Gentlemen;
My son bought one of the M48s that have recently appeared on the surplus market. He brought it home from where he is stationed and left it with me, saying that he couldn't figure out how to dis-assemble it.
Indeed - when I tried later on it was really troublesome. It turned out that the upper and lower bands had to be removed in what I thought was reverse order - that is the lower band had to come off first. Once the barreled action was out of the wood I found that the trigger guard/magazine wouldn't come out of the wood at all. I was finally reduced to my 2 pound hammer and copper "beater" before it came off. But it had been in so tight that a chip of the stock came with it. Yuck.
Well, I took everything to pieces, digging out cosmoline down to the last little screw. Then I re-assembled it and waited until he returned home on Christmas leave.
He brought 100 8x57 new made-in-Serbia cases and a set of LEE dies with him. ~ We loaded them up with SAECO 62081, Lyman 321297 and the 243 grain LEE "8mm Max".
The rifle didn't shoot well with any load. Just light experimental stuff that had proven accurate in previous 8mm shooting. I could see that it 'wanted' to shoot since now and then a semi-visible group formed before being spoiled by flyers.
My son was deeply disappointed.. I knew we had only begun to shoot.
I recommended that we toss the wood and start fresh with a commercial wooden or composite stock. He wouldn't have any of it - he wanted to preserve the 'piece of history' that it represented. ~ But he did go so far as to allow me to install a nice old Lyman 48 receiver sight and one of my home-made Mauser blade front sights.
In process of this work I first thought I'd epoxy bed the rifle. But I thought it over and realized that all that wood it carried would most likely neutralize anything good I might accomplish by doing so. Instead I went to inspecting the fit more carefully.
My! I soon found why it didn't shoot: There was a 0.030 gap between the stock's steel through-bolt and the receiver's recoil lug! No wonder!
But, I still didn't like the idea of messing round with epoxy in this situation so I carefully measured the gap by using number drills and feeling up through the front screw hole of the stock where I could get at the gap. Then once I had the gap measured I made up a steel shim of 0.002 greater thickness than my measured gap so it would all fit together tightly and reassembled the whole works..
This worked. The rifle now shoots as well or a little better than the usual as-issued military rifle does. That is about 5x2.000 groups.
My son now has his 'piece of history" and it even shoots fairly well.
Forrest