sporterizeing surplus guns

Although I'm not a true collector, it is the rifles' original configurations which often can not be restored.

I understand Volucris' views, as it often appears that a large fraction of guns were modified, and have heard/read that many were in good condition. Are many people still doing this?
Could these people not afford a civilian hunting rifle, so that they can leave military rifles alone?

I've seen almost nothing about people wanting to sporterize the CMP's M-1 Garands, but it is possible.
Over at "Surplusrifle", they limit discussion of how to do it.

While past activities which increase present day 'collectability' are considered virtues by some (so a seller can make a profit?), this makes it much more difficult for shooters, who began this hobby later in life, to find guns in the original configurations.

It is bad enough that some British/Euro associations (they have websites) organize the destruction of large stockpiles of surplus weapons, and pay other countries to do so (i.e. South Africa now destroys Enfields, as if war lords prefer these over AKs...).
 
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It's bad enough that the monkeys at importation feel the need to put huge ass electrostenciling marks or stamps all over the rifle. You can thank the BATF for being a bunch of anti-2nd amendment retards for that one.
 
Hello, seansean1444, I agree with you, they are getting too valuable to be altered. That said, If you ever have a chance to see an original Griffen & Howe sporter made up on a 03' action it will make your eyes pop! Also some of the very early sporters made up by Adolph..Germanic flavor in stock design..made one up on the 03' for Roosevelt for his 1912 Africa trip.
 
Could these people not afford a civilian hunting rifle, so that they can leave military rifles alone?
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Just to interject a few facts that you may or may not be aware of into the mix:
* During the 1941-1945 period, many domestic firearms manufacturers curtailed and almost stopped manufacturing sporting rifles due to wartime needs of materials and machinery.

* Mauser rifles had very little competition from the domestic manufacturers even before the war. Even though they cost much more than a Depression-era worker could earn in a month, they were still in demand. Why? Other than the Winchester Model 70 and 54, there were not many nice, slim, versatile, accurate rifles on the market. Oh, some will say Remington and Savage were around, but have you ever seen their offerings from that period? Putting all those Mausers on the market was like delivering a pizza to the wrong frat house by mistake. Gone!

* Mauser rifles were the dream of just about any gun owner, having built a great reputation and a record of reliability for decades prior to the war. All those rifles were just begging to be stripped and remade into something prettier. Imagine, if you will, that there are very few new cars, the market is suddenly flooded with military Lexuses, and you want a car. Now imagine how your greatgrandchildren will hate you for painting one and putting wheels on it. Got the picture?

* I know many people probably think the USA won WW2 single handedly, hands down, no sweat, but we were neither prepared for the war nor able to immediately respond to the demands of the war when it came to us. After WW1, the Depression hamstrung the Government, and politicos like Joe Kennedy were sympathetic to the German regime. We were "isolationists". In 1940, our leaders were trying to build ships, rifles, tanks, etc, as fast as possible because they knew the war was coming, but in peacetime it is hard to build armies. Remember, in 1941 we were still issuing Springfields to front-line troops.

So there are few relics of the past left behind. Isn't that the way it always happens?
 
If you permanently alter an unmolested historical firearm you will go to hell.
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Oh well.:D

Smith Corona 1903A3

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F.N. 98 Mauser


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Either way its up to the individual as to what they want to do with a mil surplus and what they want as a end result. They will lose the C&R status once they are sported. My thought is if you are looking for a possible tack driver or hunter go for the bigger bucks and get a Mosin sniper rifle. Still short money and you get not only history but the scope and mounts of the day. How many modern day rifles are set up for 2,000 meters for the price of a old sniper rifle?
 
The way I see it, some of the sporterized rifles are historical too.
The transition from war time to peace time, I like both sporterized and original surplus rifles.
 
Many years ago, there seemed to be and endless supply of these

guns really cheap...you could get a like new condition Lee Enfield for around $30, or Mausers for under $50. Lots of gunsmiths used these as the basis for some great hunting rifles. BUT-commercial hunting rifles got better and the surplus guns got very expensive and more scarce as people actually collected them.

I have 2 sporterized surplus rifles now, one a K-98 Mauser and one a SMLE No I Mk III. Borth were done many years ago, and both were pretty cheap. Since they were already changed, I felt no problem to change them again to my own liking, and enjoyed doing it with no loss to a collector or to history.

I paid around $125 for a 98 Mauser rebarreled to .308 with many improvements...I added a plastic stock and a Timney trigger and it is a great shooter. I', still working on the Enfield - it was in bad shape, and cost me all of $75. I have more than that in new parts now, and it is a winter project to get it right. It has a great bore and trigger, and those old Enfields really shoot.


mark
 
Scorch:
Well-spoken. You helped illiuminate some darkness.

I was aware of the situation you described before WW2. Luckily the Lend-Lease Act helped the heroic British hold out.
At that time, our military strength might have been less than that of Romania's armed forces.
 
There's "surplus" as you say in your OP.

That covers "collectible" firearms, which should be preserved as a part of history, and just plain old guns, IMO.
The fact that a gun is old, and was used in wartime, doesn't make it deserving of preservation, does it?

You won't see many people griping about an old AK being put in a plastic stock, right?

I just bought two Mosin-Nagants. My first...

Nice rifles. Haven't shot them yet, but I'm refinishing the stock on one and I'll have it ready when we go to the range next week. It'll be kept original, just because...

There were over thirty million of these rifles made. Why do you think you can buy them for under $100? Still, even though they've recently become popular...there's just SOOO many of them. They won't have monetary value in my lifetime, or my son's, and probably not his son's...

The other is being "sporterized" to maximize it's accuracy potential. I want to see if it can be a decent long-range gun with a bit of accurizing work. Aftermarket stock, pillar and receiver bedding, Timney trigger...just a project, a hobby to kill time and spend money. If the barrel doesn't cut it, I may put on a UK-59 MG barrel.

No doubt, I could buy an off-the-shelf Savage .308 that'll shoot better than what I end up with. If I had to pay a professional to do what I have planned, I would need to have my head examined. But I do everything myself, so it's more of a time expenditure, not $$. But that's not the point with me...I enjoy working on guns; I get far more enjoyment out of a project than pulling a factory rifle out of the box. Call it "sense of accomplishment", if you will...
It's a "hobby"- and people spend money on their hobbies, right? So far, it's one HELL of a lot cheaper than than restoring the boats I've owned :)

Now as far as collectible guns go, I don't think that's even an issue. Only an idiot would take what is already a valuable rifle and devalue it.
 
There were over thirty million of these rifles made. Why do you think you can buy them for under $100? Still, even though they've recently become popular...there's just SOOO many of them. They won't have monetary value in my lifetime, or my son's, and probably not his son's...
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People said this about aircooled VWs not long ago. Now, it's like finding a needle in a haystack the size of Texas to find an early '57 that hasn't been botched by Bubba under his shadetree. Beetles used to be throwaway German metal and considered a dime a dozen. Nowadays due to people hacking them up and the element of time, they're getting to the point of being as valuable as American muscle cares...

My opinion? A mil-surp rifle, regardless of what it is, should be left the hell alone IF it's in good useable condition. If it's at the point of diminishing return, then sportorize/hack at will. On the same token (and heartbreakingly more important), the current owner has the right to do whatever he/she wants...period. It's their gun. It's their money. It's their business...
 
tobnpr said:
Only an idiot would take what is already a valuable rifle and devalue it.
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The reason that those guns are valuable now is because so many got bubba-ed once upon a time.

You know how you can buy all the Mosins you want now for ~$100? Well, it was that way once with lots of guns now considered "rare and collectible".

Time, attrition, and the market will separate the collectible wheat from the cheap milsurp chaff.
 
I'm reminded of the story about the most collectible/valuable postage stamps -- only two of them remained in the entire world. When the owner of one of the stamps passed, the owner of the other bought it at the estate auction for a record price. Later, when asked how he liked having the two most valuable stamps in the world, the owner replied, "You don't understand, now's there's just one."
 
Hawg Haggen said:
I remember when you could get Mosins for 9.00...
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When was that? I mean, I've been slinging guns across the glass pretty much since the Berlin Wall came down, and I don't ever remember them being nine bucks wholesale... :confused:
 
I was just a kid with a rusty single shot shot gun when I saw an add for "Russian Trench Guns". If I remember correctly they were $15.00 dollars, but may have been 12.00. Anyway, I sent for my honest to Charley first deer rifle and got it in the mail. The damn thing was almost as long as I was tall, but that wasn't the worst part. The only 7.62x54 hunting ammo you could buy was Norma and one box cost more than I paid for the rifle. I don't know how old it is but it has a hex receiver. I never saw any cheaper than 12.00 to 15.00 dollars but it is possible. I still have it in original condition and actually did kill a deer with it once. If I had not been given an old rifle shortly after buying the Russian one, I absolutely would have taken a hacksaw to it. It was like walking around the woods with a '57 Pontiac axle. Other than lever actions, the only hunting rifles I ever used were military reworks or original military guns. Buy a Model 70? Why buy a copy when you can hunt with an original Mauser?
 
Well, with ex-military guns unable to be imported between GCA '68 and FOPA '86, and Communist Bloc guns being scarce as hen's teeth before improved trade relations with China in the late '80s and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact in the early '90s, I just don't remember Mosins being all that common at all before about eighteen or twenty years ago. Oh, sure, I'd run into the occasional WWI-era Remington-made Mosin that never got delivered before the Czar fell and the Russians chickened out of WWII, but they weren't all that common and a lot of them had been (unsafely) converted to .30-'06.

Maybe they were more common where you were than they were in Georgia.
 
Years later I was in my '20s and living in L.A. I used to hit the hock shops looking for deals and the shops were full of Russian and Chinese rifles and pistols. You could not get ammo for them and like the Japanese rifles were pretty worthless. I suspect they were Korean war bring backs. When you could still buy guns through the mail, most were sold by sports shops, department stores, and hock shops, not importers.
 
Gunplummer said:
When you could still buy guns through the mail, most were sold by sports shops, department stores, and hock shops, not importers.
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And those sporting goods stores and department stores got them from importers, mostly. In a slow year, Bannerman's imported more Mausers than have been brought back to the States by every GI in every war America's ever fought combined.

Until the Iron Curtain fell, Mosins were comparatively rare compared to Mausers.

(And the ones that were around were shunned for just the reason you mentioned: Ammo availability. With the only source for ammo being Norma, they suffered the same problem Arisakas have always suffered from, which is that the rifle's Blue Book value fluctuated dramatically based on how many rounds were in the magazine. Speaking of comparative rarity, this is why Arisakas and Carcanos have always been comparatively rare, at least when measured against Mausers in the '50s and '60s and Mosins in the '90s and '00s: The latter two have been imported in the hundreds of thousands while the former were imported in trickles by comparison...)
 
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