Thread: For rifle aficionados

Originally Posted by JDM61

Funny you should mention that. As a former artilleryman, I read up on such things on occasion. I read an article once talking about the German tendency to overengineer stuff. They compared the WW2 vintage German 105mm howitzer with the comparable American one, the legendary old M2/M101 which was used by the US Army up though Vietnam. They had almost identical performance, but the German gun had TWICE as many parts. I used to have an old post merger DWM stamped 1909 Argentine Mauser which is considered by many to be the finest military Mauser ever built, comparable to the high end civilian magnum actions made for super expensive hunting rifles. It is a piece of the machinist's art and well favored by custom rifle makers to this day. I read an article that said if you tried to build it in the same manner and to the same level of fit and finish today, it could cost as much as $4000 just to build the action!!!!! That was for an export rifle!!!!

Yes, apparently they had never heard of KISS. For military purposes such over engineering can be and was a drawback in a lot of cases. Oth for consumer products it is a selling point in most cases.

Bob

Originally Posted by BobH

Yes, apparently they had never heard of KISS. For military purposes such over engineering can be and was a drawback in a lot of cases. Oth for consumer products it is a selling point in most cases.

Bob

A perfect example of kiss is the AK 47,cheap,easy, simple.Is a reason there are an estimated 100 Million AKs in the world to day.
(a great read if interested,Simply called AK)

The one rifle that matched those production numbers and may have exceeded them were the variants of the 1898 Mauser, which as previously stated, oft times was not simple or and rarely if ever crude ro cheap, but just damn good!!!!! Folks still pay a premium for a Mauser type sporting action to they day.

Originally Posted by pixelfixed

A perfect example of kiss is the AK 47,cheap,easy, simple.Is a reason there are an estimated 100 Million AKs in the world to day.
(a great read if interested,Simply called AK)

Originally Posted by JDM61

The one rifle that matched those production numbers and may have exceeded them were the variants of the 1898 Mauser, which as previously stated, oft times was not simple or and rarely if ever crude ro cheap, but just damn good!!!!! Folks still pay a premium for a Mauser type sporting action to they day.

Back in the day my Dad was a very accomplished Gunsmith here in the bay Area,In the late 1950s you could buy 98s at the emporeum,15 bux ea,They had barrels of them,he would buy 10 at a time and build some killer customs

Some of the nicest made commercial 98 sporter rifles I have seen were made by Brno in the late 1940s through the early 1960s. Their small ring 98s were just sweet and the large ring 98 ZG model was top notch too.

Bob

In the late 80's, some import company got hold of big bunch of WW1 vintage 1909 DWM Argentine Mausers in the Belgian 7.65 x 53 mm. A lot of them were still in the cosmoline!!!!! You can't do a straight sporterizing job like you could with the 7mm and 7.92 rifles because the ammo was kind of scarce and expensive (Norma stuff mostly) but suffice to say that a goodly number of custom rifle makers were overjoyed.