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Remove original rear sight when mounting scope on small ring Mauser?

partsproduction

Titanium
Joined
Aug 22, 2011
Location
Oregon coast
As mentioned earlier I have a Karl Gustav 6.5 x 55 Swedish Mauser I'd like to do some 300-800 yard target shooting with, as it is now set up as original military do I need to remove the rear sight? Apparently it is soft soldered on and to get it off people use a propane torch.
This has me wondering if the locking lug recesses behind the chamber could not easily be accidentally drawn down doing that.
According to one forum they originally used almost pure lead solder as opposed by 60/40 lead tin or whatever, and I recall that an alloy of lead and tin actually melts at a lower temperature than either pure lead or tin. Lead melts at 621.4 F, certainly hot enough to temper hardened steel.
So, 2 questions;
1. Is it advisable to fit a base that puts the scope high enough that there is no need to remove the rear sight? (This would also have the effect of leaving the rifle close to stock for others later) and;
2. Can the rear sight be removed without weakening the action, mechanically perhaps?
Thanks very much.
 
Very easy to move military mauser sights,a run over with a propane torch is enough....no need to heat the barrel ,let alone reciever.....The bolt handle is a forging job for specialist ,if perfection is required......best way for a amateur is to cut off and weld on a fancy Brownells one.The whole action is only case hardened (thinly),and a slight grind removes any case....We used to pack the whole bolt back inside and out with wet asbestos....probably not now.....The camtrack must not be softened.
 
1. Is it advisable to fit a base that puts the scope high enough that there is no need to remove the rear sight? (This would also have the effect of leaving the rifle close to stock for others later) and;

It need not be all that much "higher", it can be done, and I'd call it well worth looking into.

Case in point, my very different Savage 99DL and the B&L mount for its Balvar 8 Scope.

TWO advantages accrued.

First one is that it left fully-functional original sights so that if the scope is de-mounted, damaged, or simply not the best tool for the task at hand , one just moves the head a tad and uses the original sights.

Second, and not so obvious benefit was that for fast on-target, close-in defense, the scope base actually makes for a sort of overly large "peep sight". Certainly not a winner for punching-paper targets, but at least gets "the goods" a lot closer to a useful hit than just grabbing and guessing!

At 600 yds or so, KD range? Fun is the order of the day.

At 6 yards in desperation? Simply living to SEE another day or buying crucial time for a BETTER placed follow-up shot can have damned high value.

Yah just never really know in advance about such things.

Might as well get your money's worth, all counts.
 
I saw several nice looking Husqvarna bent bolts for Swedish Mausers, maybe they made them for sniper rifles?
Swedish Mauser Bent Handle Rifle Bolt Body NEW M96 M38 M94 6.5x55 Swede | eBay

I like the idea of setting it up higher, oh, and one mount specifically for the M96 mounts to the left side of the receiver and puts the center of the scope about 45 degrees above and to the left, for ejection clearance I suppose. And no tapping close to the chamber too. With that ugly setup there's no doubt about ejection either.
Thanks guys.
 
The M38 model short rifle made by Husqvarna in 1941-1945 have bent bolt handles.....very nicely done too,not just a bend like the K98ks .......headspace may be out with a new bolt .I see no reason to offset the scope...looks ugly to most.Ejection with a scope is never a problem with a Mauser...........be aware that some of the bolts off ebay seem to be slightly oversized.....whether that is intentional,or not is a matter of opinion.....But it means the bolt may need to be fitted ,by honing the front part of boltway.....or not.
 
I saw several nice looking Husqvarna bent bolts for Swedish Mausers, maybe they made them for sniper rifles?
Swedish Mauser Bent Handle Rifle Bolt Body NEW M96 M38 M94 6.5x55 Swede | eBay

I like the idea of setting it up higher, oh, and one mount specifically for the M96 mounts to the left side of the receiver and puts the center of the scope about 45 degrees above and to the left, for ejection clearance I suppose. And no tapping close to the chamber too. With that ugly setup there's no doubt about ejection either.
Thanks guys.

Being ambidextrous, I want mine right over the CL. And it is!
Also why it was a lever gun under it.

All the Mausers but one were Dad's. ISTR the mounts were Maynard P. Beuhler or Kuharsky Brothers, all for our other Balvar 8's and none of them at all offset.

"Been a while", but I thot it was Cowboy-Winchester lever-guns as needed the scope offset?

Don't those eject nearly vertically?
 
You should be able to drift out the cross pin and lift away the rear sight element, leaving just the base which will not be very high. Thus not needing to unsolder the sight base. There might even be a mount base that uses the left-over rear sight base as the front base for a scope mount.
 
Parts, you might give thought to permanently altering your rifle if it is all matching. You could use a scout type mount with a long eye relief scope that mounts to the original rear sight mount, no modification necessary. Or you can use a mount from these guys: https://www.accumounts.com/swedish-mauser.html which will give you the look of the original M41B sniper. You will need to modify the bolt handle however, but you don't have to remove anything. Jim
 
I did a number of scope conversions on the small ring Mausers, mostly Swedish and South American. The iron sights are easy to remove and in any case you need to some localized annealing on the receiver to do the drilling and tapping for the scope mount. The Swede is very hard case hardened and if not annealed difficult to tap even with carbide taps. I spot anneal just the screws area using a plasma needle welder. A small Oxy-Acetylene torch can be used as well. The bolt handle can be cut off, bent and welded at right angle, or a new handle made and welded if you want it a little longer. One needs to change the safety as it usually interferes with the scope. In the photos the Huskavarna bolt handle is the the original, bent and tig welded and the other (Chilean Mauser) it is custom made and welded. The safety is custom made from A2 steel.
Swedish-Mauser-2.jpg bolt3.jpg
 
Much to chew on here guys, thanks. I was hoping to put a scope with at least 12 power, actually wanted another big Vertex 24X but now I know it would cause problems (Using just the rear sight base).
I also found out the maker's correct name is Carl Gustafs instead of Karl Gustav, if it matters.

Bilsweig, in the past I've used a carbide spotting drill to get below the case, though I don't know how deep it is. I watched some videos and it looks like there is only enough room for about 4 threads over the chamber with 32 TPI.

The hardest tapping job I ever did was on a Ruger Mini-14 stainless receiver. I broke many taps before carefully grinding just shy of 1/2 of the threads off the tops of the peaks of a tap,turning it into a roughing tap, hard to believe but after that I only needed that and one regular bottoming tap to do the rest. Crazy, I know.
It sounds like the choice is either the short cut method of using the rear sight base , which appears to limit the scope to a long eye relief type, or going whole hog and altering many things. I'll ask my GS about scopes for the short cut mount first and go from there, he is awesomely helpful and generous with his time, Richard Coon's Guns of Tillamook Oregon.
 
Much to chew on here guys, thanks. I was hoping to put a scope with at least 12 power, actually wanted another big Vertex 24X but now I know it would cause problems (Using just the rear sight base).
Mum's memories of "Handsome Johnny" Unertl, a year or so ahead of her, same HS, and chased after by all the girls, had little to do with his going into the 'scope bizness! But.. his extreme magnifications - or even the 12-power - could well be overkill for no more reach than what your Mauser has.

Fellow who did my Savage, Balvar-8 mountup and initial zero-in summer of '61, a really interesting old guy with a really NEAT shop in Wilcox, PA, was firing Mauser-derived but hand-built actions in a whole different venue for HIS amusement. .220-K Swift, IIRC. 1000 yard benchrest.

There was a period of time mebbe a five-year run, where four out of five if not ALL five of the top bench rest slots listed "Bellows action" and Orren himself often as not behind the trigger of one of them.

Can't get that far with the chambering you have, and it would be a travesty to change it.

Same as Orren flat-out REFUSED to rechamber mine from .300 Savage to .308 Win after putting a full magazine plus one through near-as-dammit the same hole at the 150 yard zero-point we had asked him for [1].

Pure luck of the draw and the statistical drift of volume manufacturing done well. It was a rather ordinary 99DL lever-gun Dad had bought used. For all of fifty bucks! I suspect someone actually did us a favour to also take my "one and a half" M95 Steyr-Mannlicher's with the incompleted left-hand/right-hand bolt swap as trade-in. My amateur-hour gunsmithing was starting to worry Dad, the home-made nitrate explosives a few years earlier having got him spring-loaded into the paranoid position.

:)

[1] Terrain as it is, Appalachian game hunting, that era, the Savage, or Dad's choices, either one, were good from point-blank to about 220 yards or so with no need of worry about range when set up for 150 yards. Most kills were at well under 100 yards anyway, often under 50. It was a "too many trees" thing.
 
Carl Gustav s are quite soft,Husqvarna s are a much harder spec.....You will have no trouble drilling a Carl Gustav for mounts or tapping the holes....If you are going to drill,then also grind off the clip guide to simplify the mount....As to the bolt handle,the Husky handle is ok if you mount the scope medium height............incidentally,the Husky handle does not have enough clearance for the Swedish M41b sniper setup,they have a specially altered bolt.
 
his extreme magnifications - or even the 12-power - could well be overkill for no more reach than what your Mauser has.

Hathcock had a Unertl 12X scope that had a special mount to fit it to any Browning .50 BMG, with that he did his longest kill, was it 2000 yards? IIRC 12 power was pretty extreme back then, but now 24X and higher are common, and maybe just good for seeing the little holes in a distant target, even so I like lots of zoom.
 
Hathcock had a Unertl 12X scope that had a special mount to fit it to any Browning .50 BMG, with that he did his longest kill, was it 2000 yards? IIRC 12 power was pretty extreme back then, but now 24X and higher are common, and maybe just good for seeing the little holes in a distant target, even so I like lots of zoom.

Johnny was building THIRTY power onto tubes when I was still a pup, and I ain't young.

Problem with it came into my ken same summer that Savage was being done up. I was being taught to survey by a former ace, US C&GS, then Corps of Engineers master of it. Air isn't all the same temperature between transit and stadia rod. Some of it is always wanting to be somewhere else, so it is in motion. In surveying, there IS NO bullet trajectory even involved - that has its own issues.

But you do not GET a true line of sight inside the Earth's dynamic atmosphere. You must be alert, take multiple sights, and compensate.

Too much magnification, add tremors, Mark One brain has more to deal with, it slows you down.

Hathcock has had that to deal with as part of the job. Literally life and death, not just punching paper. Few others ever have that need. It is not exactly a large labour market, and we do not REALLY want it to become one.

If you plan to "go there" with punching paper, you still need a different rifle and cartridge.

Kinda comforting knowing you can do well, any firearm, but still. I don't THINK there is a sub-division for "best old Swedish Mauser" nor even "best hundred-plus year-old smokeless powder" in KD competition is there?

Chasing this s**t even for giggles can get silly expensive, after all..

Next thing yah know there ain't even money enough left for two full magazines for the 40 mm Bofors or enough four-deuce for a proper ranging salvo!

:)
 
I have removed the sight base on a Carl Gustaf as well as a Husqvarna. A good even heating with a propane torch, and a few sound taps with a drift slipped the base forward. Regards, Clark
 
Bilsweig, in the past I've used a carbide spotting drill to get below the case, though I don't know how deep it is. I watched some videos and it looks like there is only enough room for about 4 threads over the chamber with 32 TPI.

The hardness and thickness of the case hardening varies considerably with the many makes of the Mausers. I prefer not to spot drill as not to loose any material for the treads. And I do use HSS taps - carbide, as great as they are for hard stuff, are quite brittle and the last thing you want is a broken tap. The spot annealing works well and the plasma needle is so hot is just take a few seconds and the area around the flame is not affected. Old timers used an electric arc created by touching and withdrawing a sharpened graphite rod connected to a car battery. For more extensive work on the bolt or receiver (for example shortening or extending the action) I re case harden both. This case hardens the weld area and augments the original case on the rest (welding or any other application of high heat starves the steel surface from carbon)
 
I have not done this......never needed to......But,some of the spare Husky bolt bodies being sold now are a very tight fit/jam fit when tried in rifles...I can only assume they were purposely made oversize to reclaim worn guns.....by honing?
 








 
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