Five Action Lengths

by WARREN PAGR

     The true novelty of this rifle lies entirely in the idea of relating action length to cartridge length. As practicing gun nuts you are presumably familiar with the fact that no American made action is turned out in more than two lengths. One European type (the Czech-made BRNOs in the ZKK models) has been available in three lengths. As gun nuts you’re a all aware of certain basic facts: that  a standard or 30-60-length-action, roughly an inch longer than those intended for the 308 family of rounds, is also inevitably proportionately heavier and slower to operate (where and when when weight is not needed); that an action long enough to handle the 375 H&H looks pretty silly digesting a 222; that, conversely, jamming a cartridge into an action length which is marginally short for it—the 6.5 Remington or 350 Remington magnum into the M600, for example—may place ballistic limits on the round’s performance by limiting the case volume. That’s why you can now buy the normal-length M700 rifle in 6.5 Remington Magnum, for example.

     What the people at Steyr have done is to plan 5 basic actions, all alike save in longitudinal dimensions (and also in the fatness of the magazine area, naturally) tailored for each of 5 categories of cartridge. Four of these rifles, the centerfires, are in production as this is typed; the rimfire will be along during 1970 and will in most details save length duplicate the centerfires’ operating principles.

     The SL series, shortest of the 4 centerfires, has been made for three years. I first tested one in 1967. Equipped with a Weaver V9 scope and weighing only 7 1/2 pounds it shot better than most rifles hefting half again as much. Remington factory loads with Power-Lokt .224" bullets punched clusters as tight at .769" on the average; handloads with Sierra match bullets came up .488"  for the average of five 5-shot spreads. This is a shooting iron, believe me. Its length is structly for the 222, 223, 222magnum family since the SL magazine will accommodate rounds no longer than 65 mm or 2 5/8  inches.

         The L version is one size longer, with a 76-millimeter magazine, 3 inches in our terms, and equivalent spread between the receiver bridge and the ring so the action throw is appropriate to such rounds as the 308, 243, the 22-250, and, of course, the shortcoupled metrics. Longer yet is the M series, which boasts a 92.5 mm magazine length and like action throw, to handle cartridges like our 30-06 and 270, the 7x64, and the 7.92x57, 7x57, or the 6.5x57 when their bullets are seated properly out, not shoved down against the primer hole as they must be through our "compact" or 722 lengths of action. The big one is called the S type. Its functioning length is indicated by the measurement on its magazine, 101 milimeters. That of course means it’ll take the pony-car magnums like the 264 Winchester, 7mm Remington, the 458 Winchester and the 308 Norma. It handles the shorter Weatherby cartridges, but not the 460 or 378. It will digest Holland & holland rounds (300 and 375) or others of like dimension, and of course will swallow the European blockbusters like the 8x68 , 6.5x68 or 9.3x64. Only one thing bothers me about the S type. To accommodate all those elephant-jarring rounds in its magazine, it has to be a mite portly, some might say fat, around the mid-section. Other-wise it and the little SL com out of the same pasture.

Heart of the S-M

by WARREN PAGE

      Heart and core of the New Steyr-Mannlicher—they want it called that because the design was solely conceived within the Steyr works—is a complex moulding of a synthetic developed by the Bayer people and called Makrolon. Now before you start cussing plastics consider these points. Makrolon is self-colored, so the blue-black matches the rifle’s metal parts even if you manage to cut the surface. It is stable under any humidity or wetness variation, and over temperatures from a minus 150  Fahrenheit to 275 above zero, which is more than 50 above boilling. You’re not about to encounter temperatures beyond either, not during this life. It will neither scratch like aluminum nor rust like steel. It is tough beyond  belief. After watching an engineer pound on the table with parts made from Makronlon I tried to go him one better by whanging a steel chair leg with the one long thin-walled piece that in aBew Mannlicher constitutes the triggerguard floor section, and magazine liner-box. I hurt my hand, not the synthetic.

       The same substance is used for the detachable rotary-spool magazine(modeled closely after the original Schoenauer feeding device)that slickly feeds the New Mannlicher with, in any given caliber, one more round than is usual today in commercial bolt action magazines of that caliber. Five 30-60 cartridges, for example,not four. Four fat magnums, not three.

      The Makrolon element becomes heart and core of the New SteyrMannlicher for these reasons: 1) it permits the magazine, trigger guard and floorplate weight to be kept minimal, thus keeps gross weight down; 2) by eliminating a whole slew of complex milling/stamping operations, it permits magazine and guard parts to be made for several different lengths of rifle action (actually 5) without shoving the retail price up through the roof; 3) it makes possible a stiffer rifle since the recoil lug can be positioned so that it bears at the rear of the whole action, not under the breech end of the barrel, to keep receiver and barrel “working” as one unit. Without Makrolon, in fact, the real newness of this Mannlicher would’ve been impossible.

THE NEW MANNLICHER RIFLES

by WARREN PAGE

The new mid-lugged, low-lift 60-degree Steyr-Mannlicher action-with a mere nod to herr Schoenauer-comes in five basic lengths, derives much of its excellence and strength from engineer Horst Wesp and a tough plastic called Makrolon. Field&Stream’s editor wrings out several of the new fifles, both on the range and in the Austrian gebirge for red deer and chamois.

           THE TOWN OF STEYR is located in Austria where join the Enns and the Steyr rivers, at the confluence of the greatest brown trout stream and the best water for the pike-like huchen in all of Europe. The people of Steyr seldom yodel on street corners, but lederhosen are as common as ordinary pants and wearing one of those Tyrolean-style hats rivals brandishing a beer mug as a local occupation. Steyr should be a tourist town, but it isn’t really. What Steyr is famous for is a great works, where iron and streel, swords and plow-shares, have been pounded out since the early Mikkle Ages, where firearms have been  made for the past 105 years. It’s all very well for the local Chamber of Commerce to point out that the industrial combine of Steyr-Daimler-Puch makes jillions of trucks and tractors or more jillions of motorcycles, but that gets no more tumble than do the trout in the beautiful Enns, What everybody does know is that Steyr is the home of the Mannlicher rifle.

          Ferdiand Ritter von Mannlicher—the “von” indicates that he was a nobleman—has perhaps never been so glorified as Paul Mauser in the field of bolt-action rifle development, possible because his designs were primarily produced only at Steyr and, Mannlicher being a complete patriot, chiefly for Austrian army use. His first repeating bolt action, an 11mm Austrian or.433 " is datede 1880.  In that same year Mauser had about perfected the famous 1871-'84 repeater with which the Prussians overwhelmed the French. It could be argued that Mannlicher’s rifle was the better, though more complex to manufacture, since in one version its magazine held 20 rounds!

         As far as I know the two great designers never foined forces, but Mannlicher dreamed up as many significant ideas as did Mauser, including, for example, feeicient straight-pull designs like the Model 1895  Austrian which we still see floating around, While he did not go as far into the automatic pistol field, like Mauser he ended up designing automatic rifles, Regardless of the country of usage, ass of these were produced at Steyr.

         But of all the military items, the model to become best known among sportsmen was the 1900 Greek Mannlicher-Schoenauer, on which engineer Schoenauer had collaborated to work up the spring-driven spool magazine, a device that has guaranteed smooth feeding for Mannlichers ever since. It is this 1900 version, with its complex multiple-piece bolt and mid-point hadle, which was sporterized in carbine form, weighing only 6 pounds 9 ounces in 6.5x53 with a slim, fulllength stock, with close-lying or spoonshaped bolt handle. These packets of graceful potency earned the respect, even the love, of our fathers and their fathers before them, The light, slick, handy Mannlicher, in either rifle or carbine form, imported into this country then as now by Stoeger, attracted scads of would-be- owners.

       The name Mannlicher has honestly earned its luster in sporting circles. Karamoja Bell hunted ivory with a 6.5, slew hundreds of bull elephants with it. The 6.5 carbine went with early north-country hunters like Sheldon and piled up Yukon game amazingly, the long 160-gr bullet doing well even at mild velocities. I recall seeing my first Mannlicher-Schoenauer when I was about eleven, the prized possession of one of the oldtimers who introuuced me to the outdoor world. He had never killed anything larger than a whitetail deer with it, but from the way he handled it, he very evidently would never have swapped that carbine for an 8-cylinder Wills SteClaire and a pretty new wife!

         The traditional Mannlicher-Schoenauer, despite its two grave drawbacks—the midway positioning of the bolt handle gardly helps repeat-shot speed and the split-bridge receiver provides major scope-mounting limitations—is still desired by tradition-minded European hunters. They now have available calibers like 7x64 and 8x60, more potent than the original 6.5x53, 7x57 and 8x56 combinations of the early 1900s. So the Steyr plant is still turning them out, in very limited numbers. For a while, anyway.

         What is really coming off the machining lines in quantity is a New Steyr-Manlicher,  and I mean new—or neue, as we say in Austria—New, because the design is not only new to Steyr after some 70 years but is new in its approach to several basic design problems common among sporting rifles.

photo by zastava-arm.rs