Lately this has turned into my primary rifle, and I continue to make adjustments and improvements. See my weblog for details.
I have won an award in competition with this rifle.
Lately this has turned into my primary rifle, and I continue to make adjustments and improvements. See my weblog for details.
I have five of these at the time of this writing. If the price stays low I may very well acquire even more. As many as four are not "shooters", though three of those could be; one just barely fails headspace. I bought most of them for their quality Czech large-ring '98 Mauser actions, on which to build or have built custom rifles in the future. On the fifth rifle, with the best bore of the five, I have installed Mojo Phase III dual-aperture sights, and I like them.
This is a Czech copy of the immortal Mauser bolt action of 1898. It is chambered for 7.92x57mm, the standard German service cartridge in both World Wars and plenty powerful by today's standards.
This is generally considered the best bolt-action rifle ever mass-produced - and when I say "mass" I mean tens, if not hundreds, of millions, worldwide, throughout the first half of the 20th Century. The Mauser bolt action, starting in 1891 if not earlier, influenced rifle designs worldwide with its two big locking lugs up front, its spring-clip speed loading, its generally beefy construction, and numerous other features. Most modern civilian hunting rifles - Winchester's M70, Remington's M700, Ruger's M77, Savage's 110 - copy the Mauser in at least some way.
Everybody, near enough, used a Mauser at one time or another - the list of countries that licensed or contracted Mauser production, or simply infringed on Mauser's patent (that would be us, with the '03 Springfield), is too much trouble for me to compile here. In what I consider a case of poetic justice, Israel's fledgling Defense Force bought piles of surplus German (and other) Mausers, some possibly made with concentration-camp slave labor, rebarreled them to 7.62x51mm NATO and used them to maintain their sovereignty.
The Czech Republic, formerly Czechoslovakia, has at least a century-old tradition of making very high-quality weapons, particularly small arms (the CZ75 pistol, for example; also, the British BREN light machinegun of World War Two was little changed from an otherwise-obscure Czech design, smuggled to the Allies past Nazi occupiers). See my weblog's September 2002 section for a detailed description of this rifle.
I added the usual Uncle Mike's slip-on recoil pad and Ace Case ten-place cartridge carrier on the butt, but these altered the stock geometry to the point it smacked me in the cheek on recoil, and having finally developed a tolerance for this level of recoil otherwise, I took them off. Also I've removed the side-mounted sling swivel from behind the pistol grip, as that was smacking me in the lips when firing prone. I've discovered that the USGI M16 sling, 1-1/4" black nylon, available at gun shows for $4 or so, fits most of these old bolt-actions nicely, and for a lot less than commercial production. I hope to add, or have professionally added, a Williams or similar aperture rear sight, mounted on the receiver. I found a nice old Redfield with target knobs for $50 at a show but haven't had it installed yet. The Mojo sights are working well in the meantime, I'll save that Redfield for another project.
The VZ24 is the standard-size Mauser action, with all important dimensions the same as the German, so all the lovely aftermarket goodies will fit, and there's plenty to choose from. Thinking ahead to converting the other specimens, the stock and handguard will probably work fine the way they are - I certainly want to keep the bayonet lug - but after I get the new rear sight I'll probably want a new front sight, and there's piles of other little things, inside and out, to play with. I'll likely have the bolt handle turned down, American fashion, but after wrestling with the Mosin for several weekends in a row it doesn't seem so important for the smooth Mauser. The real point of converting the Mauser would be to install a new barrel in a more desirable caliber, particularly .308 Winchester, which is mostly interchangeable with 7.62x51mm NATO, which is available cheap, in bulk, as military surplus. A softer-kicking .243 for deer might be quite nice, and there's always the .30-06, which will do nearly anything most folks would ever require of a rifle.
UPDATE: In July 2007, faced with a financial crisis, I liquidated the other four VZs, though I'm keeping the customized fifth.
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