Tuesday, May 09, 2006

Boomsticks: Light rifles...

Josh at South Park Pundit wants to build himself a Scout Rifle. The urge is understandable: A light, fast-handling rifle in a do-it-all caliber is a wonderful thing to have.

Alston has a scout rifle that Bob the gunsmith built. It's a slim little wand of a .308, built on a Remington 600 action, and it handles and points more like a .22 than a bolt-action medium bore centerfire.

Myself, I've fallen in love with early Mauser cavalry and engineer carbines. I have a little Chilean DWM M95 carbine in 7mm Mauser that, despite being a bit on the chunky side for a Scout at 7.5 pounds, is a well-balanced little rifle whose barely three-foot length belies its weight. I think if I was going to make a personal Scout, I'd go for an older small-ring Mauser action and chamber it in .275 Rigby, because I love Mausers. I'd also probably cheat on the weight requirement by going with a Mannlicher stock, because life is too short to own ugly guns. :)

10 comments:

AnarchAngel said...

For a while I was trying to get one of the Tristar arms imported australian enfields in .308 to make into my light/scout rifle project.

Unfortnuately the Aussie company making them nearly doubled their prices, so tristar and Sabre stopped importing them.

I'm not sure what I'm going to use as the basis for it now; but I still plan on doing a scout rifle. Maybe pick up a beat to hell 98k with no collector value left, and build from the ground up.

Really any solid action will do I suppose, but you can still pick up a cosmetically junk 98k for a reasonable price.

A half decent composite stock, harris bipod, mojo sight, a burris or leupold LER scope (say a fixed 6x40), a good three position sling, a shillen .308 barrel, a timney trigger, and a trip to Robar later; and you've STILL spent less money than a comparable brand new rifle, and you're getting EXACTLY what you want.

Anonymous said...

Kevin Brittngham of AAC has a neat Rem 600 action (see my "site" link) which would be nice for a walk-about rifle...even if it isn't a scout. I wonder why I hear so little about Remington 600 vs. the more common 700.

Anonymous said...

Link did not work. See http://olegvolk.net/gallery/technology/arms/rem600_UY9O8971.jpg.html

theirritablearchitect said...

I became enamored with this concept after my wife bought me The Art of the Rifle by Cooper, wherin he describes its attributes and utility in the field. It had never occured to me that the guns I had been taking afield were meerly adequate, and upon reading his wonderful accounts of the "shootability" of his first scout, on a Sako action, I convinced myself that I needed to build one.

Much thinking and parts tracking later, I gave up in disgust, as it was already turning into a colossal pooch-screw with coordination of action, barrel, mount, clip conversion...you know the drill. Seems like a lot of fun on paper, but I cut my losses and just bought the next best thing, Steyr SS Mountain Rifle and topped it with a Leupold Vari-XIII.

Hope Josh will let us all know how it turns out.

Anonymous said...

The G33/40 Mauser action makes a fine little custom rifle. Highly recommended.

The little sliver of a hang nail they try to pass off as an extractor is a very weak link on any Remington action, whether 600 or 700.

Get your Winchester M70 Featherweight while you still can!

Anonymous said...

Oleg's Link

Let's see if Oleg's link will work now...

Tam said...

" The G33/40 Mauser action makes a fine little custom rifle. Highly recommended."

You could buy a pretty nice factory scout for the going price for an un-bubba-ized G33/40. Besides, if the Cruffler community caught somebody carving on one, they'd throw a lynchin' bee, and I'd hold the torch. ;)

Anonymous said...

Ahh! A purist.
Very well,.....but there are no nice factory Scouts! :)

Kevin said...

I've got a 48 Yugo Mauser I'm (excruciatingly slowly) working on making a scout-style rifle. It will be overweight (so am I), but since it's chambered for the manly 8x57, the extra weight will be useful. Wood stock, too, not composite. It was hard enough finding a wood stock for the 48's oddball dimensions.

Anonymous said...

Oh, this is going to be fun. In the process of researching this build project, I keep coming up with idea, making concessions and attempting to stay as close to Cooper's vision as possible while maintaining a semblence of a budget. It will be fun, to be sure.