k31 7.5x55 question

[Jason F]

I just picked up one of these rifles,do they make aftermarket stocks for these guns

[shot1]

I saw some wood sporter stocks on Boyds web site.  I have done A LOT of hand load work with these rifles. IMR 4064 seems to be THE powder with everything from 125 to 168 gr bullets. The accuracy loads listed in the Sierra manual are right on the money as to the powder load. You will need to seat your bullets much shorter for the K-31 than those listed in the manuals. The manuals use the older model M1911 Schmidt Rubin to do their work up and they have much longer throats. Make you up a split neck dummy round case. Saw a line on one side of the neck of a case down to the start of the shoulder and FL size the case. Place the bullet you want to use in the neck of the case by hand and then place in the chamber of the rifle and close the bolt. When the bullet hits the lands it will push the bullet back into the case. Carefully remove the case and measure the OAL. This is your to the lands OAL. You can pull the bullet out of that case and use it again. Seat the bullet 10 thousands deeper for your loads to start with. You can play with seating depth some to see if you get better accuracy. These rifles are shooters. Most will benefit from a new crown job which you can do with a brass stove bolt chucked in a drill using slow speed and valve grinding compound. You can get a clamp on scope mount from St. Marie that really works well. Have fun and good shooting.

[1911crazy]

These stocks really clean up nice if you take your time to refinish the orginal wood.  I even ended up steaming the dents out of the wood too.  If you do it carefully you can't even tell its been refinished.  I take the wood down to 600 grit paper then to 0000 steelwool between coats of tung oil. With the black on the butt stocks most of it will disappear too.  Out of 8 stocks i had one that didn't fully clean up.  I like the orginal stock with the scope look.
 
For the orginal barrel length St Marie offers a barrel dampener only(threaded on) or a barrel dampener with a muzzle brake(screws on).  I guess there maybe some harmonics with the longer barrel.  I never thought of shortening it.   I'd like to set it up for shooting the swiss GP11 ammo and my 175gr USGI FMJBT sniper rounds too, to see which one will shoot flatter and better.  They i'll try the 180gr psp bullets for my deer hunting.  I been after an unusuallly large monster buck but never see it, i see just the tracks.  I figure a very long shot will take it out.

[Jason F]

thanks for all the info,i think i am gonna redo stock on it to keep it original

[Richard P]

 That's the spirit we want.

[prairiedog555]

I have 2, a birch and a walnut.  I am kind of afraid to separate stock from action to finish it because I read that they were custom shimmed for accuracy.

[james]

I couldn't find an after market stock either, so I made one.