I wanted to preserve all the engraving detail on the action of my rifle..i.e. on top at the front & the manufacturer on the side, so prefer not to fit a claw mount located at the top front of action. Same goes for the sidemount, which also requires some cut-away of the stock in order to fit.
The answer appeared to be by way of a barrel ring soldered in front of the action...:
But taking the exact measurement of the S&B scope and distance between the angles of eyepiece & objective lens..

1. The tube is not long enough to reach the distance so I cannot use 30mm rings
2. The Objective lens angle is too long so an objective lens ring cannot be used either.

So unless some form of reverse direction mount is available I cannot fit 30mm rings to the tube
and if I locate an objective ring at the front (rearmost point of objective lens), the eye relief is completely wrong.

The only alternative is to do exactly what I don't want to do - to fit a claw mount at the top of the action front - over the engraved Mannlicher Schonauer and Model number engraving.
Unless someone out there knows different.
Cheers, deeangeo