Bought a sporterized swede mauser last week. Fired it a couple of times and found it to be very easy on the shoulder. It has a 24in barrel. Anyone have an idea how much I could shorten the barrel without affecting accuracy?
Fixed it for you!
Thanks, not sure what I did wrong.
Assuming a proper job of cutting the barrel and crowning the muzzle, the barrel can be shortened to the legal limit of, I believe, 16.5" without affecting accuracy adversely. Obviously, muzzle velocity will suffer.
I'm curious about the loss of velocity mentioned. Any idea what a 4 inch loss of barrel length down to 20 inches might do to velocity?
It's not an exact science by any means, but figure on 50 - 100fps per inch, depending on the load. This is just a rule of thumb.
I have to agree that you can chop it down quite a bit without really affecting accuracy. The WAY you cut it down, though can have a big effect. Just as an FYI, the barrel will have to be re-crowned after being cut down, which can have a very big impact on accuracy. Just thought I'd throw that out there in case you wanted to do it yourself. Not saying you can't crown it, but it definitely isn't a trivial operation.
Yep, I would guess you'd lose 100 to 200 feet per second. Not really enough to worry about unless you're going to do a lot of shooting over 250 yards or so. The shorter length makes it a lot more handy and worth the tradeoff, at least for me. My favorite bolt gun is a savage scout, 308, 20 inch barrel, a great little do everything rifle
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