Long eye relief scope mts for vintage military rifles

Dutch

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I could write a dissertation on this subject but will instead show some of the mounts I've made in the last 10 years. I haven't made any for 5 years but I get requests every single day for one or another. In most cases my mounts are actually intermediate eye relief scope mounts as I design them to use the very inexpensive McStar 2-7x32 handgun scope. At 7x the eye relief is only 8.7 inches. At that distance the sight picture is much better than if it was 12-18" in front of the eye.

The m/1896 Swedish Mauser was the first mount I made that has the most requests. Primary design feature is the scope height is as low as you can go. Military rifles don't have optimum drop of the comb for scope use so getting the scope as low as possible is the name of the game. (hopefully!).
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From the machinist perspective there's not much involved in these mounts. They require no modification to the rifle, which is the #1 design criteria.

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The rear anchor I call a top-hat because it kinda looks like one. It fits in the slot where the ladder spring goes and can be challenging as it has to be fit tight.

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Czechoslovakian-made Persian Mauser Model 98/29 made in about 1933 caliber 8x57mm. This is one of my favorite rifles. Because the handguard hump is lower on this model than say the 1908 Brazilian Mauser the scope sets lower and is much more comfortable for the shooter.

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On some mounts I utilized a Picatinney rail for the Marlin 336 because the bottom is flat and it offers a lot of options. I bought about 60 of these rails from China for about $4 each.

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The part that fits into the rear sight base I call the "insert". All my math is done with pencil & paper and all figuring is done without a calculator... and I keep all these notes in case there's a problem down the road I can see where I made the mistake.

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One of the more simpler mounts is for the Finn Mosin-Nagant m/39 caliber 7.62x54R. The rear sight base on this model offers a optimal base for a scope mount. I would say its my #2 favorite rifle for a LER mount.

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This mount required very little machining of the Marlin 336 rail. The one requirement is that the rear sight base set screw needs to come out and sometimes it gets soldered in place during assembly at the factory. Easy enough to remedy with a propane torch and a light touch. The screw is M4x.5mm.
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I made a simple drill bushing to locate where the 2 mounting screws go. In a previous design I utilized the existing elevator pin but found the screw method to be superior.
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A little hand-held tap guide. I think these are also M4 thread.
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The height limiting factor with the Finn m/39 are the 2 protective "ears" at the rear of the sight base. It take experimenting with different scope rings to find a set that will allow the scope to sit the lowest without interfering with anything.
 
The German Gewehr 1898 caliber 8x57mm. This one made by Mauser Oberndorf in 1915. Far as I know there is no other scope mount made for this model rifle. This rifle is the #1 best platform for a LER scope mount.

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This scope is the NcStar 4x32 handgun scope but it now wears the 2-7x32 scope.

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This is what the Lange rear sight looks like. So-called "roller coaster" rear sight.

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I've paid for this mill 3x with these scope mounts. From Australia to Iceland, Holland, Germany and elsewhere. Production was small. I get bored doing repetitive machining:). Table on the 1525 mill is 8x36. Before Grizzly phased out their version of this mill they had the column extension on sale for $250. Drop-in fit. The one complaint about this mill was insufficient spindle-to-table height.

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Beautiful work, Dutch! I have a Finnish M28/30 (Sako/SK.Y/D-marked barrel) that would benefit from one of these setups.
 
Very inspiring.
My Turkish Mauser could use one of those.
Me myself, I could use a mill like that!
thanks for sharing.
 
Thanks for posting this. I have a number of milsurps and unfortunately, age is catching up with my eyes so that front sight post is getting pretty hard to see. I had just started looking into LER optics that I could mount that are non-permanent mods so all this is incredibly helpful. Thanks
 
Sounds like it has been a good little sideline for you. Some of the shapes on the original sights are a thing of beauty (roller coaster). Hard to balance the elegance of some weapons, and the fun that can be had shooting them, with the pain suffering and death that are also attached to them. Hard to get my head around some times. Nice looking Enco also. Cheers, Mike
 
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