Long Time Readers will know of my fondness for full-stocked rifles like the SMLE. Try this beauty on for size, at Steve Barnett’s Very Very Bad Place:
Okay, it looks beautiful, and the chambering is of course excellent — the 8mm Mauser cartridge is adequate for almost any purpose, like its Murkin .30-06 counterpart — but I have a couple of reservations about the Mannlicher flat or “butter-knife” bolt handle.
You see, it’s lovely to look at and of course it works very well; but after more than half a dozen shots, that sharp edge starts to hurt your hand. Granted, in the hunting activity, you seldom have to shoot more than a couple of times in a row — unless things are going very, very wrong — but I must say I prefer a regular rounded bolt handle like this one to the butterknife above:
But would I shy away from the Brno (later named CZ) if offered? Hell, no.
And this little short-barreled carbine would be extremely handy in the field.
I guess you could temporarily wrap it with tape and remove it when done. shrug…
Beautiful rifle! I haven’t tried a rifle with the butter knife bolt handle. I’m surprised that most bolt action rifles have a big ole’ ball on the end of the bolt handle. I would think other shapes would be far easier to manufacture.
Beautiful rifle. A well done Mannlicher stock just calls out to me.
I hate to compare it, but it looks to my eyes as if they refined and polished up the lines of the Ruger M77 International, but I expect that it’s rather that both spring from the same root and the Ruger just wasn’t as well done. I find the buttstock to be quite similar, but the Brno looks to have the tiniest bit of curvature to its forend, while the Ruger has always struck me as looking as though they drew a straight line from the front of the floorplate to the forend tip cap.
Overall, the actual Mannlicher Schoenauer carbine stock is the one that always gets me, with that voluptuous compound curve in the forend. Up to 5 now as I appear to have zero sales resistance to them. While on the subject, their butterknife bolt handle isn’t a faceted bunch of edges. Form over function seems to have gotten hold of the Czechs on the pictured one. Pretty, and it’s probably not sharp enough to make one truly miserable or leave one bleeding from running it energetically, so maybe not a huge issue.