Yesterday's Weapons Forums

A few years ago, I bought some used 8mm Mauser barrels, mostly yc K98 and a few yugo, from Numrich while they still had them advertised in good to excellent condition, taking a chance that some were at least in decent condition, plus to get some random usable K98 sight parts off of them … as I expected, what I got was about half ok, half junk , but there were some nice WaA-marked pieces in the bunch.

I wound up using a WaA280 rear sight base from one of those barrels to replace/correct the butcherjob the local mauser smith did on the rear sight base of the replacement barrel he put on a sportered duv41 I'd bought with its handguard sleeve ground off (he bragged up what he had as 'factory new' Sauer barrels), but in reality what I got was no more than a take-off yc barrel, yugo stamps and all. It's in decent shape, but no friggin' way is it a new barrel. He even left the yugo front sight base on it, and left it off-center as well. Hadda korrekt it all myself . I'll post those pics when I find them again.

Anyhow, collected whatever random WaA280 rear sight parts I found on the Numrich barrels, put them all together as one rear sight assembly, and looky what I got!
I swear I did not notice this until tonight … matching rail&slide serial#4312 WaA280 parts … only non-matching part is the ramp, but the whole assembly fits nice&straight on that WaA280 sight base .. can't wait to see how the rebarreled duv41 does at the range with the 'new' sights in place …


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Here's a pic of the rear sight base the smith left on the gun ... he split it down its length and rotated it hapahazardly 'approximately' into place. Problem was that once the action was screwed into the stock the split base didn't fit and so pushed down and sideways against the barrel channel. Pretty amazing the 'expert' didn't notice that before he handed it back to me 'rebarreled', right?


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... not to mention that the sleeve for the handguard was so bent up that the back of the handguard wouldn't fit into it ...


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Real nice work and quality control via him and/or his apprentice, right?

That sob had pretty much ruined the gun for me anyhow, so what did I have to lose by trying to fix it myself? Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? Found a nice rear sight base on one of the Numrich barrels I'd bought (it happened to be a WaA280) and installed it on the 'new' barrel.


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... finished product...


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That 'franken' duv41 liked this walnut stock ...


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Here's the first target after I installed the front and rear sight bases ... it shot high @ 100 yds, but look how it grouped with 1939 WWII German milsurp .. most of the rounds were clustered around top left of center of the black ... point of aim was on the blue dot in the pic The black ring on the target is 8".
The rest of the hits scattered all over the target were via my M48A .. bought it in '02, and that thing has yet to shoot worth a crap..


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Looks like you did a good job replacing the sight.

Rad

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Very nice!! Thanks for the pics and range report!!

its a shame that you got taken by the 'expert' but it looks like all turned out quite nicely in the end , that is a very nice looking stock