Mini Mark X project.

[AlNyhus]

This is a little project I just finished up. I've posted it on a couple of forums but thought maybe some here might enjoy a low buck, bargain rack project.

At one of the local gun shops on the semi-daily stop to see what components may have come in, this little rifle was on the 'Used Rifles' rack. Times being what they are, anything decent that's used just doesn't stay around long so there had to be more to the story.

It was an Interarms Mini Mark X chambered in 223. These are sometimes called 'Mini Mausers' but other than the bolt shroud, they are almost a duplicate of the little Sako L461 actions. They were imported in the '80's by Interarms, then by Charles Daly and finally by Remington as the Model 799. With the 20" barrel, it's a bit over 6 1/2 lbs.

Paul Harvey time now ("...the rest of the story"). When I tried to pull the bolt back, it hung up and really got tight. It had a nice, newer Nikon 3-9 in low cheapo rings on a Weaver one piece base so I thought the bolt might simply be hitting the power ring on the scope. Nope.

One of the sales guys stop by at that time and tells me about it. Seems like they took it in on trade for a new Christensen Arms double throw down, carbon fiber barrelled rig in some Creedmore KoolAide chambering and really didn't check it out. He says it shouldn't be on the rack and it's headed to their gunsmithing area to get checked out. Then he says he'd be really happy if it just went away so the shop charges wouldn't be assessed against it and get tacked on to the price before it came back out for sale. Guy must be a fly fisherman 'cuz he dropped that bait right in front of a fish that can't resist any gun that justs needs me to make it all good again. "Get it out of here with the scope and leave $419 at the register" was the final set of the hook. Had Jeremy Wade from River Monsters been standing there, I would have heard him say: "Fish ON!"

As it looked:

From working with some Sakos, I had a pretty good idea where to look for the bolt binding and sure enough, there it was. The guide bar for the bolt is retained by a small roll pin through the guide bar. The guide bar normally fits really snug in the raceway...maybe .003-.004 clearance. Around the roll pin area, the guide bar was bowed just slightly and had a raised area on both flat surfaces where the roll pin went through..making it tight in the rear raceway. A little light stoning and it worked smoothly. Here's the roll pin area:

The back of the barrel had some scratch marks and sure enough...the extractor was hitting the back of the barrel. Some careful work with a diamond file took it back to about .010 clearance. Pics not great but you get the idea:

Taking the barrelled action out of the stock showed a bunch of stress in the bedding as the barrel moved about 1/16" up at the front of the fore end when the actions screws were loosened. Pillars are in now and it will get bedded in a couple of days:

My plan is to rescue the little devil, redo the stock, mount some good, lightweight bases and rings, feed it some good hand loads and see if we can't end up with a handy little rifle for predator calling or for walk around 'dog whacking w/o a lot of dollars invested.

If there's any interest, I'll update this as it goes.

Good shootin'. -Al

 

[AlNyhus]

Floating in the bedding today. Now the hard part....resisting the urge to pull it out before 24 hrs.

With the action side rails just resting on a thin sliver of stock material, I removed the side receiver rail contacts areas and did a simple two point bedding job. Stock sides and mag box area have been enlarged for no contact. The recoil lug bottom was really rough with a lot of casting marks, etc. Thought about setting it up on the mill and taking .015-.020 off to make it flat. In the end, I did a skim coat of thinned JB Weld across the bottom of the lug to fill in the defects, prior to bedding. Plus, actual milling gets beyond the reach of most home gun tinkerers. I still want this to reflect what the average gunny guy can do at home.

The sides and mag box area still needed to have some final work and sealing done here. Not much of a pic, just grabbed this with the phone, not a camera.

 

[AlNyhus]

Bedding the bases to the receiver. Bases have the anodizing removed from the bottoms, bedding compound applied to the bases, and screws lightly started. Mold release wax everywhere where you don't want it to stick. You can see the bedding compound oozing:

Some old Bushnell rings I use for bedding Weaver bases are put on the bases. Then, the ring lapping bar is set into the rings. The weight of the bar aligns the bases vertically and horizontally:

 

[AlNyhus]

Fitted the rings and started lapping. This is after 15 strokes with the lapping bar....very, very little contact. No knock on the rings as there's just a lot of tolerances that can stack up. But that's why you lap and then bed the rings.

As close to 100% contact between the bases and receiver and rings to scope tube gives a stress free mounting system that ensures repeatability. Repeatability is essential to accuracy. Also, once the rings are bedded they become pretty much 'universal' for any subsequent scopes. For ring bedding, AccraGlas Gel is better than any of the harder bedding style compounds. It has a percentage of Nylon in it that gives just enough flexibility to conform to the scope tubes w/o leaving any marks....similar to the Burris Posi Line inserts.

Rings are lapped and bedded, parting lines relieved, ready to go. I love how the ring tops come up to 'tight' instantly when they're correctly bedded...like the action screws on a well done pillar bedding job.

The tops were the same so they got the same treatment:

Been futzin' with the trigger and with some careful stoning and smoothing, it breaks at 1.5 lbs. with no creep, a bunch of sear engagement and the safety still functions fine.

 

[AlNyhus]

Got back to it a little bit this weekend. Rummaged around and found a Sinclair bore guide that needed the O.D. reduced to fit in the raceway. That done, I cleaned the beejeezus out of the bore with Butch's Bore Shine and then got after it with some J.B. paste. With a tight patch on the cleaning rod, it appears to be twisted 1:12. The throat appears to be pretty long, as expected.

These little 7X10-12-14 mini lathes really come in handy for little projects like the bore guide.

 

[AlNyhus]

Finished the wood work...smoothed some edges and eliminated the grip cap. Did a sand colored epoxy finish, then broke out the airbrush and added some black webbing for a bit of texture and followed that with a matte epoxy clear coat.

With this 16 oz. Weaver V16 4-16X44 scope, it's 7lbs, 2oz. all up. Could pare 4 ozs. with a short little Leupold 3-9X33 A.O. that's on hand, also. It's a bit butt heavy and the longer Weaver balances it pretty well, though.

Total tab figures out like so:

$448.33 - gun incl Nikon 3-9 scope incl. tax
$21.90 - Leupold Rifleman Weaver style rings incl. tax
$14.83 - Weaver two piece bases incl. tax (replaced the one pc base it came with as it had very little contact area to the receiver)
$12.82 - rattle can sand colored epoxy paint
$2.16 - two 6X1.00 mm Allen head button screws to replace the flat head screws for the trigger guard.

The Pro Bed and the aluminum round stock for the pillars was on hand, as was the Delrin bore guide that was cut down to fit this action. The black paint for the airbrush webbing and matte epoxy clear was also here from some other stock jobs I've done.

So, the total was $500.04. A pal needed a decent scope for his daughters new Tikka 308 deer rifle so the Nikon that came on this gun headed his way for $125.00. So all in, it looks like $375.04 for everything, less a scope. The Weaver I put on it was a NIB one from when they were discontinued years ago that I've been saving for...well, you never know!

As soon as it warms up a bit, I'll get the Bargain Basement Mini-Mouser out and see how it shoots.

 

[SSL]

Awesome find and great write-up on your process. Please keep us posted on how she shoots.

 

[hnts4fun]

Please continue posting. I just bought a Zastava "mini" in 223 and found your write up interesting and informative. Thank you!

 

[boltfluter]

Enjoyed your story. Very good write up. Looking forward to the range report.

Paul

 

[matthias]

Very nice work . I love the mini mark x rifles. Don't tell too many people about them. Prices are going up.

 

[AlNyhus]

These are still available from Zastava U.S.A. as their model M85 in 22 Hornet, 223 and 22-250. I just talked with them the other day and sourced a couple spare extractors.

They have their quirks but nothing too big. -Al

 

[jackson1]

Al great write up and pictures. That how I like to spend my winter days, Can't wait to see how she shoots. Again thanks Al.

 

[Twicepop]

Myself and two other shooting buddies had these, they were great little rifles and an "almost" copy of a SAKO Vixen action. One of the guys had an action only and went to get it barreled and then the problem arose. The extractor wasn't solidly attached to the bolt, it was only staked to the bolt body and fell off. He spent a lot of money getting the extractor firmly affixed to bolt so the project could go forward. The one I had and the other shooting buddy also had the same problem (staked extractor) and we both got rid of them so as to not have the same expensive problem. Later versions of these actions had this problem corrected.

 

[STOMP442]

Awesome project. Makes me a bit sad to see that nice walnut covered up but that webbing job looks good. How are you doing the webbing with an air brush?

 

[AA Ron]

Great job Al!

I got one of these rifles for christmas back when I was in middle school. They sold for $235 in the Walter Craig catalog back then which was '89 I believe. My dad bought one for a buddy and was impressed so thats what I ended up with, still have it. He put a Redfield 1 3/4-5x in Weaver rings on it and that little rifle stoked with 26.5gr of BLC-2, CCI 400's and Hornady 50gr SX's followed me everywhere for years. Im not at home right now but could rattle off the 4 digit serial number off the top of my head without even thinking about it! Thanks for the great write up!

Aaron

 

[AlNyhus]

Between the race car shop, helping a family member build a new home and crappy weather, my time just hasn't been there to sort this gun out.

Today was cloudy with winds from the NE at 14-17. With a few hours free time, I grabbed the gun and headed to the range with 10 rounds I'd tossed together a couple weeks ago. Load was a book minimum of 24.0 of AA2230, a 40 gr. Sierra Blitz King seated with .075 of the shank in the neck, Fed std 205's in used R-P cases sized with a .248 neck bushing. Since these little guns have a history of needing the bases to be shimmed, I decided just to head out and get on paper to minimize the jacking around that might happen on the first real range session.

Bore sighting and adjusting the scope at 100 yds, the first shot was 4" high and 3" right. Not too bad, all things considered. The next five shots seemed to indicate things were good though it seemed like it had some vertical in it. With four shots remaining, I hung a new target. After the first shot, I gave it 6 clicks left and fired this 3 shot group. Lots of vertical as the load is obviously too light. But not too shabby for the first group out of this old gun rack reject. Didn't even stick any flags out.....

Will continue as soon as the weather cooperates and keep going up with the 2230.

Good shootin'. -Al

 

[AlNyhus]

Yesterday wasn't exactly the kind of day to be testing with blustery and switchy winds from 15-25+. But around here, you either deal with shooting in windy conditions or stay home and mow the yard, so....

The previous bright spot of AA2230 proved to be a disaster as I went up in charge weight, giving big globby 3 shot groups well over 1". After that poor showing, I decided to jump right to WW748 next as it's always done well in any 223 I've shot it in. If 748 didn't show some improvement, that would be a good indicator that this barrel would be good for a jack handle and not much else. After a thorough cleaning (that 2230 was some dirty stuff) and a couple of foulers with 748, it perked right up. A bullet of vertical at 26.0, a round group at 26.5 and no vertical at 27.0. Since the winds were directly at 3:00 at that point, I decided to load three at 27.0 and just shoot with the flags in the same spot but disregard the wind speed changes. Over the years, that's proven to be a good way to test any load for vertical.....just let the push and the letoffs do what they do and see how the load reacts. The caveat is, there can't be any vertical component in the wind...it needs to be as close to a 3:00 or 9:00 direction as you can get.

Here's what it looked like...close to 1.5" of condition:

I wanted to quick shoot a three shot group but by the time I'd loaded three more, the flags had started moving and the winds were picking up some more. After about 15 minutes, the flags pretty well settled down to a 5:00 position...the absolute worst condition to shoot at my home range. Up and down vertical poppers are the norm in this condition on this range. Anyway, I made a scope adjustment to the left and shot this 3 shot group over about 10 minutes..still lost one out the bottom to the conditions.

Monday looks to be warmer with reasonable wind direction so I'll go verify the load and if it still hangs in there, swap the test scope out for the little Burris Compact, zero it at 200 yards and call it good.

My goals for this project when I started it was to end up with a light weight little knock around gun that would shoot honest 1/2" 3 shot groups with the Nosler 40 BTip, Hornady 40 gr. VMax, Sierra 40 gr. Blitz King, etc. And it looks like we're there.

The throat on this chamber is so long that even a 52 gr. conventional flat based BIB BR bullet can't get to the lands. I made the decision to just seat any bullet I was testing so that .075 of the bullets shank was in the case neck and wherever that was relative to the lands..so be it. The ammo needs to feed from the magazine without any chance of the bullet getting tweaked or knocked out of the neck in a hunting situation. The Nosler 40 BTip has shown to be very, very tolerant of long jumps to the lands so it got the nod for initial testing. And it's performed just as it always has, which is excellent. I've got thousands of the Nosler 40 gr. BTips on hand and scads of WW748 so that's worked out well, also. On a related note, if you haven't tried the 'new' 748 since WW powders have been brought into the Hodgden fold, you should. Same characteristics as the old 748 for metering, etc. but it's a lot cleaner.

Here's a couple other pics from he range yesterday. The Hart Accuracy Asset makes testing a sporter-stocked rifle a breeze. It goes on to the sling swivel stud and fits into a 3" bag. If you test sporter-style guns, you know how frustrating it can be to get them to behave in the front bag.

"Does this scope scope make my butt look big?"

 

[AlNyhus]

Further testing with H4198, H322 and Benchmark proved rewarding. Benchmark gave nice, round groups with no vertical with four consecutive 3 shot groups averaging in the mid .5's. -Al

 

[HardyJ]

To you guys that have updated your Mini Mauser. Do you have a good gunsmith that you would recommend to barrel a Mini. I have an action that I purchased 25 years ago new and want to barrel and chamber it for 6-223. I have searched the Phoenix, AZ area and not a a single gunsmith will touch it.
Any referrals would be appreciated.

 

[matthias]

Why won't they do the barrel job? That seems off. Its is just like any other barrel job. Metric threads , small receiver pretty much like a howa mini action. Just way classier.