A buddy had this for a year, never shot it as he was afraid to shoot it, hear all the horror stories about headspace, blah blah. I ended up trading him two cheaper guns for it, that I have had for some time. The wood has some wear on it, but good solid shape overall. the receiver still has most of the case, blue is great on the barrel, and the best part, the bore is pristine. Bright and shiny, rifling edges still square and sharp. This is in original configuration. I had one about 25 years ago, same condition but bore was not as nice, but a hell of a shooter. I had heard all the stories about headspace etc, but I don't worry about that. In Precision Shooter, there are two very thorough articles, about shooting the 7MM Mauser in the rolling block. Since these authors are very aware and knowledgeable about all things concerning rollers, and have forgot more than I will ever know about ballistics, I tend to go with their information. According to them, the signs of headspace issue on fired brass, was caused by too long a leade in the throat, or too hard of a bullet jacket, such as cupro nickel jackets. I do know if there was any issue with the one I had, I never saw signs of it. I had came into possession of 1000rds of Kynoch cupro Nickel clad 150gr fmj ammo. I ran close to 600 rounds thru this rifle, with no issues, and several boxes of factory ammo. Some of us used to get together every Saturday morning, at daylight, and shoot till 9am, at least 3 weeks out of the month. A buddy had some property where we could shoot from 300 to 900 yds, at a cliff face that had a about a 28" indention, circle shaped right in the middle of it. We had two rests on sleds, that we could tow back and forth and shoot from 300 out. The indention had so much copper imbedded into it, it turned green from the oxidizing.
Anyway, there was also an in depth article in PS also, about shooting one of these rifles, with cast boolits from 100yds out to 1100ish yds. They seemed to have done their homework, and I should be able to hit the ground running when it comes to cast boolit load development. For the record, I plan on shooting some sedate loads up to about 3/4 of max with jacketed bullets. Hopefully I will be able to post pics by the time it gets here the first of January. Any of you guys that have had history shooting one of these, please chime in and share your experience.