Girlfriends late dad's rifle
Posted by Substantial-Tree5454@reddit | Firearms | View on Reddit | 124 comments
Its not loaded i made sure before the barrel photo dw lol
My girlfriends dad has this rifle and were curious about it. We've never taken a close look at it and I was checking it out and we decided to post here and see if there's anything anyone can tell us. We don't know guns lol.
SquareRelationship27@reddit
Please don't aim the barrel at your face or the camera. That's one of the first rules of shooting a gun.
wwhijr@reddit
I've never heard the don't point itThe don't point it at a camera rule. I really hope you're not that triggered by a photograph.
EquipmentInside8623@reddit
The rule is to not point it at anything you’re not willing to destroy. I get that OP said it was unloaded for the pic but it’s still good to be safe.
Hook-n-Irons_TCo@reddit
I have a professionally sporterized enfild originally from the 40’s. Redone in the 50’s when my grandfather was stationed in Germany. It was his deer rifle until 2018 when he had a stroke.
Some people will hate sporterized mil-surp because “it destroys history”. But I can say that the one of one rifle that I now have, has more meaning and history now, than it did for the couple years it was in service during the war.
Hold_Left_Edge@reddit
General-Mils@reddit
Kurt Cobain POV
HondaBob1@reddit
That second pic got me doing this...
SpottyWeevil00@reddit
Jump scare
alexman1188@reddit
Second pic - (Kurt Cobain POV)
Freikorpz@reddit
Kurt Cobangs p.o.v.
Late_Advisor_2863@reddit
Ummm.. never ever point the barrel at anything you don't want dead. Including yourself. . I can tell you haven't been around guns much. That's the very first rule when dealing with guns.
StretchWinters@reddit
kurt cobain POV one the 2nd pic was a jump scare
highvelocitypeasoup@reddit
For once a Bubba with skill
Searril@reddit
What does it mean to call it a Bubba?
No-Wrangler3702@reddit
Bubba is a stereotypical nickname for a male rural southerner, especially Louisiana.
It is associated with cheap and dumb redneck stuff like using folding lawn chairs for living room furniture and crude "fixes" because no money or skill to do it right like building stairs out of a pile of bricks or a piece of plywood to replace a car's trunk lid.
So it's a "bubba" job to crudely use a hacksaw to cut down the barrel of a military surplus gun (as they were at one time very cheap) which generally have very long barrels, plus buy a cheap plastic stock from it, etc.
Now, some more recent members of the gun community is not familiar with all the famous gunsmiths who would make high end custom huntinc guns using surplus mausers and springfields. Bubba implied a crude poor job. But because these new people were unfamiliar with Griffin and Howe and similar who did masterful jobs sporterizing, they call all sporterized rifles "Bubba" out of ignorance.
It's interesting because they are keying in on simple, stupid, crude, and the ignorance to not know what is tasteful. But the misusers of the term are unfamiliar with history, and unable to distinguish craftsmanship from crude. They are the bubba
thereddaikon@reddit
Do you remember that reality TV show sons of guns? Where they would make abominations and always say "Nevah been dun before!"
Bubba is short hand for a low skilled or unskilled gunsmith who makes questionable modifications to guns. Sometimes it's poor taste. Sometimes it's poor execution. Sometimes it's both and sometimes it's just unsafe.
After WW2 the market was flooded with milsurp rifles. You could order Mausers, Arisakas, Carcanos etc through catalogs for next to nothing. A new Winchester model 70 was expensive but a surplus K98 was like $20 in 1950's money like $100 today. Guys would buy them and have them "sporterized" to be more like hunting rifles. The gun community was very different back then and people weren't as into "tactical" or military weapons. This is also where the Fudd mentality comes from. Making it like a hunting rifle was seen as adding value and usefulness.
Poorly done sporter jobs are called Bubbas, although you'll see dudes refer to any sporter good or bad as a bubba. These rifles are all over the place and easy to find at gun shows and estate sales today. Since altitudes have changed and now people consider intact guns as historical relics, sporters are lower value than unmolested examples. But if you just want a shooter or want to practice your own gunsmithing and try to un-convert them, they are a cheap entry point.
No-Wrangler3702@reddit
Bubba is a stereotypical name for a rural southern guy (Bubba Gump shrimp company)
zwinky588@reddit
It’s like a hillbilly version of fudd kinda. Imagine a guy named Bubba from Alabama that “does his own work.” That kinda thing.
earle27@reddit
Bubba dun good.
KushKingKyle@reddit
Anthony Guymon - ran an operation back in the 60s it seems
EstablishmentFull797@reddit
Bubba of distinction
Mighty-Bagel-Calves@reddit
Still a bubba 😑
BeenisHat@reddit
meh. There were millions of those K98k's made.
No-Wrangler3702@reddit
Not a bubba when done like that.
Plenty of custom rifle makers today use old Mauser actions (and old remington 700 actions) they just attach a brand new barrel.
highvelocitypeasoup@reddit
If it was done long enough ago it gets a pass from me. Part of the history imo.
AspenLief@reddit
This is going to sound terrible, but that’s a Charlie Kirk shooter.
Salsalito_Turkey@reddit
That's a sporterized Mauser Model 98. It's probably chambered in 8mm Mauser. Back in the early-to-mid 20th century, commercial hunting rifles were very expensive while military surplus rifles were dirt cheap. What you have there appears to be an excellent example of high-end gunsmithing to convert one of those then-cheap milsurp rifles into a nice hunting rifle.
TorturedChaos@reddit
My grandpa picked up a very similar Model 98 Mauser in .30-06 back in 1954.
Apparently the local sporting goods store had wooden barrels full of them. They sold for $25-35 depending on how fancy the stock was.
I inherited it and still have it. It was my go to deer hunting rifle up until my last 20's when I lost interest in hunting.
Hoplophilia@reddit
Interestingly, many of these were rechambered to 8mm-06 to utilize the abundant 30-06 brass available.
ilovewindex409@reddit
I have a Norwegian capture K98k rechamberd to 30-06. It's smooth and ammo is much easier to find than 8mm.
Hoplophilia@reddit
"Rebarreled." The beauty of the 8mm-06 is that a guy could do it in his garage with a vice and a finish reamer. I do believe reloading for fun and profit had a much stronger following in the mid-century than today.
Salsalito_Turkey@reddit
That is very interesting.
FafnerTheBear@reddit
My Dad built a sporterized Kar98k in .30-06. I dont know if he rechammbered it or a whole new barrel.
Salsalito_Turkey@reddit
It would need to be a whole new barrel, since the bore of an 8mm mauser barrel would be way too big for a .308 bullet.
DrunkenArmadillo@reddit
Nah, you just need a hollow base bullet like with a .36 1851 conversion...
But on a serious note you could always put a liner in the barrel. The whole thing wouldn't necessarily need to be replaced.
sovietwigglything@reddit
Simple conversion to do. 30-06 is very similar in dimesions to 8mm mauser. It used to be like the my first custom gun, to the point midway usa had a video series on how to do it.
Sea2Chi@reddit
I miss the cheap old WW2 gun days.
I grew up with old rifles like that being less than $100 so my friends and I looked down our noses at them in favor of more modern semi-auto rifles.
I once bought a Mosin Nagant for $80 just because I had $80 on me at the time and thought it was funny to go run errands with a friend and come home with a new rifle. My girlfriend at the time was not amused.
They would literally sell them out of wooden barrels where you could paw around looking for the best one.
flyguy_mi@reddit
The days before 1968, when you could buy them out of a magazine ad, and had them shipped to you.
trollspotter91@reddit
I have a vz24 in 8mm Mauser someone sporterized and all I want to do with it is restore it to its original stock and sights.
Unfortunately a 101-102 year old wooden stock in good condition is pretty hard to come by.
captaindomer@reddit
I have a sporterized Enfield done by Savage. I'm a little mad that they cut down the barrel by an inch making it impossible to put it in a surplus stock.
unclefisty@reddit
Well at least nice looking. Nice shooting is a maybe.
Pappa_Crim@reddit
Damn it might be sporterized, but at least they put some artwork on it
Oscar_callelle@reddit
Looking down the barrel made me duck in cover for about a second or two.
Membership_Worth@reddit
A beautiful sporterized German mauser
Not usually a fan of sporterized rifle but I love this
BusinessPlot@reddit
I agree. I think it’s well received because 1: it was well done and 2: granddad did it (probably) long ago, so it adds a heartfelt element
sHoRtBuSseR@reddit
I would buy this immediately.
I've always wanted a 98 with the crest on it.
datfreemandoe@reddit
Jump scare on that second pic of the barrel 💀
wtfredditacct@reddit
It's an Arisaka! ^or ^a ^kar98
chronburgandy922@reddit
My dad has my grandpas rifle just like this he brought back from the war but is almost 100 percent original. Wish we would shoot it more often.
ClassroomNo4024@reddit
Mona Lisa bubba
MoonGoon066@reddit
Kurt Cobain POV
2_befair@reddit
I didn't see Courtney Love on the over end tho...
uninsane@reddit
Wipe off your fingerprints!
RN93Nam@reddit
2nd pic jumpscare
JBCTech7@reddit
lol why? nerd.
Its ok to point a camera down the barrel of an unloaded rifle.
RN93Nam@reddit
It's just a comment, nerd
JBCTech7@reddit
clearly not...since every other comment in this thread is 'ohemgee scary picture lol!'
likemy10thaccount@reddit
I'm glad I'm not the only one who viscerally reacts to those types of pictures.
No-Wrangler3702@reddit
And yet, crown condition is important to assessing a firearm. Are you saying there should be a trigger warning?
quandjereveauxloups@reddit
Was that pun intended? Cause I really hope it was intended.
No-Wrangler3702@reddit
I thought about it. I rewrote it a bunch trying to highlight the pun. In fact I tried 10 times to come up with a better pun.
But no pun in ten did.
quandjereveauxloups@reddit
That was beautiful, thank you!
physicallyOK@reddit
Everytime. It seems they’ve been happening more and more lately for some ungodly reason.
1610925286@reddit
It's a fucking picture. There's nothing wrong with putting your phone over the muzzle of an empty gun, your head isn't glued to the phone. Why are redditors always such fucking dweebs?
Wait till you find out how your gunsmith works on your rifle.
OvenMistakes@reddit
Got me good
AGoodN_IsADeadOne@reddit
People finding the barrel pic unsettling is hilarious.
WizardMelcar@reddit
Right?
Additional-One-3628@reddit
Sorry for your loss
ProbablyNotaCar@reddit
Someone can correct me but isn’t that mark on the last photo a reich mark, done by nazi German to guns made under there control.
No-Wrangler3702@reddit
Yes it is.
You don't distinctly say it, but I get the impression you are wrinkling your nose at the Nazi connection.
I hope not, because you are wrong. We defeated the Nazis and then sonetimes our soldiers brought home war trophies but also we forced massive disarmament and forced them to sell massive amounts of guns.
This connection is nothing to be ashamed of and people who have these aren't doing it because they think Nazis are cool.
ProbablyNotaCar@reddit
I didn’t think anything of it, just watch to much Brandon Herrera and recognized the mark.
No-Wrangler3702@reddit
Then good
ZombieHoratioAlger@reddit
Yep, it's a wartime Mauser military action in a "sporter" stock.
These were *dirt* cheap surplus rifles in the mid-century; every hardware store had a barrel full of them by the door for $40 each, when a new Winchester Model 70 was $125. Since it's a well-built gun in a good cartridge, thousands of them (including this one) got repurposed into deer rifles.
These converted guns aren't valuable (their very existence makes the collectors and forum nerds Big Mad), but they're usually pretty decent shooters.
No-Wrangler3702@reddit
That's not true.
They may be undesirable by military collectors but a lot of collectors who can't afford to collect Newtons or Pre 64 Winchesters are collecting the Springfilelds and Mausers that are skillfully sporterized, especially by custom shops and especially when in wiidcat cartridges that got popular later. A Springfield 1903 sporterised skillfully in 35 Whelen is prized by many. This was THE american African Rifle back when no American gun maker was making rifles in 375 H&H or similar, and the fancy English makers were out of reach but a plane ticket to Africa wasn't.
smokeyser@reddit
I've got an enfield like that. Sights have been changed, stock has been sawed off and had a recoil pad glued on, and apparently it spent some time in mexico because there's a peso glued into a hole in either side of the stock. But it shoots great and was dirt cheap so I love it!
Hovie1@reddit
Mine is a lot of fun to shoot. Kicks like a mule!
No-Wrangler3702@reddit
Yes. Because the Nazis were defeated and we made them sell tons of thier war gear.
Perfect-Dimension356@reddit
Yep. Likely brought back by a WWII vet and then turned into a hunting rifle.
No-Wrangler3702@reddit
No, likely surplus gun imported then purchased by master gunsmith Anthony Cuyman who had a custom shop named Guns of Distinction, who made custom guns for customers who saw his advertisement in Shotgun News and similar publications.
Mr Cuyman probably picked through hundreds of lesser Mausers looking for low use models with above average triggers.
kwb166@reddit
Or one of the millions of wartime Mausers sold commercially since the end of WWII.
Hovie1@reddit
It is indeed. I have an old sporterized K98 myself that has nazi Germany markings in different spots.
misfitofscience76@reddit
It is. Another poster noted it was made at the German Mauser Oberndorf factory in 1939
ZeroPointSpecter@reddit
It's commonly called a Waffenamt mark. It is a German military proof/inspection stamp.
GamesFranco2819@reddit
Man, you hate to see it with an all matching, early/pre war rifle
No-Wrangler3702@reddit
No. That's the kind of rifle a skilled craftman picked out of hundreds of lesser guns to create a masterpiece of Americana in the 1950s.
If it was some igmorant buffoon in the 1990s who sporterized an old mauser without knowing what it was, I would agree. But those guys would not put on a micrometer peep, nor scroll the stock.
There were tens of millions of mauser 98s dumped on the market. Hundreds of thousands had matching serial numbers and were pre/early war. There was nothing at all tragic about 80% of those going to hunters vs collectors.
GamesFranco2819@reddit
Huh I didn't realize you could correct my own viewpoint for me. I dont cate that the work was done well, I understand why it was done, but that doesn't mean I agree with it. Work like this is exactly why the market for complete examples is so stupid today.
No-Wrangler3702@reddit
I can when you are wrong.
For instance, if you were to spout off on how sad you are that you can no longer own slaves I'd tell you "No, the act of owning another human as property is repugnant"
GamesFranco2819@reddit
. . . . What are you even on about. My opinion is that it sucks to chop up old rifles and create a situation where the market is now stupidly inflated to own nice examples.
Get the fuck out of here bringing slavery up as some sort of "gotcha" argument.
No-Wrangler3702@reddit
You get the fuck out for not being able to understand an example without taking it personally.
Classic example of a question designed to entrap: 'yes or no, do you still beat your wife'. Most people can understand the trap without feeling like the teacher is literally in that moment accusing them of domestic violence.
tesseractivism@reddit
That is some fine work on that wood. Beauty!
aziatsky@reddit
WHOA! watch where you’re pointing that thing
irierider@reddit
Man the modernization made sense then, but damn hurts to see now lol
Substantial-Tree5454@reddit (OP)
I appreciate all the responses about this. I've been driving so I haven't been able to respond, but I let my girlfriend and her mom know and they seem pretty satisfied and i know they didn't plan on selling it, but I think all this solidified their decision to keep it because it's honestly pretty neat
Key_Bluebird6279@reddit
2nd pic scared me
Lucky-Hunt-9915@reddit
By all means, treat it with reverence as a family heirloom, but it was an early war K98 that has been irreversibly stripped of all collector value or interest. It is a $2500 rifle that is now worth $200.
cleverkid@reddit
Those are worth about $600 now.
No-Wrangler3702@reddit
A lot of very fine custom rifles were made using surplus Springfield, Enfield, and Mauser actions as the world switched from bolt action to modern rifles after WW 2 when tens of millions of guns were dumped onto the market.
In addition to custom gun makers many of these military guns were bought in the thousands by hardware stores, gun shops, feed stores, etc.
People who could not afford a fancy new rifle from Remington or Winchester would buy a surplus rifle (often looking through dozens of the seemingly same gun to find the best one).
Then they would "convert" it to make it a better hunting rifle. Sometimes this was very crudely done.
Other times (like this one) it was done with great care and skill, sometimes by a gunsmith but often by the owner themselves especially those men who were engineers, architects, or machinists in their day job and who were therefore able to be very precise and careful.
Salsalito_Turkey@reddit
I'm glad there are other people pushing back against the blanket application of "bubba" as a pejorative for all sporterized milsurp. It's not like somebody slapped an ATI stock and a Leapers scope mount on this thing. This is the work of a master craftsman who took something cheap and common and elevated it into something beautiful.
Informal_Original_62@reddit
Bro, you just flagged all of us 🤣
EDC-JAKE@reddit
Yeah because a picture of a barrel can hurt you right
netsurf916@reddit
Reminds me of people complaining about UV light in a YouTube video.
Albbarcat@reddit
Curtkoban pov
dont-worry-about-tom@reddit
I’m normally immensely against sporterized military rifles… but this one is done very well.
notsosoftwhenhard@reddit
yo...............things I did with Karl 98 in COD was cray
ImaginationBasic9376@reddit
That's a custom gun, keep that thing!
LexingtonPatriot1775@reddit
Flag me again and we got a problem
Loves_tacos@reddit
Don't point that thing at me
14446368@reddit
At first, partly because of my own inexperience and partly because the first several photos are close, I saw "98" and went "Ah, Springfield Model 98, nice!"
Then the spicy stamp came in and I was immediately corrected lol.
Looks like a great gun, appears well-maintained, somewhat altered but not garishly.
Given its manufacture in 1939... this thing's probably seen some real shit lol.
SpiteBadger@reddit
Lol spicy stamp is so accurate
Poorknowthrowawayact@reddit
HOLY FLAGGING. Can I get a NSFL warning on picture 2?! :-D
HaasMe@reddit
Its always an arisak......... damn
Acceptable_Put9737@reddit
Pro tip: your phone isn’t a pair of ray ban Meta glasses. You can point the gun slightly away from your face, point your phone down the barrel, and still see the phone while taking the pic
Internal-Mission7123@reddit
Man even if I know it’s not loaded that’s a wild barrel picture lol
RacerXrated@reddit
I complain about sporterized surplus rifles, but when done we'll they're a sight.
OG_Fe_Jefe@reddit
I would cast the chamber to confirm the caliber.... the bbl is original, however it might have been rechambered and unmarked.
coldafsteel@reddit
A bubba deer blaster 98.
Decently done, but still just a sporterized nazi combat rifle because it was cheap to kill critters with.
Slight_Mammoth2109@reddit
I have no idea but it looks like some Nazi shit
Ok-Substance-6034@reddit
Protip, if it's a bolt gun and it's got an Nazi eagle proof, it's almost assuredly a Kar98k, a decently accurate infantry rifle that make good hunting rifles. This one has been sporterized, which I dislike, but sporterized well, which I appreciate.
lube7255@reddit
It's a bubba'd German Mauser made in 1939. The are Nazi cartouches stamped into it at places, if you were wondering what the bird symbol was.
Salsalito_Turkey@reddit
That rifle is not "bubba'd" in any way at all. It is a quintessential example of high-end mid-century gunsmithing. It has just as much historical significance as an un-modified Mauser, since the men with the knowledge and skill required to convert a standard Mauser into a high-end hunting rifle are rapidly dying out.
Late-Ad-5850@reddit
its a sporterized M98k, probally in 30-06 or .308w. low cash value.
OldManGeezer69@reddit
Mauser
Pelcat@reddit
It's a very nicely sporterized German K98k. This one was made at Mauser Oberndorf in 1939.
OneManGang2001@reddit
Looks like a sporterized Mauser