Mauser Mag Madness

This problem actually started about 15 years ago when a customer gave me a nice M98 Deutsche-Waffen Munitions 1908 Mauser receiver that he had tried to open up the feed rails to chamber the rifle in a cartridge with a larger case. Honest, it wasn’t me! I finally came up with and answer to this problem after a few years and after many more years I finally completed it. You see, I have to admit that I am a procrastinator. It took me six months to get around to finally writing this article. OK, you get the idea.

Now back to business. The answer ended up being a Remington M788 detachable magazine that lent itself to mount quite nicely into the existing magazine well of the M98 trigger guard. While it only holds three rounds, this magazine doesn’t overly protrude out the bottom. This action was going to be chambered in 7mm-08. Numrich Gun Parts Corporation (gunpartscorp.com, ) has Magazine Track Schematic (Design by the author) Missing is the small piece that goes in front of the mag well.

M788 magazines available in this caliber. Note that .308 and 7mm-08 magazines are same-same. The hardest part of this whole project was to fabricate the "track" that the M788 magazine rides on and this required considerable welding work. The welding on this was done with a heliarc welder by my best friend of many years Robert Age, who has at least 50 years of experience with all types of welding. The pictures are self-explanatory.

Of course, the magazine track requires the most time and milling work to finish it out. I have included a schematic of it. The other three pieces of metal for the magazine well were cut from 1/2-inch by 1/8-inch stock to fit the sides of the well. Also notice that I beveled the edges to allow a better weld. The third piece goes to the front of the magazine well. Note that these pieces also were spot welded on the inside of the magazine well.

The original magazine release button hole was plugged, welded and milled out. I drilled and tapped a small hole in the magazine track and a corresponding hole in the back of magazine well where track resides. This will enable you to line up the track, making sure the magazine will be in the right position before welding.

After welding, dress it off, run a 1/4-inch end mill long enough to clear the 1/2-inch pieces and bring the mill to the back of magazine well almost close enough to the track to touch off on the side of well. As you go to the front it will cut more metal off because of the taper and you’re opening up for the straight magazine. After these cuts were made for the magazine a bevel on top of the track for bolt clearance was done with a sanding drum on my Foredom.

With this finished, I barreled the action with a sporter-weight tube originally chambered in .280 Remington that I took off a Ruger M77, rethreaded for the Mauser and rechambered for 7mm-08. I’ll leave the details of that for another article. I’d like to thank one of my mentors, Reid Coffield, who in the past helped me out of many a problem. Happy trails and keep on gunsmithing! AG