I have a nice 98 mauser action (no barrel) and a new 8mm stepped military barrel that I want to install on it. The barrel is one of the ones made in the 50's? and is brand new, not a take-off barrel. I plan on putting on a Lyman peep sight that I already have and making a no-nonsense iron sighted hunting rifle. I've done some google searches, but all the info. I find is on the difficulty with removing mauser barrels and reaming short chambered barrels.
My question is, since I do NOT have to remove the original barrel and just need to install this "long" chambered barrel, do I really need a barrel vise and action wrench to install it? I have seen a few discussions where you only need 50 - 75 ft. lb.s of torque on the new barrel, if so, couldn't I use a standard bench vise and some sort of strap wrench or something to install the barrel with that amount of torque?
I can screw the barrel on by hand so its snug on the inner torque ring and a FL sized case chambers easily and one fired in my Yugo 24/47 chambers with just a slight amount of resistance, not much, just enough that you can feel a tiny bit of "drag" on the last little bit bolt rotation. So it seems to me, all I have to do is install the barrel to that amount of torque and check it with a No-Go guage?