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https://www.gunsonsafari.com/the-sporting-m98-mauser-action

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4 May 2023 | Johan van Wyk
Two vintage Mauser-action rifles by John Rigby & Co. The top rifle is a .400/350 NE made on a very rare round-top Magnum Mauser action rifle with a stepped receiver ring and a sloped magazine box. The lower rifle is a .350 Rigby Rimless, made on a square-bridge Magnum Mauser action during the 1930’s.

The sporting M98 Mauser Action and its variations

Original Mauser sporting rifles manufactured before the onset of hostilities in Europe in 1939 are today rightly regarded as collector’s pieces. Many a collector seek them out and study the finer nuances of the many different variations that left the factory, and it is fair to say that collecting original Mauser sporting rifles has become somewhat of an obsession for many.

The original M98 Mauser was designed for the German military cartridge of the day, the 8x57 J. As a military rifle the Gewehr 98 ticked all the right boxes: it was well-made and strong, reliable, easy to disassemble and maintain, and could be reloaded in a hurry by an infantryman under fire by means of stripper clips. Naturally, these qualities immediately caught the eye of keen hunters, and it wasn’t long before the M98 action was pressed into service in the hunting fields of the world. In addition to Mauser and a host of other German and Austrian makers, both ex-military and commercial M98 actions were used by the renowned British makers of the day. Firms like John Rigby & Co (the Mauser agents in Britain up to 1912), Westley Richards and Holland & Holland made some of the finest M98-actioned sporting rifles to be had anywhere.

Military surplus M98 actions was the cost-effective option for many gunmakers. Many of these ex-military veterans were converted into sporting rifles and gave (and are still giving!) faultless service in well-made rifles. For the makers with well-heeled customers, however, nothing but the finest would do and the M98 action of choice in this regard was the superb commercial M98 Mauser actions manufactured for sporting purposes.

A Type B Oberndorf Mauser sporting rifle in 9x57, made on a standard-length M98 sporting Mauser action. Note the pear-shaped bolt handle, a characteristic of the sporting M98 action.

To cater for the multitude of sporting rifle cartridges that were created after the dawn of the Nitro era, the Mauser engineers conceived the idea of manufacturing their sporting actions in different lengths. The thinking was to allow the manufacture of a tailor-made action for a given sporting cartridge to ensure not only reliability but strength as well. Many makers habitually modified the ubiquitous standard-length M98 action to accept longer cartridges such as the .375 H&H and .404 Jeffery. The list of required modifications to make such a conversion work effectively was extensive: open the bolt face and magazine rails, remove steel from behind the locking-lug recess to lengthen the available space in the magazine (potentially the biggest cause of trouble as it weakens the action in a very crucial area), and lengthen the bolt-throw. Sometimes, a clearance notch had to be milled into the receiver ring to allow a loaded cartridge to be ejected and a completely new trigger-guard/magazine-box assembly had to be fitted sometimes as well. The fastidious Mauser engineers probably had a close look at some of the modifications, threw their hands into the air, and went back to their drawing boards.

The longest of the sporting M98’s was the famed Magnum Mauser, examples of which are usually pictured in the hands of legendary hunters of yore leaning casually against all sorts of big and dangerous beasts. The Magnum was conceived because of a request by John Rigby & Co in 1899 for an action large enough to accommodate their rimmed .400/350 NE cartridge. Mauser responded by adapting their Siamese Mauser action (which was developed for use with a rimmed cartridge) and lengthening it to 9, 150”, which was approximately a quarter of an inch longer than the standard-length M98.

The Magnum Mauser action was the inspiration behind the development of such proprietary cartridges as the .416 Rigby and .505 Gibbs, and the big M98 was quickly adapted to cycle these outsize cartridges to perfection. Magnum Mauser actions usually featured straddle-type floorplates with push-button release levers. The floorplates themselves were also of different thickness according to the proposed cartridge to be used in the action and the bolt-handles were proportioned according to the depth of the magazine boxes used. Although some of the large-calibre British cartridges could be made to work perfectly well from a standard-length M98, many of them in higher grades were nevertheless made on Magnum Mauser actions, as were Rigby’s .350 Rimless Magnum. Mauser used the Magnum M98 extensively and their rifles chambered for their rifles in .404 (or the 10,75x73 in metric), 8x75, and .280 Ross.

As is the case with the other commercial M98 variants, several variations of the Magnum Mauser may be encountered. Some of the very first examples had a pronounced stepped receiver ring and a round-top bridge. Later, square bridges and rounded receiver rings became standard, and even later examples had solid sidewalls without the thumb cut-out. One of the rarest beasts of all is a double square-bridge Magnum Mauser action with a solid sidewall. Very, very few examples are known to exist, and such an action would command a premium.

By far the most encountered commercial M98 variant is the standard-length, round-top action. It was for all intents and purposes identical to the military M98 and was used by Mauser for cartridges like the 8x57, 8x60, 9,3x62 and 10,75x68. It was also sold in considerable numbers to various smaller manufacturers and custom makers the world over and these actions are sometimes encountered on rifles by makers such as Krieghoff, Sauer, Vom Hofe, Halger, Griffin & Howe, and others.

Bolts from the four different M98 action lengths. From left to right: Magnum, Standard, Intermediate and Kurz.

Popular and often used the standard-length commercial M98 may have been, but cheap it wasn’t. Prior to World War II a complete Type-B Mauser sporter sold for an eye-popping $ 110-00 in the United States. At the same time, a Winchester Model 70 rifle in one of the standard calibres sold for a mere $ 61-25. The Mauser therefore commanded a premium, even when it was still in production.

In typical Mauser fashion, various improvements and additions were added to the standard-length action as well, and they may be encountered with or without flat-top bridges, solid sidewalls, military-style trigger guards and even single-stage triggers and flat, Mannlicher-style bolt-handles. It was the bread-and-butter item of Mauser production throughout its production run and accounts for the lion’s share of the approximately 127 000 commercial M98 actions made. Should one be so lucky as to find a commercial M98 action for sale today it will most likely be a standard-length, round-top action. It is still one of the finest platforms for building a quality hunting rifle to last a few lifetimes.

The intermediate-length M98 was, like the standard-length M98, also used for military applications and served the armed forces of countries such as Turkey and Peru with distinction. For Mauser it was the action of choice for the 7x57 and, with a dedicated, sloped magazine box, the .303 British.

The intermediate-length sporting M98 action found a very willing proponent in the form of John Rigby & Co. Rigby’s made a small run of M98-actioned rifles in .303 British prior to World War I. These rifles are highly prized by collectors and are rarely encountered, but in addition to the .303’s, Rigby also used the intermediate action for their famed .275 rifles. Hunters like Bell and Corbett carried their slim and trim .275’s in pursuit of dangerous beasts and shared their adventures in print. I’ve handled Jim Corbett’s .275 Rigby, the very rifle he used to shoot everything from man-eating tigers to small antelope, and although there is not a stitch of blacking left on the exposed metal parts and the bore has seen better days, the action is still as smooth as glass after decades of hard use.

The shortest of the commercial M98 Mausers variants was the kurz (German for “short”). The kurz’s bolt was a mere 5, 760” in length - more than an inch shorter than the Magnum’s bolt. In common with the Magnum, it was never used for any military application but only for sporting purposes. The kurz M98 was chambered at the factory for only three cartridges, namely the 6,5x54K Mauser, 8x51K Mauser and the .250/3000 Savage.

Compared to the other desirable sporting M98 Mauser variations such as the Magnum, the kurz is by far the rarest of them all. Very few of them show up on rifles by other makers and even commercial Mauser sporters on kurz actions are rare. Despite the hype surrounding the larger-calibre Mauser-actioned rifles, especially those on Magnum actions, the kurz should rightly be at the top of the heap insofar as desirability is concerned and treasured accordingly. Alas, I have seen a few kurz-actioned Mausers that had been butchered beyond any hope of salvage. Two were .250/3000’s, one even in the rare Afrika Mauser configuration, but it was impossible to even guess at the heritage of the third example. It had been rebarrelled to.308 Winchester (with much elbow grease, it must be said), and along with the “conversion” went any hope of salvaging the rare little beast. It was a painful thing to witness.

The kurz M98 was made only in small-ring configuration, which means that the receiver of a small-ring M98 is the same thickness on the outside as the action sidewall. This was done to save weight and improve the rifle’s handling characteristics. This also explains why a double flat-top M98 kurz action does not exist: there simply isn’t enough metal around the receiver ring to make this possible.

I’ve already mentioned that commercial M98 actions may be encountered in a great many variations. In addition to things like double set-triggers, flat-topped bridges and receivers and the like, the lettering on commercial M98’s also differs. Prior to the Treaty of Versailles, commercial M98’s was marked with the inscription WAFFENFABRIK MAUSER-OBERNDORF a/N on the sidewall. After 1922 the name of the company was changed, and the inscription altered to read MAUSER-WERKE AG OBERNDORF a/N. The new name wasn’t applied consistently, however, and actions marked with the old inscription was used for many years afterwards.

Commercial M98 actions had several other features which distinguished them from the millions of military actions. They had more elegant, pear-shaped bolt handles, often contoured to match the depth of the specific magazine box fitted to the action. They were generally also fitted with a longer cocking piece and the metal parts of each individual action was stamped with the last two digits of the Mauser serial number to avoid getting the parts mixed up if the rifle had to be disassembled for some reason. Again, there may be exceptions to these characteristics, especially on rifles made towards the outbreak of World War II, but generally they hold true for commercial Mauser sporting rifles.

This is but a brief dissertation on the commercial M98 Mauser action. Noted authors such as the late Lester Womack, Jon Speed and Ludwig Olsen have written extensively about the M98 action, its development, and its numerous variants. It’s a subject that continues to fascinate hunters and shooters worldwide, especially those with a slight sense of the historical. Here and there new M98 actions are again in production, and although we will probably never see production numbers as in the M98’s heyday again, the demand is still there. Not too long ago, the managing director of one of the surviving London gunmakers approached a friend with a request to help source as many commercial M98 actions as possible as they were inundated with request for rifles on original actions. Such is the legacy of the commercial M98.

As mentioned, I have a bit of a soft spot for the commercial M98 action. It was a well-designed marvel of engineering that was generally made from the finest steels available. It was well finished and reliable and because it was available in different lengths, it could be tailored around a specific cartridge and for a specific purpose. Very few modern actions can make a similar claim.

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John aka NitroX

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Edited by NitroX (05/05/23 10:17 PM)