Pippin89 wrote:Pete wrote:The Musgrave is an "improved" Mauser, a single shot very accurate target rifle, whereas the Parker-Hale is a standard Mauser AFAIK, with a magazine well.
Still an excellent tool, though, especially if you can find one with the later Spanish made action and a Brindles trigger
My current 6BR is a Musgrave, and we ran a PH 1200TX for a couple of years.
Pete
Thanks for the clarification. I have an M98 in a target stock. Its an older one with a fixed mag but I have got a follower to convert it to single shot.
All you do there is fill he hole in the action floor. Given an equally large hole in the top of the action, you have a design with two large, heavy chunks of metal held together by relatively shallow side rails that have been machined and thinned with bolt raceways. Nothing wrong with that as many accurate rifles have been built on M98 actions, but not as good as one designed for single-shot competition from the drawing board. The Swing/Paramount/ RPA series and Musgrave have stronger receivers and far fewer openings - just a smaller 308 length loading / ejection port on one side.
Many P-Hs use enhanced military M98s (P-H bought 98 actions from the Spanish government La Corunna arsenal - Americans usually call them Santa Barbara actions after the name of the Californian US distributor), but later models used the '98 bolt alone surrounded by a P-H designed and manufactured single-shot action, a perfectly good one. This was the various P-H M84 single-shot models, M86 repeating police and military model with a magazine opening machined into the floor, and the further enhanced M85 entrant to the UK MoD sniper rifle procurement trials (an excellent rifle, but it lost out to the Accuracy International entrant).
In practical terms, there's little between a Musgrave RSA Target Rifle and an M84, choice depending more on how well the stock fits and crucially in buying such a secondhand rifle, the barrel make, round count and condition. P-H made its own hammer forged barrels which were rarely as good as a cut or button-rifled Krieger, Maddco, Border etc put on a Musgrave or Swing. Very few of these 1970s/80s rifles still bear their originals (and most that do are shot out), so what has been put on subsequently and its condition is vital to how well it'll now shoot.
Iron match rearsights also wear out after decades of use and being clicked up and down and across thousands of times, play building up in their dovetail joints. P-H made its own sights and they weren't as good as many of the others in use and on older rifles they tend to be worn out. Replacing such a rearsight is an expensive business and many Swings, RPAs, Musgraves have had them replaced / upgraded by highly competitive owners over their lives - what's on a rifle and its age / condition has a considerable effect on what Fultons price a TR rifle at. I wouldn't say that no P-H owner ever put a new, higher-grade rearsight on, but such will be in the hen's teeth category whereas many higher grade makes will sport a later model less-used example, also adjustable height foresight assembly which may or may not be desirable to you depending on whether you plan to shoot long-range.
Second-hand TR rifles can be a bit like used cars - cheap can get you on the road/range but the shortcomings become apparent after a while and you end up buying twice instead of once.
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