The overall shape was incredibly pleasing, with the slim forestock and Schnabel tip drawing your eye down the aesthetically mesmerising barrel. The stock itself is really quite stunning.
Steyr mannlicher sl cracked#
With the leverage of the barrel and action on these stock fixings, any kind of substantial fall with your rifle could land you with a cracked stock. If there had been a third rear fixing behind the trigger guard this would have been of little consequence, but as I alluded to earlier, this is not the case. The rear pillar is bedded in an incredibly thin inlet of the stock, with very little ‘meat’ to provide strength. My second observation was a bit more practical. It is merely an attention to detail that should have been picked up on. Obviously the pillar bedding aims to achieve improved accuracy over a standard fixing, and I doubt the resin overspill will have made a jot of difference here. The resin used to fix the pillars in place hadn’t been completely cleaned off, resulting in an uneven bearing surface for the action to fix down onto. On closer inspection, however, two issues became apparent. I was initially impressed by the aluminium pillar bedding, which is becoming the norm with factory rifles. With that, the action could be removed from the stock, exposing the fixing methods from the inside. When I removed the well-machined trigger guard assembly, it became clear that a lot of time had been spent fitting it precisely to the stock, including recessing the rear lug slot. My first surprise was not finding a fixing point to the rear of the trigger guard, leaving two bolts to the front. With this in mind, I reached for the hex-headed keys to remove the stock from the action. Conducting all reviews in this fashion should provide interesting comparisons in terms of build quality and design when different models and manufacturers are presented side by side.
Steyr mannlicher sl full#
This review will proceed from the inside out, putting the rifle together piece by piece to get a full picture of how it fares. When stacked up beside comparable offerings in today’s market, the current Mannlicher is probably one of the prettiest rifles around. That may be a negative note on which to introduce the Steyr Mannlicher, but don’t let this insight into the ‘old world’ discourage you from looking at the modern rifle. Getting my hands on one of the old rifles from that iconic era is high on my list of desires. The rifle bolt may look the same, and it still sports the distinctive tool marks on the barrel from the cold hammer forging process, but the quality and impeccable engineering of the 1903 mo del has the edge on today’s rifle. However, the new model is no modern version of the classic 1903 model. Today’s Steyr Mannlicher Classic is touted as a direct descendent of the Schönauer. This rifle, in the hands of ‘Karamojo’ Bell, reputedly accounted for 1,011 elephants during the era of the great ivory trade. The Mannlicher Schönauer was a legendary piece of engineering with a magnificent history and hunting pedigree. My introduction to Mannlicher rifles set the standard for how I would judge all rifles from that moment on.
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