Hello Oz

I've built three 458's on 98 Mausers. The last one was on a South American FN 30/06 and it worked extremely well.

They are not hard to make feed perfectly, as with most things like this, just go slow and steady, think about what you are doing and check often. Other than opening out the bolt face and the extractor and matching the feed rails to the shell, the biggest change really is opening out the feed ramp to guide the bigger shells and round nose bullets into the chamber. Beauty with the 458 in a 98 is you don't really have to remove any material from behind the bottom locking lug.

The 30/06 98 actions seem to me to have a slightly longer, squarer mag box as compared to a 98 in 7x57 or 8x57 which are more tapered toward the front. This lesser taper in the 30/06 mag box helps heaps, especially when you change to a belted caliber. Once the feed rails are altered to suit the shell, this squarer mag box allows the fatter more parallel shells (like the 458) to sit properly in the magazine.

Go for it, they work fine.

ALEX

alexbeer.com