Barrel removal..

[AllenH59]

About 10 years ago I built a barrel vise and an action wrench to remove mauser barrels. For the first time in years I removed the barrel from an action, this was a 1912 mauser, which is a 98 mauser made for Chile by Steyr in Austria. It never ceases to amaze me how tight a barrel can be. I am putting a picatinny rail on it, as my eyes do not work so well with iron sights anymore. I just removed the barrel to reduce the chance of drilling into it. I will be putting it back on. Then I will have a scoped 7x57 with a 29 " barrel. I will put a bit of effort into making it shoot well. If it does not it will get a new barrel.

[knifemaker3]

Hope you remembered to make a witness mark so you don’t loose headspace. Don’t ask how I know!

[David2011]

Yeah, in our gunsmithing class the 4 bolts in a Brownell’s barrel vise finally stripped out from removing the barrels from 98 actions. They’re really snug and they probably all had corrosive ammunition used in them. The entire curriculum was based on building a modern rifle on a Mauser action so that vise saw a lot of them. Even after soaking in Kroil we “nudged” the barrel wrench with a full swing of a piece of 2” hex stock about 16” long. The handle had to be welded back onto the wrench a couple of times. Body weight on the barrel wrench did nothing.