bolt handle weld on 98

[maggot]

I am putting on a midway replacement bolt handle on my vz24.Can anyone get me some pictures and info on how to correctly cut off the old handle?And how to put on the new one.I not able to buy the mauser book at the moment.

[gunnut69]

I have a file with some drawings.  They are not mine but do represent the correct cuts.  They are not the greatest drawings in the world but should suffice.  I shall PM them to you.  Good luck on the project.

[savageT]

Surplusrifle.com has an article:
http://www.armscenter.com/boltman/

[maggot]

the sketch you sent looks good.That should get me started.Can you recomend a procedure for grinding the reciever to work with the new bolt position?Or is that neccesary?

[gunnut69]

Since I’ve probably done a couple truck loads of  Mauser bolt handles, let me make a couple observations on heat-treat concerns.

The TIG torch is kinda my "thang"  I love to TIG weld and have used nothing but that for bolt handles since 1980. (Heli-Arc back then)

I can now weld a handle and be able to hold the locking lugs in my hand at any time through the process.  That’s good!  I do it in about three stages with the lugs suspended in water during the cooling and cleaning of the weld.   I've never worried about annealing the lugs.
   The cocking cam and extractor cam surface are ALWAYS annealed.  There’s no way to weld on a handle and preserve that surface.  It's something we have to deal with.

Mausers are very deeply case hardened at the rear of the bolt, bolt handle root and the cocking piece.  Welding will certainly get the cocking cam more than 700 degrees and anything above that will soften even more.
  No problem. Just re-heat-treat it.

--WARNING--
Don't re-heat a cocking cam that doesn't need it.  It'll almost always crack if you do.

A file should glance off the cocking cam and the upper front corner of the bolt handle root.  Check the cocking piece with the file first...just like that.  It's about 60 Rc, which is about 4 points softer than the file.  Check JUST the cocking notch face where the cocking piece rides.  It should be softer everywhere else.

You'll need a oxy/acetylene torch with a fine tip #0 Smith is what I use.  Fire it up and adjust to a reducing flame.  A moderate hiss and a sharply defined inner cone.

  Now be careful here.  This can hurt you.

Fill a big coffee can full of room temp water....right up to the brim.  Hold the bolt body so that EVERY hole in that bolt is pointed away from you.  Don’t ask me how I know....Quickly wave the torch flame, just past the cone, up and down the cocking notch...right in there close and HOT.  The goal is to heat the entire cocking cam surface, from bottom to top of the spiral, an even red.  How red? Hmm...tail-light red?  Yes, but on the slightly yellow side of there.
  PRACTICE this first!  You want to do this flame hardening job as fast as you possibly can.  Hold the bolt with locking lugs up and the cocking cam about 2 inches above the water.  Heat it fast and evenly.  There should NOT be any red deeper than 1/8 inch.

As soon as this red is seen jam the bolt down in the water FAST!  

This whole operation from the first wave of the torch to sizzle and pop is no more than 7 seconds.  PRACTICE on an old bolt.  If you cant do it in 7 seconds get a bigger tip.
 Don’t let the blue part of that flame touch things that hurt or burn.  

The extractor cam is done the same way but due to the greater mass it will take a little longer and you’ll never get an even red without melting the corner off the thing.  I give it my best shot in 10 seconds and quench it no matter how hot it is.  If the angle is proper (look at a military bolt) it only needs to be as hard as the action which is only 50Rc or so and the case is much thinner.
Concentrate on geometry and not as much on heat treat for this area.

When properly done the cocking piece will have a black scaly appearance with little patches of dull gray.  The more dull gray there is the harder it is.  If its black and no gray you need to try again.  Hotter this time.

Take a real CLOSE look at the nose of the cocking piece.  Get your magnifier out and really look at the angled camming surface.  It should look slightly concave (optical illusion) and slick as polished harden steel can be for most its length.  The cocking cam of the bolt should be its mirror image.
  I figure about 90 million of these have been screwed up by Dremel tools and a cratex wheels.  Consider any cam as a bearing.  It MUST be smoothly engaged or it galls and fails.  Don’t polish either surface unless your trying to repair it.  Die sinker stones and a calibrated eye or a jig grinder with an interconnected helix indexer.  You cant improve on the progressive helix from Mauser.  Don’t try.
  After welding and heat-treating the cocking cam will be pretty nasty and the urge to do something gives a gunsmith a case of the “Caint Hep Its”  I just caint help but do *something!!.  DON’T.
There’s usually scale in the bolt threads and you need to lap it out.  I use 320 (fine) valve grinding compound and AT fluid on an old shroud.  Just turn back and forth until the threads are free.  Clean thoroughly with solvent and a brush inside the bolt and really flush it out before trying your good shroud.  You don’t want any grit left behind to gum up the works.  It’s hard to get it all out but work at it.  It has to be free of grit.
    Put a heavy layer of motor oil on the cocking cam and the shroud threads.  Put the bolt together and  install but don’t close the bolt.  Now hold the trigger back to allow the cocking piece to “follow-down”.  Now lift and lower the bolt handle a half a dozen times.  Remove and clean everything and look at the cam..  The cocking piece and the camming surface of the bolt should rub at least half the width of the cam all the way up

  Clean these surfaces every 20 cycles or so until the scale is all worn away in the “active” areas.

Questions?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The above is not my writing but is very informative.  It was written by Jack Belk.  A custom riflemaker of some note and a great source of information.  I would note that all scale in the threads in the bolt (for the bolt shroud) can be controlled with the use of a heat control paste.  The paste keeps the oxygen in the air from causing the scale to form.  You shouldn't need to grind on the action at all.  The notch for the bolt handle will not be altered.  It may be necessary to grind the top of the bolt handle itself for it to clear the scope.  I do this with mounted stones in my drill press.  I use a stone with about a 3 inch diameter.  and move it toward the bolt knob until the raised handle clears what ever scope I have mounted.  This presuposes I know both the scope I want mounted and the ring height I will use.

[parkergunshop]

On the bolt welding issue:
Brownells sells Bolt heat sinks that screw into the bolt sleeve threads to protect them from the heat and prevent scale from forming, it also diissipates heat away from the rest of the bolt to avoid impacting the hardness there.
When used with Brownells heat stop control paste no rehardening of the cocking cam  or any part of the bolt should be required.
I have used a TIG welder on bolt handles but perfer Oxy-acetylene when using the heat stop control paste and the bolt heat sink as it gives a better weld without pin holes which is hard to avoid with TIG or a regular ARC welder.   Another advantage for me is that I can see what I am doing better when using it Goggles over the face shield used with the other welding methods, the Goggles used with Oxy-acetylene allow much better visability of your work. 
I also use Brownells 3 1/2 percent nickel steel welding rods as it gives an excellent finish and blues well.
I do agree that TIG generates less heat than Oxy-acetylene, but with the bolt heat sink and Heat Stop Control Paste use that is normally an non-issue with Oxy-acetylene.
Oxy-acetylene works great when reworking the P14 and 1917 Enfields to straighten the dog leg and recontour the bolt handle  to shorten the bolt handle, I cut the knob off, stick the hole in the knob up on the end of the bolt handle stub and weld it on there.
 
 

[gunnut69]

Actually Parkergunshop I don't use the TIG torch. I used to use the oxy-acetylene torch myself and used the TIG a few times (run by a good welder of my aqaintance) but have since swithed to a MIG welder. The process produces even less heat than than the TIG and goes faster as the wire is atuomatically fed to the puddle.. It does not allow for forming or shaping as the heat is too localized but an oxy-acetylene torch can always accomplish that later.. The advantage is the small amount of heat introduced to the bolt allowing less work getting ready.. Heat sinks are easily made with a lathe and copper rod (scrap yard may be able to supply some, that's where mine came from).

[parkergunshop]

Gunnut,
I have also used a MIG welder and I have made heat sinks using the aluminum/steel shafts used to install a grinding or polishing wheel on a electric motor.  They dissipate heat very well.
I made the mistake of loaning my bolt welding jig, bolt bending blocks, heat sinks, heat stop control paste and supply of welding rods to a friend and he never brought them back and now has passed on.   Expensive mistake not to be repeated again.
With some military bolts the bolt bending blocks work ok for forging the handle lower, leaving the bolt handle long enough with a pleasing shape however on most of them the handle winds up to short for my taste.  Some of the Turkish and Belgium Mausers have very pleasingly shaped longer military handles..  They can be made very pretty with the bolt bending process with no welding involved.
On the super hard 1903/A3 bolts don't try to use a bolt bending block approach at all cut off and weld on a new handle,  as they will often break during the forging process.  The rear of the 03/A3 bolts are not as strong in any case as the bolt sleeve/handle areas on the Mausers and Enfields and they are apt to be brittle..
 

[gunnut69]

I know what you mean about the rear of the bolts being a bit weak... I've not done a bunch off  springfields so have only the couple I did as reference. Also when doing them I was in a cut off and weld back on phase so had no trouble.. It seems the mausers with straight bolts usually end up too short when bent (forged) so I use a jig and let the welder extend the handle a bit...  This has never been a problem with the MIG but always caused consternation when gas welding.. I've also used the MIG to reshape the bolt handle itself. In fact the mannlicker I'm building now will get a version of the spoon bolt handle by building up the sides of the existing handle after cutting and welding to a lower angle. A bead at the top of the handle from the stub down will be ground to shape the center rib.  The form I intend to make uses a half ball to ease the feel in the hand and I prefer a bit of sweep by angleing the bolt handle to the rear a bit, but keep it fairly straight! This rifle is nearing completion of the metal work and the barreled action is in the wood..and bedded. I still need to install the nosecap and install the trigger (a timney unit with no safety). They also want the action converted to cock on open so that will also have to happen.. I certainly hope his sister likes her CHRISTmas present this year.. My own rifle is way behind as usual and needs the bedding.. It's in the wood but not yet bedded. Also the laminated stock was severely weakened by the lightening process and I need to glass re-inforce the foreend holes to prevent collapse and give the front sling stud something to attach to.. A couple layers of glass fiber cloth in polyester resin formed to fit should help a lot.. I'll likely have to cold blue the piece in order to get to use it this season..  I got an interesting gift from a friend and former client, via his wife. He died but she remembered me and gave me a slab of cherry that Paul had for nearly 30 years and he got it already dry!! It's a little over 9 feet long and about 2 feet wide with a thickness of well over 4 inches.. It's pretty drk but from what I can see it's pretty knarly stuff. I need to get it sanded and cut down to manageable blocks and out from under my carport... Might become the stock for my 7-08 or maybe the 338 Fed on the intermediate action? Perhaps even both... It's really late so I need to go..  later!!

[parkergunshop]

 Gunnut69,
I have replaced my bolt welding jig, heat sink, 3 1/2 percent nickel steel welding rods and heat stop control paste and have several bolts to work on. I used a TIG welder to alter 4 bolts, 3 Mausers and 1 Springfield the past two weekends, but I'm going back to oxy-acetylene. On the action you are converting to cock on opening above? What type action is it, I have converted 1917 and P14 Enfields with excellent results, but was unhappy the results when I tried the convertsion of a 93 Mauser to cock on opening.
I have a half dozen P14 Enfield bolts left to alter, one 98 Mauser and one Springfield.
Before I had welding equipment, I had McGowen convert two Mauser bolts to Spoon handles back in the 1980's with excellent results, a mannlicker just looks better with a spoon handle, My 98 mannlicher has one of the Mcgowen altered bolts. I have an intermediate action 1909 Peruvian Mauser spoon handle bolt in my bolt inventory
Note I don't have a lathe, but have fitted several 98 Mauser barrels using just a grinder and mill files using prussian blue to get good contact for the end of the barrel with the inside collar in the receiver, two of these were long chambered barrels. For short chambered barrels I fit them and then have a local gunsmith finish up the headspace with his finish reamers, reamers are too expensive to stock.

[gunnut69]

I've done several cock on opening conversions on 93's and 95's and find the metal inferior to the M96 Swedes,, The Swedes tend to present more problems when welding (per the MIG guy) but once he got the settings right it welds slick as a gut. Endfields of all ilks convert well and the 93-95's made in germany seem better than the Spanish made ones.. The current conversion is a M96 Swede, and I've a couple to do. I've one I was going to build for my son but he decided to 'never hunt with me ever again'? ;(...  I've all the parts so the build is on but I'll just keep it, perhaps he'll change his mind. I've some reamers and an aquaintance in Kansas that seems to have all the common ones so farm come out to him..  vI've got a lathe but I usually use short chambered barrel for convenience as I'm very machinist challenged!! The last 98 I bought had been smithed by an ameture and he had sinply installed the barrel and an already bent bolt and was really upset when the bolt wouldn't enter and lock. I bought the whole rig including the Fajen precarved stock and new barrel with new reamer and guages (243 Win) for a song.. He even had the original bolt (straight handle) and let me have it instead of the one bent by someone else.. The bent bolt had the front of the firing pin recess drilled to allow the firing pin to fall even if the bolt wasn't fully closed..VERY POOR PRACTIVE. It's going to become an action donor for a 35 Whelan and the intermediate action the Whelan was installed on will likely become a 338 Federal.. in due time of course.. Have a great day!!