Nearly new Turk

[lar45]

I picked this up for parts for a project I've been working on, but now I'm wondering if I should leave it all together and cut on something more ugly?
http://www.lsstuff.com/howdah/pics/turk1938/turk-01.jpg
Whole rifle It's a long bugger with the 29.5" barrel
http://www.lsstuff.com/howdah/pics/turk1938/turk-02.jpg
Action. It has real nice deep blueing.
http://www.lsstuff.com/howdah/pics/turk1938/turk-03.jpg
Rear sight
http://www.lsstuff.com/howdah/pics/turk1938/turk-04.jpg
side view of the stock. It does have some dings and smudges, but looks pretty good. None of the numbers match on anything.
more pics in next post

[rocklock]

Wow...that's a good looking Turk!

If it were mine, I'd leave it alone and find one of the crappier ones to part out.

Some good information on these at the Turk Mauser website -

http://www.turkmauser.com/

[lar45]

http://www.lsstuff.com/howdah/pics/turk1938/turk-05.jpg
The butt has some smudges that will almost come off with a thumbnail, but is fairly nice looking wood. It's not all oil soaked like the first one I cut down.
http://www.lsstuff.com/howdah/pics/turk1938/turk-06.jpg
The wood to metal fit is terrible. You could hide a candy bar in their.
http://www.lsstuff.com/howdah/pics/turk1938/turk-07.jpg
A better picture of the action.
http://www.lsstuff.com/howdah/pics/turk1938/turk-08.jpg
The butt plate is scuffed from being set on something hard and the wood is chipped on top.

I was thinking of just takeing the wood and stuff off and putting it up on ebay as I just want the action, barrel and mag box. The barrel looks absolutey new on the inside. I don't know if my camera can take a pic of it.

I have no interest in keeping it stock. With no matching numbers would it be worth anything to a collector?

Thoughts?

[lar45]

http://www.lsstuff.com/howdah/pics/turk1938/turkcut-01.jpg
This started out as a Big-5 $59 special. I cut the barrel to 24" and crowned. I cut, welded, bent and ground the bolt handle myself. Then I drilled and tapped the reciever to put a 1 piece mount on. I had an old $39 Bushnell 3x9 sporter and plunked it on. I had to use high rings because I didn't get the bolt handle cut low enough and it wouldn't clear the scope. I cut the stock off then used the front piece of wood, cut a strip out of it to glue into the cleaning rod slot so the wood would match. I then cut it back at a slight backwards angle and sanded. I kept the stock steel buttplate as it's only an 8x57. I blued all the bare metal with Brownells 44-40. I like to take the extractor and ring off the bolt and blue them, then put back on the bare metal. I think it dresses it up some. Then some $3.99 sling swivels from Wally world and a sling from the used bin and I was ready to go. I have around $125 into it top to bottom.
The bore slugged huge. I don't remember, but was thinking maybe I could shoot 338 bullets through it.
I initially tried Speer 150, but got about 12" patterns at 25yds. I was going to scrap the barrel, but someone here, suggested trying a heavier/longer bullet first. I loaded some Speer 170's and it did the trick. It now shoots into .8" at 100yds going around 2600fps with 4064.

Now I is a certified Bubba.

[Buckshot]

................That's a good looking Turk. The stock is one of those issue replacement fat deals. The stock is like freshly off the duplicating machine and left big all over. Matching numbers on a Turk is pretty much a non-happening event. I don't think there is a lot of collector interest in the Turks other then it's being another Mauser varient.

I have heard of collectors paying some pretty desent money for an "Enfouser", or an early Mauser still in 7.65x53 vs 8x57. Pretty much what a collector does with the Turk is to collect one of each of the variations the Turks put out. The mentioned SMLE oddity the Enfouser, Turk marked M88, the 'Turked' M88/14/35, the 1890, 1893, 1903, 1905 carbine (scarce), 1938 Ankara, 1944, 1938/48, and Czech CZ contract rifles.

http://www.fototime.com/4081B75BF8E1589/standard.jpg
My humble collection. Top: M88/14/35, middle: M38 Imperial German action, lower middle: M1938/46 (TC, ASFA, Anakara), bottom: Bubba-ized M38 into a kind of a M1905.

BTW, the M88/14/35 IS all matching and in superb condition. It's a real shooting sonuvagun!

If your M1938 shoots, I'd leave it alone or sell it, if you have a C&R so it can be done without great expence. They USED to be $59 but I've seen them go for 3 times that.

....................Buckshot

[Ricochet]

Yeah, it's a nice looking one all right. I really like those things. I've got my $55 one with little bluing and a cosmoline-saturated "2x4" stock beside me now. Nothing matching is the usual condition they're found in. Doesn't really matter, but I did get crazy the other night and gave J&G Sales $85 for a "matching" one (likely bolt and receiver numbers matching), because that's so uncommon. (It's due here on the big brown truck Tuesday.) These so-called "M38" Turks (that's a designation made up by the importers) are sort of hybrids of local Turkish manufacture. It's argued and unknown for sure in the collector community whether the receivers were really made in Turkey or made and shipped surreptitiously to the Turks by the Germans, but local manufacture seems more plausible to me as they started making them after WWII had broken out. They're a standard length M98 action, with an extra flange on the front of the receiver ring to hold down the rear of the handguard as was done on the Turk M93s and M1903s. They can use bolts for the G98s and 98/22s that Turkey had lots of, but although they're large ring actions they're threaded for small ring barrel shanks so they can interchange barrels with the M93s and M1903s. That means they can also use barrels from M96 Swedes and Remington M700s. Some of the later ones are made from G98s, and a groove was turned into the front of the receiver ring to hold the handguard. They look like the "M38" Turks, but the receiver ring looks to be standard M98 length, rather than longer as on the Turk-made ones. Some say the handguard groove weakens the receiver. I don't know.

I love 'em in the original long infantry rifle configuration. I'd only build a sporter if I had a barreled action with no stock (and then I might ask around for a stock and hardware from someone who'd built a Bubba) or particularly if I had one with a totally trashed barrel and no hardware.

Speaking of cosmoline: On Christmas Eve as I opened up a cosmoline-glazed M1903 Turk, my teenage son said to his sister, "It smells like Dollywood!" They went on talking about the "mine" ride, where apparently the greasy machinery smelled like the greasy old Turk. Brought back happy memories for them, which never would've occurred to me.

Currently my Turk collection consists of a Czech-built M98/22 (of which only 60,000 were built, a shame so many have been cut up recently), this greasy old 1941 K. Kale "M38" beside me now, and the above-mentioned '03, with the matching "M38" on the way. I'd like to find an original M93 that's reasonable, but at the moment the importers don't have 'em. Haven't heard of any M90 Turk Mausers turning up. I've seen their 1930s refurbished G88s advertised as "M93s" by dealers that don't know the difference.

[Ricochet]

Oh yeah, having mentioned the 60,000 production figure for the M98/22 (nearly all of which ended up in Turkey), I might as well mention that the original production for the M1903 was about 200,000, many of which were lost in the Balkan Wars of 1912/13 and WWI, and the total production of the "m38s" is unknown but estimated around 200,000. Not commonplace rifles like G98s, K98s and Vz24s, which were built in far larger numbers.

An awful lot of the Germans' Gew88s and Gew98s ended up in Turkey after WWI. The Brits thought they'd cleverly demilled them by removing the bolts, but the Turks got the new Czech arsenal in Brno to make replacement bolts for them. Then the Turks bought all the 98/22s from the Czechs when they switched to the Vz23 and Vz24, and got 'em to make some more 98/22s for 'em on contract in the mid-'20s. That's how the Turks came to have a lot more rifles on hand chambered for 8x57 than for their standard 7.65x53, and so they converted all their older 7.65mm rifles to 8mm in the '30s. (And the G88s got new stocks with the metal barrel shrouds removed and new barrels, making a rather nice looking rifle.)

The Turks shot all of these things with their rather hot-loaded 8x57JS-type ammo.