Ahhh I could be even crueler and post photos of it's elder sister the mdl 1892 built up by Rigby's as a "Best Sporting rifle" which uses the rimmed version of the cartridge. The 6.5x53R often known as the Dutch/Romanian cartridge.
I always wanted a Schoenauer but they normally fetch more than my budget would allow then I saw this one on a stand at one of the Bisley shows. Although it had some issues we haggled and I brought it fairly cheap for the UK. It cost me £225 however upon shooting it I discovered that it wrecked the brass, case head seperations were common even on new RWS ammo
I then discovered that the Re-lined bore had gone bad in the chamber area and it was this which was wrecking the cases. The re-line job was an old one with the muzzle marked :-
"Zero Liner ... F. Clarke"
We never found out who F. Clarke was but it needed a new barrel which is normally very expensive here, so it was put up on commision sale but didn't sell then after a year or so I collected it and took it to Ron Wharton of Rigby's workshop to ask his opinion. He agreed to look it over and have a thunk on it to see what we could do to salvage it. Time passed then one day I got a call from Ron ................... would I like a brand new in the white Steyr made barrel in 6.5x54MS?
Well you can imagine the answer
the barrel cost £117:50 including postage to Ron's. Again time passed and Ron was too busy with the real work of building custom Rigby style rifles to get onto my fill in project so it was sent up to Lew Potter who removed the old barrel fitted the new one and got it proofed the re-blacked that little lot cost anopther £170 ish if I remember correctly so my cheap Schoenauer is no longer cheap but how many Schoenauer's do you know of with brand new barrels, original Steyr made barrel at that
. So now I have to gather the funds and get a nice stock for it. As it's not original and been messed with by previous owners I will stock it as a half stock sporting rifle with nice wood. My stock making skills are not up to the job so a stocker will have to be engaged to do the work and that's not cheap but the results wil be worth it. I have shot it on it's current stock and it even shoots the 120 grain bullets well
those scope mounts are not the nicest looking so I am looking into replacing them with some AKAH or Apels, a little spendy but then we might as well finish it off well. I already have a nice Zeiss 4x32 rail mount scope set aside for it that I picked up on E-bay.
Ok I cannot resist beign cruel:-
I hope your key pad survives AtlLaw
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