Alot of smiths back in the day did things like that but that does not mean the receivers were designed for modern high pressure loadings.
The reason the receivers hold together is because most bolt action receivers have a significant amount of over build into them to give a safety cushion with the rounds they were designed to shoot.
That is why the M96 will handle these rounds in most cases, however, they were not designed around these types of cases so it is impossible to say how they will perform over a long period of time.
Always look at the chamberings offered with the original receiver design and that will tell you what rounds you should pick from if you want to build a rifle on them.
Personally, in this day and age, I have no desire to pay some Lawyers kids way through college!!!
Using a receiver because its cheap or because its there is not the right way to do things unless you keep the project in the relm of the original receiver design.
It may be of interest to many here that I just rebuilt a M98 that a customer brought in to me with problem chambering fired brass. The rifle was build on an argentine M98 originally chambered in 8mm mauser I believe the customer said.
It was not barreled to a 416 Taylor. The problem was easy to see, the top portion of the bolt face was actually collapsing under the bolt thrust generated by the belted magnum round. In fact it had recessed nearly 20 thou!!!!
The problem was that when a round would fire, it would take on this cant on the case head and when it was tried to be chambered again, if the head did not match up with the cant on the bolt face, it simply would not chamber for obvious reasons.
We had to switch out that spoiled receiver for a newer interarms M98 clone originally designed for the belted magnum chamberings.
Point being, there are so many old mausers out there with questionable heat treating in their bolt heads and receivers that it is simply foolish to use them for modern high pressure loadings unless their original design was for this purpose.
Back in the day, they did not have many options for custom receivers and the Mauser was the standby and that is why you saw everyone use them. With the proper heat treating a M98 would certainly be able to handle the pressures of a 22-250 and 308 but you are talking about a company that knew what they had and what they were doing and I believe they reheat treated all their receivers before building on them. That is not the case with most smiths that use the Mausers simply because they are cheap and easy to get.
Just my opinion, but use them at your own risk. I would never do it for a customer and chambering one for a belted magnum is simply nonsense in my opinion. Take it for what you will, just another opinion.
Kirby Allen(50)
