Santa Babara Mauser

[Mckie Hollow]

I'm refinishing a rifle for a friend. It says Spain on the bottom of the reciever and Italy on the european walnut stock. It has a nice trigger mech. and the safety is the push type. I assume it is a Santa Barbara Mauser. It might be a Herter's import? Anyways, My friend would like to know the overall quality of these mauser's. Actually, it looks pretty good to me. The metal is unfinished in hidden areas, but it seams to be well inlayed. The wood is ok. The checking was hand done, but in places the lines ran off and were not finish cut. All in all, it looks like a good gun, that if you scratched it up a bit, you wouldn't mind.

[John Traveler]

Santa Barbara was the Spanish national arsenal, and they produced excellent mauser 98 actions and rifles.  During the 1980s thousands of them were imported as do-it-yourself "kits" complete with Sile (italian importer) inletted, unfinished stocks.  I've owned a couple, and still have two mauser 98 barreled receivers I finished into sporters.  They are fully the quality and accuracy equals of the german, yugoslav, and formerly British Parker-Hale imported actions.

[Hank08]

I finished up several of those Santa Barbara kits and still have a .300 Win Mag made from one of those. They're excellent as JT says, their triggers are  not the greatest but they're OK.
Parker Hale used them for their Weatherby look-a-like rifles.  Those kits had hinged floorplates
and the trigger housing went all the way to the tang and the rear guard screw went through the housing.  Serial # usually a letter or two- then some numbers.
H08