Stock for a Mauser 98
Grubby--Best answer, "It depends." I've had good results dealing with Boyd's Stocks, and I can recommend them.
www.boydsgunstocks.com Phone 605-996-5011. Their 'phone people are very good with advice and holding the hand of a nervous first-time stock finisher. You can get a varnished and finished walnut stock for a K 98 for well below your $300 limit, if you want to accept Boyd's shaping. Frankly, there are bunches of retro parts available for a K 98.
If you want to do a bit of creative work on your own with the stock, get a Boyd's "unfinished" (that is, not varnished, not finish-sanded) stock. It'll still fit your rifle with VERY little dremel work on your part, if any. But then you can glass-bed your action, and make any small changes in the stock you want, before doing the finish work. Costs less from Boyd's, too. This is the route I recommend.
Now, you can do it like Velocette did, and I admit that his wood looks better than mine, and his finish job is much finer. But frankly I haven't got that kind of patience. Nor finishing experience. And the Boyd's walnut will be plain, not tiger-striped. You PAY for that...
You'll have to sand and sand and sand the darn thing--that is the most tedious part of any woodworking project. Then you dremel in a couple of notches to help hold the bedding compound, apply the release compound to the rifle bbl and action (do NOT stint on the release compound!!) mix up the bedding compound and apply it, push the bbl/action into the bedding compound, carefully scrape off any that oozes out, clamp the whole thing together and let the bedding compound set. For a clamp I just wound a length of surgical tubing around the stock and rifle action, tucked the ends under the tubing, and that was that.
Then you varnish the stock. Boyd's sells kits for all of this, but I bought a bedding kit from Midway IIRC, and used local hardware-store sandpaper and spray-can satin spar varnish. Hung the stock by a wire on the clothesline. Sprayed it all over. Let varnish set. Sanded it all off. Repeat. Sand off a little less each time. After I think 5 coats, I called myself done. Could have done one more coat just for pretty.
Total work time: Fitting rifle to stock, say 1 hour. Prepping interior for bedding, 1/2 hour tops. Sanding, probably 4-5 hours, stretched over 3 days. Doing the actual bedding, say 1 hour. Spraying stock and varnish-sanding, say 1/2 hour per coat, with a day in between each for drying. So, 10 or so hours, not counting drying and setting times, stretched over maybe 2 weeks. Not painful at all.
Results: My rifle looks beautiful; it's a Yugo Mauser M-48 with a scout 'scope, fits me perfectly, and incidentally, my budget for the whole project was still
'way under your $300 limit. (The 'scope and its mount is not included in this--Mount was mebbe $50, and I went with a Leupold scout 'scope which set me back another $300 or so IIRC. There are cheaper scout 'scopes to be had. You do want a solid mount, not a cheapie.
