There are a lot of old damn Mausers out there. And not everyone who caught COVID died from it. Only about 1,000,000 American's did, and they were old geezers, so no one remembers, and no one cares.
Look, the older something is, the more skeptical I am about it. Shall I say, the burden of proof for some antique, proving that it is safe, should be higher, than something new. And yet, there are enough poorly made modern arms on forums, things with cracked lugs, blown barrels, that even new stuff occasionally gives way. Something with 70 year old, or 110 year old steels, made in pre vacuum tube technologies, I think those that claim such things are safe at 60,000 to 80,000 psia loads, they need to develop a non destructive process that proves the material is good. Usually these things don't blow on the first shot, it takes time for the lugs to pound the receiver seats in, and that's when the fun starts!
Pressures, Case Strength and Back Thrust
https://www.longrangehunting.com/articles/pressures-case-strength-and-back-thrust.396/
I have the remains of a Mauser M98 action that was totally destroyed with a standard loaded .22-250 cartridge when the headspace became too long, allowing the case to separate. The brass cartridge head was welded into the ejector slot in the locking lug and part of the case body at the end of the web area expanded and formed between the bolt face and the butt of the barrel in a tight manner, looking a lot like it had been melted and poured into the gap. I had to remove the barrel in order to open the action. Incidentally, the shooter ended up in the hospital emergency room for removal of metal and carbon fragments, his eyes being saved by the glasses he was wearing. All of this was brought about by the failure of the brass case when the soft M98 locking lug seats finally pounded back far enough to make the headspace too long. Perhaps I should add here that Mauser actions are not heat treated like our modern factory actions. They are made from relatively soft carbon steel and then only surface hardened, case hardened, for a very thin, hard surface. When these M98s are reconditioned many shops will lap the locking lugs and often will cut the thin, hard surface completely away, leaving only the soft carbon steel underneath to hold the pounding of the bolt locking lugs in the future. They will pound back over a period of time resulting in too much headspace and a wrecked rifle...or worse.
I have seen nothing to indicate that Mauser, or Yugoslavia, or FN, or or anyone else building 8mm military Mauser actions built these military actions to a higher pressure standard. The average pressure did rise by a couple of thousands in WW2, that may have been because the Military was willing to accept a reduced service life, or that they thought improved production processes produced a cleaner steel. But these rifles were made to a price point, by managers who were only interested in meeting the minimum requirements. No one built military actions out of higher grade materials, or for higher pressure applications, so anyone could regularly use 60,000 psia cartridges in the things one hundred years after the managers and workers retired from this plane of existence.
The risks of higher pressure loads is bolt lug cracking and receiver seat set back, and possibly receiver ring cracking. The shooting community knows what headspace is, but hardly know what cartridge case protrusion is. Cartridge case protrusion is far more safety critical, and headspace gages are a simple means to determine if cartridge case protrusion is correct. If headspace is growing, it is not going to be due to the chamber shoulder moving forward, it will be due to the lugs deforming or the receiver seats seating back. And if enough case sidewall is pull from the chamber, the case head will rupture.
And I don't want to be behind a rifle in which the receiver fails.
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A bud of mine had a CMP M1903A3 drill rifle receiver. It looked new. He had ground off the tack welds and it looked perfect. He barreled it, shot it, and the headspace grew. He put in a longer bolt, and the head space continued to grow. That's when he took the barrel off. What we concluded was, when the rifle was demilled, someone with an acetylene torch had heated the receiver ring to set the tack welds. That took away the heat treatment and made the steel soft. Which did not matter as a metal rod was pounded into the chamber and the rifle was never supposed to be fired again. I suspect the owner of the above receiver was not as technical minded, the lugs/receiver set back, and ka pow!
Here is an historical low number M1903, and the face of its last owner.
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There is stuff out, post WW2, that was always dangerous, and not everyone knows.
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The shooter above was lucky. I talked to a guy who is a consultant to a major importer and major firearm manufacturer in product liablity cases. I had only a little time to talk, between targets at a Regional. I asked if he had been on a case where someone had died due to a defective firearm, and he had not. However, he remembered lawsuits where the shooter lost eye sockets, lower jaws, had a rifle bolt blow through the jaw and shoulder, and lost hands.
I am going to tell you, the more you shoot, the more you will personally experience malfunctions that catastrophically destroy a firearm part, and you will talk to people who have seen worse. And once burnt, you get twice shy.
It only takes one ship wreck to understand, charging at full speed, at night, through an ice field, is probably not a good idea. Sometimes, they learn too late. Glug, glug.
When anyone asks me how I can best describe my experience in nearly forty years at sea, I merely say, uneventful. Of course there have been winter gales, and storms and fog and the like. But in all my experience, I have never been in any accident... or any sort worth speaking about. I have seen but one vessel in distress in all my years at sea. I never saw a wreck and never have been wrecked nor was I ever in any predicament that threatened to end in disaster of any sort.
Edward J. Smith, 1907, Captain, RMS Titanic
