Most abused surplus arms encountered

[Gil Martin]

I know you good folks look over the used gun racks and am curious regarding your experiences. What are the most abused surplus arms you have ever seen? Several come to mind that really gagged me. The first was an absolutely mint FN1949 Eqyptian 8mm that sat in a local shop for months. The price was right, but since I had several I passed on it. Someone bought it and a month or two later it was back in the same shop. The previous owner ran a few hundred rounds of corrosive ammo through it and did not own a cleaning rod. The bore was black and badly pitted. Someone finally bought it.

Another case involved a nice 1898 Krag and an 1896 Swedish Mauser that had the barrels cut at 18 inches on a metal cutting band saw. I bought the Krag for next to nothing and salvaged the action. My twin brother had it rebarreled and uses it today. Another chap bought the Swede for the action.

Finally, there was a Model 99 Japanese 7.7mm rifle that had the stock tortured on a disc sander. The former owner wanted to test fire his "sporter" and bought a box of commercial 8mm Mauser ammo. He traded the rifle and a half box of 8mm ammo. Surprisingly, the Jap rifle fired the Mauser ammo without coming apart. All the best...
Gil

[DogYeller]

I bought a TC Hawken with a plugged barrel about 15 years ago. I finally got around to messing with it a few mo's later and it was still loaded; ball, powder,ball, powder, ball, ball, poly-patch. It still shot as good as a new rifle.

[Adam Helmer]

Gil,

Good post; a few examples come to mind. When I lived in NH, I used to hunt deer in the northern section of the White Mountain National forest out of a camp with other guys. On the wall of the camp was a 98 Mauser one of the hunters found in the woods way up on Deer Mountain. Apparently 15 or 20 years before a hunter got lost and panicked and ran out of the woods without the rifle. The rifle was still loaded and the safety was on. It was a rusty hunk of junk.

A fellow nearby ran an ad in the paper saying he had "Army Guns" for sale so I went to take a look. On his dining room rug were about 20 rifles lying in a heap; all were rusty, the stocks were black with grime and the bores were solid rust. He advised me he shot most of them, but did not own a "gun cleaner." He had inheirited the arms from his uncle, a WWII veteran who brought most back from the war. I passed on all of them.

Adam

[buckhunter]

Some of the worst gun abuse I have ever seen comes from a few of my friends. They clean them Sometimes . Most shoot auto and when the fail to cycle they always wonder why. They put them away wet without wiping them down. Mine never fails. They just don't understand.

[Adam Helmer]

buckhunter,

You hit the nail on the head; some of my local gun club members abuse their guns on every trip to the range. Yesterday, I was at the range shooting a few muskets and some military arms I bought in excellent condition in the 1960s and I always transport all arms in gun cases. Well into the parking lot comes two guys. They open the car trunk and pull out 6 or 8 guns tossed therein like cordwood with the spare tire, jack and tire chains. As they passed my bench carrying their "shop worn" arms, one guy looked at my T/C Hawken .50 caliber and commented, "Did you just get this here gun?" I said, "No, I have had that rifle for 30 years." The guy was stunned and commented, "Why that would pass for new." I asked him if he owned a gun case and he said, "Nah, these are huntin' guns." Nuff said!

Adam

[jl1966]

I always think it is kind of funny when someone sees one of my guns and say's "man, you havent used this one much", and I have had the gun for twenty years, hunted almost exclusively with it, and killed a pile of game. I was taught by my dad, a WW2 veteran, and someone who had lived through the depression, to take care of what I had. His thought was " you might not get another one". Cleaning your gun was just part of the days hunting chores. I also have friends who engage in backyard gunsmithing. One has a swedish mauser that he sanded, cut down and refinished the stock on. It was a real pretty job. Then he decided to make it into a varmint rifle. He was short on cash, tried to drill it for a scope on his drill press, got the holes off center, tried to JB weld one and redrill it, messed that up. Then ground the bolt handle to clear the scope. It is a shame what he did to that rifle.

[Gil Martin]

I forget to mention a Krag carbine that I bought that had been sporterized. The gun was in excellent condition. When I removed the scope base for the side mount I found seven (7) holes that had been drilled in the receiver to get the base positioned correctly. The drill operator managed to put a few holes through the serial number. Oh well. All the best...
Gil

[Adirondacks]

That would be my nef handi rifle.
Actually I take good care of all my guns except that
one. It shoots good still, but the stock is a mass of dings and
scratches. The barrel and reciever is equally abused. I've
dragged it up so many hillsides and sat stand with it in so
many rain storms that lets just say "it has character".
Hey I bought it for this treatment.

Another would be my old beater. A savage model 10 243 that
I got from someone for $150 who didn't like the 243 for deer.
Hint: don't ever try to do custom stock carving using a buck knife
while you sit deer stand. I had a lovely mural that was
supposed to be a guy shooting a deer but acually looks like
a monkey sticking a baseball bat up a cow's a**.

I restocked and rebarreled it to 7mm-08 and it shoots and
looks great.

[GoodOlBoy]

I spotted a 03 a few years back somebody had tossed a cheapo plastic sporter stock on it, and had chopped the barrel to make a carbine (Pawn shop owner said brush gun, el same same) They had literaly used a hacksaw to cut the barrel down. The thing was covered in pits and rust. They had put this gaudy chinese superhuge scope on top of it.

Broke my heart, but I was not about to buy it.

GoodOlBoy

[Mr. 16 gauge]

Worst peice of abuse I ever saw was on a surplus "Turkish" mauser that I bought when I was 17; I still haven't figured out if it was a '93 or a '95, but the thing shot patterns that would do my 870 proud! The bore was so rusty and pitted that it would barely pass as a water pipe (and that is all it was good for). Whoever did the rechambering job (from 7.65 Argentine (I'm guessing) to 8x57 didn't do to great a job....the cases were always cracked when I extracted them. The front sight would turn 15 degrees to the left and 10 degrees to the right, and when I pulled the barreled action from the stock, about half the Sahara desert fell out of that gun stock!

I ended up using that rifle to "practice" my gunsmithing skills!

[Mad Reloader]

Based on my many many years of perusing gunshops and pawnshops and gunshows, IMHO it's the 1893 Mauser that has suffered the most abuse and butchery.

I swear, almost EVERY hole in the wall gunshop or pawnbroker I've been to over the past...geological epoch!...has had a minimum of ONE skanked-up 1893 Mauser.

The fact that for a good stretch (1968-late 1980's) twas 1893 Mausers that were pert near the ONLY rifles one could mail-order sans FFL you could actually get ammunition for was the major contributing factor to this ongoing butchery. The old armories running out of these antiques in the 1990's was the only thing that slowed down this carnage.

(pre WW2, think it was the Krags that took the title, during the 1945-1968 epoch anything that came down the pike was fair game...I think now the title will go over to SKS's and to Mosin-Nagants, shipping containers full of these arms are coming out of the former ComBloc, awaiting the basement bomber gunsmith....)

[Jack]

Ah, Thee Olden Days
Gotta agree, MR, you did see 93's all over the place way back when. You used to see a ton of 03's and 1917 Enfields around, too- in all states, from 'as issued' to 'hey, I bet I can make.......'

[Mad Reloader]

Now, since the M-1917, and its immediate antecedent, the Pattern 1914 in .303...were the ancestral designs to the Remington Model 30 & 30S, a number of folks just after WW2 decided to rework their surplus arms into "reverse-engineered" :roll: Model 30 wannabees. (This usually involved cutting off the rear sight ears for starters)

Also--and especially in the New England to upper Midatlantic states, the M-1903 action was highly prized for making into a sporter, anywhere from a custom jobber to a minimalist chop job, so there went a number of the others!

That practice pert near died off somewhere between 1969-1979 or thereabouts, as the stocks of surplus M-1903's stateside dried up, likewise M-1917's.

Since numerous 1893 and 1895 Mauser rifles qualified under the GCA-68 provision for "pre-1898" manufacture, depredations there went unabated until stockpiles of those finally vanished in the 1990's.

Another one that was popular for conversion work during the timespan of about 1975-1985 was the "Siamese Mauser" in either 8x52R or 8x50R. A loophole in GCA-68 allowed these post-1898 arms to be sold sans FFL due to the fact that ammunition was completely unavailable for years. Twas very popular during that aforementioned approx 10-year stretch to rebarrel the things to .45-70, as the 8x52R bolt face was already pretty close to the .45-70 dimensionally, then all one needed to do was to get a sporter stock made for it (original mil stocks could not accommodate the .45-70 barrels being sold, from what I saw of them), discard the tang coming off the trigger guard, and have sights installed...Strangely, unmodified Siamese Mausers are scarce, and no-one seems to be willing to part with their .45-70 conversions, as I've only seen ONE offered for sale from the mid-1980's to the present day!

SMLE rifles tended to be a bit more immune to the basement bomber treatment, as the 2-piece arrangement for the stocks tended to be baffling to the amateur gunsmith crowd. A cutdown forend, discarded handguards, was about as far as they went. "Factory" sporterized Enfield halfstocks , such as was made for a number of years by Springfield Sporters of Penn Run, PA may also account for a number of those.

Seems a couple of Arsenals have in recent years decided to "cut to the chase" and produce a sporterized version of a mil rifle straight from the factory. Charles Daly is bringing in Zastava arsenal M-1948 Mauser sporters with Timney-type triggers already fitted from Serbia-Montenegro, calibres ranging from .22 Hornet on up -- and good old Ishapore in "Mother India" some SMLE-based sporters, like the "Quest II" in .308 Win stocked a lot like a #5 Mk. 1 "Jungle Carbine", or for the true masochists: a .45-70 SMLE sporter rifle of similar configuration!

{I would have gone with .444 Marlin, as the SMLE bolt head was already configuired for same, but from what I've picked up from HC's India hands (Lynx and Rustam Bana) and also from some South Asian emigres I've met stateside, QC issues about "Ishapore" marked arms..especially those with typos!*...may have influenced the lower-pressured chambering choice.}

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*If you encounter what's supposed to be an India arsenal weapon and there are numerous typographical errors, odds are you have a Kohat Pass or Darra Adam Khel made Pathan Gunsmith knockoff from Northern Pakistan! A number of Martini-Enfields have just shown up that are probably of this ilk. Fair warning.

[Jack]

MR, I remember those Siamese Mausers. I saw a few that had been converted to 12 gauge shotgun.
Remember, too, that during the 40's and 50's, Springfields and Enfields were available cheap thru DCM, as well as other surplus outlets. M-1 carbines, too.
Not to mention all the 98's and Arisakas that came home in duffle bags.....
And Carcanos...at one time- I'd guess late 50's-early 60's, you couldn't give away all the Carcanos floating around.
Or selling for 12.88$ with scope

[Cal Sibley]

I think that generally speaking the German M98 mausers I've encountered have been in the worse shape of rifles that were widely used. It's a great rifle, but many of them were used through 2 world wars and not always in winning situations. I've seen the occasional one in great shape, but they are few and far between. By necessity the Germans were very hard on their military firearms. Just one mans opinion. Best wishes.

Cal - Montreal