Thread: .22lr Mauser 201

Picked this up off Trade me as the tupper ware vs wood was getting out of balance in my safe.
Interesting little rifle. Front locking with the bolt inside a rotating body.
It had a couple of issues, it was missing the bedding shim from the front of the action which was letting the barrel rub on the rosewood fore end and it wouldn't eject reliably(maybe 30-40% fail) . On the positive side it came with a new MAE stainless suppressor which wasn't advertised in the auction so I was happy over all.
I cut out a new shim and eased the barrel channel a little and set about the ejection issue. The weak link in this little rifle is the solid ejector and as luck would have it I managed to break it with a case that didn't make it out of the action.


Being an older rifle parts are non existent, but it was a rainy sunday afternoon and I had a file and a hacksaw so I rummaged through a few boxes of bits.
A rem trigger that had been horribly two paced started the process


Roughed out , it worked well



A good tidy up and polish, fitted


Maybe more good luck than good management and not quite 100% but now it ejects cleanly as long as I'm positive with bolt manipulation.

Nice weight, not to light, beautifully smooth action, shoots very well with the CCI range.

Nice work...had one of these I bought for a friend who couldn't buy it at the time...beautiful rifle, very accurate.

Nice looking rifle, nice lines.

Originally Posted by Tikka7mm08

Nice work...had one of these I bought for a friend who couldn't buy it at the time...beautiful rifle, very accurate.

Yes typical high quality euro. Deep rich bluing. Its very tidy for its age, close to as new. Made by Kleinguenther I think.
Found some spare magazines for it as well.

Cross over with Voere, stock and mag from memory.

I wondered who picked up that rifle off Trademe - nice score. I've got a Voere 2000 - the same rifle before Mauser bought the rights off Voere and started making them themselves. I also found ejection was inconsistent, but largely solved it by tweaking the extractor claw inwards a bit.

I don't know if your Mauser would have been chambered with the same reamer as my Voere, but I've had best accuracy with SK (previously branded Lapua) HVHP when I want to use hunting ammunition, and RWS when I want to shoot target ammo. The RWS target ammo is better than the Lapua/SK equivalent in my gun. Suggest you might want to try them if you get a chance - neither are bad price wise if ordered online.

I believe Voere (of Germany, not Voere of Austria) developed and produced this rifle until getting into financial difficulties. This was when Mauser bought the rights and produced it as the Mauser 201, like yours. Kleinguenther was an American importer who brought in the Voere versions (not the Mauser's as far as I know), did some tweaking including pillar bedding, then sold them under the Kleinguenther name. Very, very highly regarded in the states - often rated above the Anschutz 54's (1710, 1422 etc) in terms of accuracy.

I've been reading the forums here for a while, but never got around to joining up - until I saw your rifle.

Originally Posted by PaulNZ

I wondered who picked up that rifle off Trademe - nice score. I've got a Voere 2000 - the same rifle before Mauser bought the rights off Voere and started making them themselves. I also found ejection was inconsistent, but largely solved it by tweaking the extractor claw inwards a bit.

I don't know if your Mauser would have been chambered with the same reamer as my Voere, but I've had best accuracy with SK (previously branded Lapua) HVHP when I want to use hunting ammunition, and RWS when I want to shoot target ammo. The RWS target ammo is better than the Lapua/SK equivalent in my gun. Suggest you might want to try them if you get a chance - neither are bad price wise if ordered online.

I believe Voere (of Germany, not Voere of Austria) developed and produced this rifle until getting into financial difficulties. This was when Mauser bought the rights and produced it as the Mauser 201, like yours. Kleinguenther was an American importer who brought in the Voere versions (not the Mauser's as far as I know), did some tweaking including pillar bedding, then sold them under the Kleinguenther name. Very, very highly regarded in the states - often rated above the Anschutz 54's (1710, 1422 etc) in terms of accuracy.

I've been reading the forums here for a while, but never got around to joining up - until I saw your rifle.

Welcome aboard!

Originally Posted by PaulNZ

I wondered who picked up that rifle off Trademe - nice score. I've got a Voere 2000 - the same rifle before Mauser bought the rights off Voere and started making them themselves. I also found ejection was inconsistent, but largely solved it by tweaking the extractor claw inwards a bit.

I don't know if your Mauser would have been chambered with the same reamer as my Voere, but I've had best accuracy with SK (previously branded Lapua) HVHP when I want to use hunting ammunition, and RWS when I want to shoot target ammo. The RWS target ammo is better than the Lapua/SK equivalent in my gun. Suggest you might want to try them if you get a chance - neither are bad price wise if ordered online.

I believe Voere (of Germany, not Voere of Austria) developed and produced this rifle until getting into financial difficulties. This was when Mauser bought the rights and produced it as the Mauser 201, like yours. Kleinguenther was an American importer who brought in the Voere versions (not the Mauser's as far as I know), did some tweaking including pillar bedding, then sold them under the Kleinguenther name. Very, very highly regarded in the states - often rated above the Anschutz 54's (1710, 1422 etc) in terms of accuracy.

I've been reading the forums here for a while, but never got around to joining up - until I saw your rifle.

Thanks @PaulNZ, that sheds a little light on things. I found a few differing stories on the history in my brief search but quality and top accuracy were a common thread so thought it would worth getting the wallet out.
I looked at the claws first but they seemed ok, held the case tight, I did remove a small jag from the edge of the ejector side claw which helped a fair bit. The ejector tab on my hacksaw model has a larger contact suface and I played with the angle a little.It still drops the odd case back into the action, maybe 1 in 30 ? but some of fails could be operator error.
This one has bedding pillars though the front pillar has no contact with the action at all ? .
Where do you get the rws ammo from?

I wrote a response to your post yesterday morning, but apparently it's still waiting on moderator approval before being shown? Maybe because I included a photo? Not sure what's going on with it.

I get my RWS ammo from here Rimfire - Shootingstuff
They have just got their latest shipment in - a lot of their selection was out of stock.
They are excellent to deal with.
Mail order available obviously. @sneeze

Well, I've given up on my post being approved by the moderators and appearing in the thread - on the assumption it was because of pictures I'll leave the target photos out.

What I was going to say was the same as zimmer - RWS ammo is available from Shootingstuff. The target ammo is marked from 1 to 5 stars - 1 star is "Club" at $8.80 a box and 5 stars is "R50" currently at $18 a box. I tested "Target Rifle" (2 stars) and "Rifle Match" (3 stars) and the average of 4 consecutive 5 shot groups was just under 5mm. So I settled on Target Rifle. Since I've last been back to the site I see they've added a few more options too - I might have to try some RWS HVHP for hunting.

My rifle was pillared the same as yours, but I epoxy bedded it mainly to re-centre the barrel in the channel. I've got a photo here if you're interested (and if I'm allowed to post it).

It looks like someone went to the trouble on your rifle to actually move the front site back and remount it when threading for a silencer?

Thanks guys, got my police form off to shooting stuff this morning.
Yes the front site was re-positioned, a very tidy threading job, still has the original crown. Iv removed the rear site. I dont think Ill bother with any further bedding, It sits nicely in the stock now and accuracy with average hunting ammunition has been very good even with some parallax error to contend with . Looking forward to trying a new scope and some better ammo.