Thank you for your reply and sound advice. I intended taking it to a smith but did not want to waste anyone's time asking them to do achieve something which cannot be achieved.
Lots more Mauser rifles in the US and many, like yourself, who have lots of experience "fettling" them.
Regards
Yamavira.
These are a few things that I have learned by restoring Mausers, sometimes from bare receivers including the model 95. Jerry Kunhausen's shop manual on Mausers is pretty useful in explaining the parts interactions and how to check individual parts of the differing models as well as making sure that they function together safely and reliably.
One of the issues with military issued Mauser triggers is that for a long time, these were plain carbon steel case hardened parts. This is especially true for the older small ring actions. They are also designed for functioning in the awful conditions found in wars with almost absolute reliability. Simplicity also ensured that armorers and raw troops in the field could clean and maintain them. Thus, the springs are too heavy, the trigger is a two stage to promote safety and range competence, the clearances are generous, and the sears on small ring Mausers also have a bolt safety interlock that prevents firing if the bolt is not completely in battery. All of this weighs on the trigger pull along with the safety system.
Peter Mauser designed these to work together as a system and simply altering one of the subsystem parts, such as the trigger, doesn't do the job. To do it right and safely, you need to address each part, the bolt sleeve, the bolt channel, the firing pin, the firing pin spring, the cocking piece, the safety, the sear, the trigger, the receiver bottom where the trigger uses it as a lever, the sear spring, the sear and trigger pins. Each piece should be polished without penetrating the case hardening layer, the sear spring should be adjusted and polished, the firing pin channel polished, the firing pin itself polished, the trigger/sear pins polished and trigger/sear pin holes cleaned and lubed without enlarging them, and so on. For an ideal trigger, you want the smoothest possible interface between parts as possible while being safe. However, this does take time and labor which is where it can get expensive. To some degree a moly coating or keeping the working surfaces lubricated can help. Moly coatings such as SentryCote can smooth out a trigger and working surfaces until it wears off, oil lube evaporates pretty quickly on the sort of oils that can be used on a trigger and grease is off the table as an attractant for crud.
It is complicated even more by the fact that most military small ring action parts, with the possible exception of the Swedes for some parts, are nearly all used, some well used. Burrs, rust, pitting, and so on, make it more of a challenge to properly fit the parts. That is one of the reasons that a lot of folks do not like parts rifles as in the factory, a skilled person using bins of parts could select and fit those with the best working relationship and the minimum of fitting. There is a reason that Mausers stamped identifiers on parts to indicate being fitted to a particular rifle.
Outside of that, the action is simple enough that people could simply change parts to get function but without fitting which gives an inferior experience to an original fitted rifle. Over time, hasty repairs, budget issues dealing with obsolete war reserve, etc. and then the uncertain murky world of milsurp sales and middlemen, resulted in a lot of surplus rifles becoming known for the surplus but not so much the fine examples of craftsmanship that many of these rifles, apart from wartime production, exhibited coming off of the assembly line.
Putting in a Timney unit solves some of the issues regarding trigger and sear, and perhaps if you go with their trigger locking safety unit instead of the simpler one, you can also scratch off the safety subsystem as well. But, you will still need to address cocking piece, the bolt channel, the firing pin and spring, etc. At one time, aftermarket solutions existed for many of these but as the number of these still in action has faded and regulatory issues have become so embedded into the firearm industry, the aftermarket parts mfg and sale for these old mausers is drying up.
At least in the UK, you do have proofing which helps weed out the unsafe dogs which tend to wind up here in the U.S.
