate to reveal the 4350 loads as I abandoned them before receiver bedding experimentation with 4831. 43 gr of IMR4350 showed signs of being a little hot with a 140 Nosler Partition. Again, the receiver only was bedded, the stepped barrel was drilled and tapped. Use the above info at your own peril.

 

[JohnKSa]

The ones I've shot were very accurate with the ammo they liked. I also picked ones that had really tight bores and almost no wear.

 

[Cliff Roberts]

@MutinousDoug gotcha! I appreciate that. I ended up devcon bedding the receiver and free floating the barrel. I tried removing some wood from the upper handguard to avoid contact with the barrel but ended up ditching it altogether to try to remove it from the equation. I've thought about getting another stock and bedding it all the way down to see what that does for the accuracy but haven't had the money or ambition as I've been working on other projects. (Finished building an m16 a2 and refurbishing an old eddystone 1917 - really proud of that one. Little brother really helped out on that one!!!)

I havent gone up past 41 gr with the H4350 (I dont know how H4350 compares to IMR4350) - Hornady manual says that's starting to get into unsafe pressures. Older speer manual has it up to 43.2 gr but I tend to find Speer to be a little hot for my liking. Would you be willing to reveal your preferred load with the 4831 with the 140 grainers?

@JohnKSa I don't suppose you have a measurement on that bore for a reference?

 

[JohnKSa]

Both of mine are marked by the armory as 6.49mm and appeared to have new (unfired) barrels on them when I bought them.

 

[mjsdwash]

the best thing to remember, on the internet, people interchange feet for yards.
1.5-2 "MOA" is a lot easier when your measuring 1/3.

That said, I would look to the stock interface to get groups as small as can be. With oversize bores, there isn't much to be done for the average person.

 

[troy fairweather]

Try a pressure point under the forend. A picture of the bedding would be nice, on mausers it important to have the bottom metal for to get best accuracy. Are you used to shooting mausers, I've seen guys not get a gun to group not being used to the lock time.

 

[Dave DeLaurant]

Can you borrow a bore scope? Check out the leade just forward of the chamber for erosion -- this is usually the first place where long use degrades accuracy. Also, how are the muzzle crowns?

 

[Hokkmike]

I have fired the Swede in several Winchesters, a 96, and 2 SAKOs. Accuracy has been outstanding for all with Norma factory ammo.

 

[JohnKSa]

Ammo makes a difference. I can't remember the details off the top of my head, but I remember one range session with three different types of ammo. The issue ammo would do close to an inch, one of the U.S. factory brands did between 2 & 3" and the other U.S. factory brand wouldn't shoot better than maybe 6". It was an eye opener for me.

 

[Speedo66]

Ammo makes a difference. I can't remember the details off the top of my head, but I remember one range session with three different types of ammo. The issue ammo would do close to an inch, one of the U.S. factory brands did between 2 & 3" and the other U.S. factory brand wouldn't shoot better than maybe 6". It was an eye opener for me.

When I had my Swedish rifle and short rifle I also found the inexpensive, at that time, Swedish military ammo to be very accurate.

OP, have you tried any?

 

[jdsingleshot]

I bedded the receiver and a couple of inches of the barrel at the breech on my 93s. Both shoot honest MOA. (Both have been rebarreled, one is 7x57 and one is .222 Rem. so perhaps it's irrelevant.)

 

[Demi-human]

I’m not a rifle maker or smith, please excuse this questions if they are foolish.
If the throat were worn and then a reamer used, would the chamber and throat still be concentric to the bore, or would it allow the reamer to wobble?
Do the bullets keyhole? I would think there’d be a lot of bullet skating missing the bore size by so much.
If they do obturate to the bore, do they do so in a concentric manner?

I would try bullets that are a better fit, perhaps those for a Carcano?
Is there a company that makes larger diameter bullets for European cartridges?

I don’t have answers for these questions, I just hope they help.

 

[Cliff Roberts]

Whew... there are a lot of responses since I've been away! I appreciate the interest and aid!

@JohnKSa that's a good tight bore! The only other 6.5 swede bores I have had the chance to slug are CZs, hence my asking. Knowing that older military mausers should be unlike the carcano let's me know that those bores should definitely be tighter.

@mjsdwash it's a lug and tang bedding job on the scout - I've done full beds but I despise them lol

@troy fairweather I've never tried pressure points on the barrel. Though, I've never fought this hard with a rifle, let alone two.

@Dave DeLaurant we've bore cam'd both. The new barrel on the dmr looks upshot- just oversized given @JohnKSa bore dia data. Old one doesn't look so shot out it would mess something up or we'd have set the barrel back and reamed it.

@Hokkmike I have t tried Norma in them. Hardware store only had S&B and there were a couple boxes of PPU in the estate that the scout came in. Ammo selection is scarce in the backwoods lol

@Speedo66 have not tried milsurp. Thought about getting a crate but got so frustrated with the rifles that I neglected it. I think, however, might not be a bad idea to get some and try it. If it's good, I can tear it apart and get some bullet and case fill data.

@Demi-human not foolish at all! I appreciate the input, fella! Most (well built) chamber reamers have a collet/bearing a couple inches ahead of the reamer to ensure that the reamer is concentric to the bore. With the barrel in the lathe, one would typically use some sort of pinning tool to check concentricity of the bore down the pin and then align that with the tailstock before attaching the floating reamer holder and starting to ream the chamber and the throat simultaneously. We did that on the 38 with the new barrel because the chamber was cut a couple thou too deep leading to headspace issues. It's honestly a pretty common procedure.

To your second point: that's what I thought! That's why I got the PPU .248 bullets! I haven't tried those with the h4350 tho... I should give that a shot...

 

[Slamfire]

I've tried to turn them into shooters but, no matter what I do, they just don't seem to want to play nice. Both of them are scoped (both vortex) have levels mouted to the scopes/rings, and are fairly consistent to each other (flinging lead pretty similarly when shot back to back) which makes me believe I'm doing something wrong. I hear guys, especially collectors (mausers are pretty popular in my neck of the woods), tell me that they're getting 1.5-2 moa fairly consistently out of a 96 with the odd lemon. I'm getting about 3-4moa between the two depending on the day and the load.

I would say most shooter fire a bunch of three shot groups, then take the best one out and claim their rifle shoots that all the time. They want their rifle to be accurate and they shoot enough targets that through statistical randomness they finally get the desired group. This is the texas sharpshooter fallacy.




I can say, the number of 1 MOA Garands, and sub MOA Garands reported on the web, actually exceed by orders of magnitude, the number that were actually built. If wishes were fishes, but then, shooters fill their boats with delusions.

I do not have the Swedish rifle specifications, so I don't know what was considered acceptable at the end of the production line. I will say of the military rifles I have owned, the Swedes shoot better than any of my 8 mm Mausers. But that might be due to the kick, a K98 steel buttplate hurts with 196 grain bullets! My most accurate service rifles have been the K31 Swiss.

It is safe to say that good military bolt guns will shoot 3 MOA with issue ammunition. Accuracy was just one of many criteria to be traded off against each other. @Hummer70 wrote a long post about US service rifle accuracy:

http://thefiringline.com/forums/showthread.php?p=5424409

Your test vehicle is likely to give different results because a bolt gun is a totally different animal than a gas gun. IF your rifle is set up right both lugs are contacting equally and the barrel may be contacting front of receiver 360° around and your bolt face may be square.

The M14 in issue condition is known as the worst performing rifle we ever fielded. I worked product engineering for the Army Small Cal Lab at Picatinny Arsenal and I had engineering responsibility for the M14 until the Chief transferred me to the Dover Devil MG project. While there my board was adjacent to Julio Savioli who was the draftsman for the M14 rifle and his name is on all the drawings for it. Al Cole was engineer in charge of the M14 and he was also a friend. Savy (as we called him) was a wealth of information on the M14 and had all kinds of stories about it as he not only did the drawings, he was in on the field testing.

First off consider the requirement facts from the engineering files from the government weapons production efforts.

1. acceptance accuracy for 1903 Springfield was 3" at 100 yards.
2. acceptance accuracy for M1 Garand was 5" at 100 yards.
3. acceptance accuracy for M14 was 5.5" at 100 yards and was waivered continually as it could not meet that.
4. acceptance accuracy for M16 series is 4.5" at 100 yards.

From SAAMI we have a recommendation of 3" at 100 yards and it is up to the vendor whether he wants to meet this or not.

H&R also made M14s and M1s and the contracts were shut down due to poor QA.

The M14 if rebuilt correctly and very few can do so is capable of acceptable accuracy. For instance the Army MTU rebuild program with rifle fired from machine rest was 10 shots in 4.5" at 300 yards. Some would go to 3" but rarely. A good bolt gun will shoot in 2" at 300 yards.

The TRW weapons were at one time thought to be good but MTU set up some exotic measurement fixture and figured out the threads in the receiver were not at right angle to the front of the receiver and from then on all their builds were on SA receivers.

If you will get a copy of Hinnant's book entitled "The Guide to Precision Rifle Barrel Fitting" you will read about a lot of the headaches manufacturers allow to get out the door even with bolt guns.

The out of square problems Bart refers to is really quite common in many vendors weapons. On a bolt gun these are easily corrected with a good lathe.

Check out http://www.bryantcustom.com/articles/true.htm which will give you a working knowledge of what has to be done to make a rifle shoot well.

These processes while they can be done on a M14 are problematical because if you chuck up a M14 receiver to square the front of the receiver and you take material off the front of it, that destroys the thread timing for the barrel.

Military rifles are set up to be rebuildable at depot by just taking off a tired barrel and replacing with new. The new barrels have the threads timed so that it will snug up right before 12:00 o'clock and the barrel can be torqued on. Thusly the interface of the receiver and barrel contact points is extremely critical and must be controlled to tight tolerances. If material is removed from front of receiver the replacement barrel will not contact the shoulder with enough "crush" to have the barrel "time up" at 12:00 o'clock.

Now with after market barrels you can square the receiver face and twick the barrel to get it to time at 12:00 a bit easier but squaring the threads is still problematical.

The 1903 and 03A3 rifles were built the same way and they too have thread alignment issues. For instance I had a barrel all threaded up for 03A3 and I had three actions with no barrels that had been squared. I screwed that barrel into one receiver and it contacted first a 4:00, the next one contacted at 9:00 and the third one contacted 360°. Which means the threads were out of square on the other two actions and on the money on the third one.

The M14 can have other problems wherein the bolt lugs don't bear equally.

A quick and dirty way to tell whether you have a problem is to examine your striker indent on a fired case. The ideal barrel to action set up is to have the bore center line of the barrel and the bore center line of the action in perfect alignment. If the barrel threads are out of square the line has a bend and it first shows up as off center striker hits. You will also find bolts with striker openings drill off center as well.

As Bart indicates you still have the problem of out of square case heads and bolt face out of square problems. If you will dig back about 1978 time frame there was a big article by a guy named Creighton Audette who did a lot of study on this and determined out of square case heads set up even more problems and if your bolt face is out of square, the threads are out of square and the bolt lugs don't contact evenly then you have compounded problems.

So basically while your rifle may shoot much better than others is it perhaps the fact is yours has a straighter bore/action centerline, lugs contact and bolt face is more square.

Case in point I had a new commercial rifle I got in 2005 and it shot horizontal groups that holes tended to touch or almost touch. I had a looksee at bolt lugs and bottom lug was not touching. I lapped in top lug and rifle started shooting round groups.

There are other problems to be experienced such as barrel is not properly stress relieved and starts to walk. Worst I ever had was a H&R breakdown rifle in 223. It consistantly shot a 3 shot group 1.5" wide and 10" high at 100. A call to H&R revealed they did not stress relieve barrels at all. They replaced barrel and it shot 2" at 100 in a round group.

The problem is finding factory ammo that shoots well in the first place as most factory ammo has cannelures which is a perfect thing to do to a bullet to destroy it's accuracy. Mass produced hunting bullets for the industry can be bested by using Sierra matchkings about 99% of the time so if you test hunting ammo and then handload Sierras your data will show handload is best but it is because of the quality of the projectile thus your data will be skewed.

This by no means is a complete list of problems that can be encountered and need to be overcome to achieve that one hole rifle. Bart has been around the block a few times and has experienced things 99.9% of others never dream about.

__________________
Distinguished Rifleman High Power & Smallbore Prone
President's Hundred (Rifle) US Palma Teams(2)
US Dewar Team (2),4 Man Natl.Champ Team

If your rifle shoots within 4 MOA, even after bedding, experimenting with various bullets and powders, then it is, what it is. You may have hit the barrel limit, there may be other issues that take micrometer's to discover. But the rifle may be simply one of the ones that still made spec, but shot on the large side.

This is mine, and with irons, that is a good group.







I installed a tall front sight, filed it down, so I still had the ability to go down in elevation when I had the rifle zero'd at 100 yards.

 

[Mauser fan]

I have a suspicion that there are couple of things going on here. OP are we still talking about two rifles or just one? In your first post you stated that the barrels were slugged and measured to .266 and .267. Even with those measurements you shouldn't be getting such an extreme deviation of accuracy .002 of an inch would be well within specification even for a 100 year old rifle barrel for example. Are they military stepped barrels or sporter barrels? What does the furniture look like? What about the muzzle crown? The slightest ding, burr or even pitting can have such an effect on accuracy. What does the bores look like? Are they dark? Even if they are dark they can still be accurate. You also said that your brother set the barrel back on one of them? Which one and what method did he use? A lathe or files for example? Either method is acceptable. You just have different variables to address in either method. What was the headspace issue that he was addressing when he was setting back the barrel? Too much? Not enough? What do the actions look like below the wood line? Some pictures would help.

If your accuracy is still an issue you could try and use cast bullets.

 

[Mauser fan]

I see that you answered in post #19 that a lathe was used. I was still typing when others responded before me.

 

[Cliff Roberts]

@Slamfire that's a lot of good information! I'mma take a closer read when I get back from the range

@Mauser fan still 2 guns. Both are demonstrating poor groups - that's why I thought it was an ammunition problem, hence the carcano bullets. Crowns are good - the scout has been recut since threading it. Vast majority of the work has been on the lathe and then files, deburring tools, and polishing compound for finishing. Dmr (m38) has the new barrel - sporter and tapered. Scout (m96 gustav) has a stepped barrel - original but cut down to 20 ish inches. Both receivers are clean, no excessive pitting. The dmr was cut a little too deep when I got it - we figured the previous smith was using original field gauges to measure which is something I've seen on CZs with replaced barrels that show excessivehead space (everybody and their brother does rifle work around here). We set the barrel back and used a combination of go-no go gauges and the S&B ammo for reference. It's about 2 thou off the low end now so it's a little tight but will reliably chamber the ppu & S&B. Harder push if the primers arent fully set on reloads (not uncommon but not unreasonable). Chamber is a little deeper on the scout but will not close on a no-go gauge so we decided not to mess with it. I actually thought about cast bullets but I don't have a huge amount of experience in that field. I cast for pistols and black powder so I've never done anything with gas checks or zink alloy casting. Never even powder coated before. Bit of a blind spot for me.

 

[mgmorden]

I had one that I couldn't get to shoot either. I love the 6.5x55 cartridge but the actual Swedish Mauser rifle isn't all that impressive to me.

 

[daniel craig]

I don't know about the MOA on my Huskvarna M38 but I can hit a 24" x 30" steel plate at 600 yards with the original sights so I am happy. It is a beautiful and smooth rifle. It has the plate on the stock from being through the government armory and also came out of a collection without many signs of being fired much.

I don't think I could even see a steel plate that size at that distance.