If your wanting to learn then get the pitted actions and either buff the pits out or fill them in.
On a Siamese action I have I painted the action and the barrel. I used epoxy to fill in the crest and other jibberish and squiggles, sanded it flush, stamped in a serial number and applied the flat black paint. Looks great.
You can even make the rifle Camo if that suits your fancy. There are kits as well as all kinds of cans in the wall mart.
Practice on some plastic pipe first. It will help you get down the idea of what items you will need to make painting easier.
The 98 action has a lot of after market items like a 3 position wing safety. Similar to the Win M70 or the new Ruger M77 MkII's. They also offer a slide safety like on a Remington 700 but that will require metal and stock work.
As for the triggers. you can stay standard, go to a two trigger set trigger set up or a single set trigger like on the CZ rifles.
Wood or composit stocks are also easy to obtain as well as trigger kit and other furniture like trigger guards and mag plates. Most of these items are just snap on or require little fitting like the stocks. Stock configurations can be military, sporting, full length, or target, varmint, or tactical ( what ever that means)
There are a lot of barrels for large ring mauser and you can go from pencil thin to real heavy and from 16.5" to 26" or longer depending on what you want to do.
As for sights. They make peep, express, three leaf, and tangent as well as templates for scope mounts as well as scout scope rails.
With the scout scope or open sights you can use the stripper clips.
Good place to start or bad due to all the ideas available is a brownells catalog.
www.brownells.com and order a catalog. Midway also is good but seems to be more expensive.
