John,
Congrats on your purchase it was a nice package. Thanks for posting those pics of the bare action. You can cleary see why they are so hefty. They definetly utilse a lot of superbly machined steel in the action. Makes the Blaser look like a toy.

An MO3 will definetly be on the cards for me in the future. I started saving up for one and 6 months later I have 3 new rifles which by the time I set them up would have cost about the same.

Instead of a custom wooden stock, why not just buy a new one from Mauser. When I was pricing eveything up the option of an aditional stock was possible, but I never got a price. In my case I was toying with the idea of purchasing the MO3 "standard" and then getting an additional synthetic stock. Apparently, I was told that (or read somewhere) that the rifles that have wooden stocks are numbered to the action.

George