Building a ZF41 fake/repro/shooter

[Claven2]

This is a cross-post from another forum I frequent that you guys might find interesting. The goal was 2-part: 1) build a nice ZF41 range shooter while 2) at the same time educating people about K98 fakes, how the fakery/humping is done, and to a certain extent what to look for.

Note that I left lots of post-war markings intact below the wood line since I have no intention of ever passing this rifle off as original

Original build posts follow.
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So I was looking for a project to toy with when I dropped by my local gun shop in time to stop the smith from destroying this barrelled receiver to get it off his book. Supposedly it USED to be a vet bring back that was clearly improperly stored. It included the receiver, barrel, front sight assembly and rear sight assembly MINUS the sight ramp (!?!). No bolt, no bottom metal, no stock, etc. Evidently the smith sold the stock to someone and the owner that brought it in and gave it to the smith sold the rest on e-bay some time ago.

Everything (receiver included) looked like the barrel before I started cleaning it, but the barrel exterior is FAR worse pitted than the receiver which is mostly intact.






The barrel, believe it or not, had a bore that WAS like new before being stored with a clot of mud up near the muzzle, so 80% of it is perfect (despite outside looks) and the muzzle is fatally pitted with heavy corrosion rings for 1cm of the bore - in other words, the bbl is toast. The receiver only had minimal scattered light pitting and is a cool salvageable late-war byf44 receiver that hasn't been buffed, sanded, capture marked or anything.

An action screw was broken off in the receiver - I got it out, but DAMN. Not easy.



This is NOT economically a good idea, but it will be fun, so I'm going to save it and build a ZF41 from nothing. It's economically wiser to start with an RC, yugo capture or something like that - which is what Mitchell's Mausers would do. They also would not care about using period-correct parts, which makes a build mode expensive. I have SOME of the parts already. I have all the bits to build up the receiver, I have bottom metal, spring, follower. I also have a take off barrel from an East German refurb of another byf44 with an as-new bore.

I have a reproduction ZF41 mount base on the way (from e-bay France) and repro scope and mount from Germany also en-route. Trying to reach mario for a stock (god he's hard to contact!!!). Still no luck finding a bolt. I really only need a stripped bolt, have virtually all the other parts. I'll post some pics as I progress.

Tonight I sweated the front and rear sight base off the "new" barrel while I wait for parts. The receiver is soaking in evapo-rust to clean out the remaining pits. The solder work on the bbl is going to necessitate a blue job for the barrelled action anyhow. It's going to get a caustic dip blue like originally used in late 1944 before going to the phosphate finish to match how this gun originally shipped.

It's a "shooter" but I'm trying for period correct and maker correct parts for a byf44 zf41, where feasible

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Well here is the receiver after an overnight soak in evaporust. Not that bad. The tang will need a small bit of filing to clean up the tip. Undecided if I want to touch up any other pitting at the expense of some of the machien marks, or just blue it over as-is.







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ok, so I lightly filed the surface scale off the tang, nothing drastic and put the whole receiver back into the evaporust to soak some more - there's still active rust in the bottom of some of the pitting. I'm also chemically cleaning the original rear sight assembly and bolt stop. All that stuff will get reblued.

I got the original front and rear sight bases off my "new" east german barrel.

Sadly, this project will have to go on HOLD until I can source a WW2 nazi bolt. Anyone wishing to contact me by pm to sell a bolt and get this project moving again would be most welcome!

Without the bolt I can't index and headspace the barrel which prevents the next step, to re-attach sights once the bbl is indexed for headspace. K98k barrels typically don't interchange as a drop-in fit, so you have to re-index the sights once headspace is set.

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I'm also waiting for parts I've already ordered. My repro ZF41 mount comes with one of those adaptors that replaces the rear sight ramp, but I won't be using that. Instead I have a proper ZF41 base coming from France that replaces the entire rear sight mount that is soldered to the barrel.

I also have period-correct byf stamped bottom trigger guard and floorplate inbound. I already have a mag spring and stamped follower to use with that. I have a selection of stock bands lying about, front sight, original sight hood, proper byf44 trigger set, etc.

The only parts I have not definitely secured are the stock (have several lines on stock sets) and a bolt - which is proving more difficult than I would have thought. K98k bolts are dirt-common, but murphy's law dictates that as soon as you actually need one, they all vanish.

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Well I progressed a few little things on this project. Now before anyone freaks out, let me be clear:

1) YES, I am faking some of these parts. Some call it "humping". Essentially what we are talking about is taking a common K98k part and making it into a less common part and then re-serializing it to match the rifle where appropriate. No, this would not be ethical if I were doing it to improve the sale-ability of a rifle for monetary gain by representing it as original - DO NOT DO THAT!!! (it's fraud, really).

2) NO, I am not doing this to be unethical. My build will be clearly marked as a reproduction below the wood line and I am NOT going to hump any parts that aren't visible when the rifle is assembled, so a cursory disassembly will show the rifle to be NOT MATCHING. For example, I will probably leave the firing pin mis-matched. It does happen to be out of a byf44 though. Be careful though, serious fakesters are not so concerned about your well being as I am

3) Pay VERY close attention to what I am doing here in some of these posts. This should help newbies detect FAKES. As a machinist, I think I'm pretty decent at "counterfeiting" 1944 era MO parts. And no, I have not done / will not do this and sell an "improved" rifle as original. Others have and will. Hopefully you all learn something here.

4) I hope that my posting this stuff on the net, while informative and entertaining, will serve as proof that I'm clearly not hiding this rifle's lineage to any future prospective owner. Though honestly I don't plan to ever sell it - it's going to be my range rifle for when I get sick of wearing my glasses and trying to see fine iron sights - lol.

The goal of this project is, within reason and without making this clone too indiscernable from the real thing, to make the rifle resemble a real one. I am not using a WW2 barrel, so though it will outwardly look original, a close inspection will show the post-war proofs on the bbl. A serious faker would weld over those markings, surface-anneal the welds, and stamp new markings. I could do that, but I'm not a fraud artist

Now obviously I started with a bare receiver so a matching bolt would a miracle to find. I have a stripped, mismatched, late-war byf bolt on the way which will be "skillfully force matched" (I hate that term!) to show you guys how convincing fake markings can get. I already have all the small bits, most of them actual oberndorf production, with a real mix of serial numbers which will be made to appear matching.

Let's start with the cocking piece. Late war Oberndorf cocking pieces are just like mid-war cocking pieces from any manufacturer except without a WaA. Somewhere in 1944 they started using a 5 digit serial number with a letter suffix. MO bolt parts only had the last 4 digits stamped on them. My receiver is an f block so all 4 digits were used on all bolt parts except the extractor which was either un-numbered or had only 2 digits by '44. Later (I think around h block?) MO changed to only putting 4 digits on the shroud and bolt, the rest of the parts getting only the last 2 digits.



Here is a mid-war WaA37 cocking piece chucked into the lathe. These are pretty glass hard, so you need to use a carbide cutter to do a skim cut and turn it into a "fresh" part. Since we are trying to duplicate a late-war piece, I'll leave some machining marks on the back of the cocking piece, unlike the smooth surface on this earlier part. A poor fake would look smooth and irregular because the amateur would use a file and sandpaper to scrub the old markings. Better fakes use real manual lathes and mills to duplicate the original manufacturing process as we are doing here. Some basic polishing was done to radius the outer lip as per the K98k drawing for cocking pieces. I happen to have 2mm a number stamp set that is a dead ringer for 1944 era Oberndorf production. The sanitized part is mounted in a heavy vise and a heavy ball peen is used to apply new numbers. They should be deeply stamped. You then put the cocking piece BACK into the lathe and re-polish the rear surface with 120 grit. MO parts were always re-polished after being serialized to de-burr the stampings. Finally you ream the hole out to .216" to eliminate any distortion form the stamping process and ensure a smooth fit of the cocking piece.

When this part is blued, it will look real. How to detect it may be fake? Well, you cannot scrub a cocking piece without the rear of the firing pin standing a bit proud. This can be hidden by slightly trimming the FP tail. The cocking piece could be mounted on a known "good" firing pin and if the edge of the domed tail sticks above the cocking piece surface more than a few thou, it's a re-numbered part. Period.



Next, I needed some late-war scews to use in my stamped trigger guard. Although lock screws were typically no longer in use, MO continued to use up scalloped screws. In this case, I had a post-war East German rear action screw and an early numbered front screw. these were mounted in the lathe and the serial number removed from the one and the dome turned flat on the other. These now look like typical rough and un-polished late-war screws. When making a replica gun, it's little details like this that make it look convincing.



Here we see the original rear sight assembly (factory un-numbered, but "WM" proofed on the inside) that was still present on the original barrel, but badly rusted. In this case the pitting has largely been removed and the part filed to 180 grit to replicate the original late-war finish. After re-blueing it will look factory fresh.



More to come.

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