8x57 Turk

[lar45]

Years ago I thought I'd try my hand at sporterizing a surplus Mauser. I found an 8x57 Turk real cheap. I cut the barrel to 24" and gave it an 11deg crown. I'm a big fan of Timney triggers, but the idea behind this one was to have a super inexpensive truck/loaner gun, so I welded on the trigger to convert it to a single stage vs two stage trigger. I only have $135 into it including a 3-9 Bushnell from the used box at the gunshop.
I cut down the Military stock, which looked okay, but found a stock that needed some work at a gunshop for $10. The stock has been sitting unused for about 15 years until I recently rediscovered it and decided to put it on. I had to do some minor inletting to get the bottom metal to fit.



When I initially fired it, I loaded some 150 Speer's and got about a 12" pattern at 25 yards. I slugged the barrel and was very surprised to find the groove measurement was .328". The rifling was very shallow also.


I was going to put a new barrel on it, but someone here suggested that I try a longer bullet. I loaded some 170 grain Speer's and was able to get around 1.5" groups at 100 yards.
I looked at the Hodgdon site and saw that CFE223 gave much higher velocity than with my old load of IMR 4064 that gave 2630ish.
Here's a target with 55gns of CFE223 and the 170 Speer going 2866fps.


The main group looks great, but the two higher holes sort of ruined an otherwise good group.

The inletting for the action was done kind of sloppily, not by me, so I mixed up some Devcon 10210 and glass bedded the action. It's had 2 days to cure, so I loaded up some more ammo and hopefully will have a chance to shoot it again today to see if it helped.

[Der Gebirgsjager]

I haven't enjoyed reading a thread as much as this one for a long time. It was also good for a few laughs, but happy chuckles, not derogatory. Those Turk rifles are really interesting. I was still in the gunsmithing business when they hit the market as surplus, and since they were basically a '98 Mauser and were really inexpensive, about $39 if I recall correctly, a friend and I bought at least 2 dozen of them. He (friend) just wanted the actions to build the custom sporters of his fantasies, so I picked through them all and saved the best. Another bonus was that as he stripped his down for his projects I got his cast off parts like barrel bands, hand guards, stocks, etc., and still have a couple of coffee cans full of the smaller parts. There was quite a spread in overall condition, and three of mine had really terrible stocks. I refinished them, but left them as full militaries, and probably still have 8-10 in the boxes as received from CAI. I never did sporterize one for myself, as I don't like to cut as-issued rifles down and am a bit of a military rifle fan; but I'll freely admit that there are enough Turks running around that sporterizing one isn't a severe blow to historical artifacts. I have made many sporters from other rifles that someone else had already altered and it wasn't practical to go back to original.

As for shooting them, most military Mauser rifles that I've inspected and/or own seem to have shallow rifling. But, as you found out, that's deceptive as to how well they can shoot. They do like longer, heavier bullets, and I've gotten my best results with bullets in the 192-200 gr. weight range.

I do like your Turk sporter very much, and one certainly can't complain about how it shoots. I especially enjoyed the part about where you got the stock, and being a bit of a woodworker myself I can appreciate the problems you encountered.

Good job.

[444ttd]

nice!!!!!!!!

i have a 98 mauser that was made in 1944. it was sporterized long ago but it has an old redfield aperture sight. it also had a an old bishop stock that was horrible (the stock had water damage, esp the barrel channel and the area of the guard screw set, it was black and split) so i got a left hand/right bolt wolverine stock(richards gunstock). i'm am in finishing process with linspeed oil. i was going to leave the trigger alone(it was 12lbs+/-) but i got a dayton trigger. i slugged the barrel, but i can't remember the inches (i "think" it was .3235", but i'm not sure) but i wrote it down.....somewhere. i'm going to try the karbiner lee moulds. it will be my "target" rifle, meaning paper, rocks, bottles, cans..........

[Oldfeller]

Check for RH and LH feeding issues with that Karabiner before making a OAL decision. You will wind up seating shorter than you think.

[lar45]

I didn't have time to reshoot it today after the glass bedding, hopefully tomorrow will have more time.
I did take a picture of the trigger modification.


I basically, took it apart, welded a booger on the bottom of the sear piece and filed it down a little at a time until the first and second stage lumps on the trigger were contacting and it still had pleanty of sear engagement surface left.
The trigger pull is just barely over 4#, but it is very smooth.