I purchased a junk Mexican Mauser from a buddy who tried to chamber it in 6.5 Creedmoor. His plan was to turn it into a target rifle but he screwed up the chamber. I couldn’t turn him down as I knew it would be an ideal project gun, but I didn’t know what project I wanted to use it for.
Laying in bed the other night thinking about the dismal results of the last Coyote hunt, I thought to myself, “You know what would be nice? Handy short barrel 308 Win scout rifle.” At the time I had forgotten that I had this old Mauser laying around, but I remembered that sometime the next day and the project came together.
The old 6.5 Creedmoor barrel, that was improperly cut might be salvaged, or it might be a good practice barrel to test barrel threading and crowning on the lathe. Either way, this project has a lot of potential to be as involved as the VZ-58 build, with different challenges. While it won’t be a true Jeff Cooper Scout Rifle, it will be a similar concept, a light handi rifle, that hopefully is easy to carry in a blind and accurate.
I hope you find this project as interesting, and will enjoy reading about the process and results as much as I enjoy building the rifle, and writing what I did!
As a note: During tear down, we damaged the original Mauser Action. We are currently sourcing a new action for this build. So it won’t be the restoration of an old action, but the heart and soul of this project lives on.