My wife loves to go to estate sales and auctions with her mom. Personally, I avoid them like the plague, except for farm and estate auctions where you can often find fixer-upper and project guns. But there are occasional strokes of good luck in these doings.
This takes me back to the late 90s. I was at work when my wife called and reported a “pretty nice little Mauser” on offer at an estate sale, price $100. After asking a couple of questions, I concluded that what she was looking at was a 38 Swede cavalry model. Of course, back in those days, she could simply fork over a C-note to the family holding the sale and walk away.
After a few minutes of deliberation, I told her to go ahead and pick it up. What with the supply of Swedes drying up and all... A nice 38 would be a good addition to the gun rack.
Sometimes, it’s lovely to be wrong.
On arriving home that day, I went to the shop to examine the find. At first glance, I saw that the rifle was not a 38 but was, in fact, a 94 carbine, one of the versions that had a small addition clumsily added to the barrel to make the length 18” to satisfy the import restrictions of the time. Regrettably, the receiver had been drilled and tapped to accept a Redfield peep, and the lower 2/3 of the butt amputated (from just to the rear of the trigger guard on a straight line to about 2” below the heel) and a portion of a pistol grip stock added on. The colors didn’t match, either. The whole thing was topped off with a large shotgun-style recoil pad (on a 6.5X55mm, which seems like overkill) and a patch of wood grafted into the handguard where the tangent sight used to be.
See Related: Sunday Gun Day XII - Gunsmithing the Mauser Bolt Action
A shame, perhaps, that the 94 wasn’t original; original condition 94s command a pretty good price these days, after all. However, the altered condition of the carbine does leave me with a certain latitude, a certain, shall we say, freedom of action.
While in Wyoming hunting antelope, I test-fired the Swede — nothing more scientific than a few shots at a pop can placed in front of a clump of sagebrush. The little carbine handled nicely, recoil negligible, a pleasant bark from the short barrel. At about 50 yards, I was able to roll the Diet Coke can over with every shot, firing offhand. Obviously, a range session was in order.
At the next opportunity, I repaired to the range with the Swede and a bunch of handloads using the 100-grain Nosler Ballistic Tip. The results were satisfying, although not outstanding — 100-yard groups averaged about 3”, with the best coming in at about 1.75”. Not bad for an 18” barreled, peep-sighted carbine.
Since I had this “freedom of action” with the little 94, I planned to try to turn out an original pattern stock out of a nice piece of walnut, with two deviations from the issue stock: I’d turn out a handguard without the cutout for the missing tangent sight, and fit a black Pachmayr butt pad instead of issue steel. The Redfield peep remained in place.
It was a good plan. The rifle was short, light, and handy, and the 6.5x55mm is a round that routinely punches outside its weight class. Furthermore, the M1894 Swede is an interesting little piece. Plenty of folks are acquainted with the M1896 Long Rifle and M1938 Short Rifle, which were made in large numbers, but the 94s are fewer and farther between. With a small-ring action very similar to the M93 and M95 Mausers, there were only about 127,000 94 carbines made out of a total of 750,000 Swedish Mausers. While most of the 96 and 38 guns were made at the Carl Gustaf works or by Husqvarna, both Swedish concerns, many of the 94s were made in Germany, by Waffenfabrik Mauser in Oberdorf (a lovely place – I’ve been there) and Ludwig Loewe & Company, later the Deutsche Waffen- und Munitionsfabriken (DWM) in Berlin.
Back to my copy. A gunsmith friend of mine who was then set up for business in Lakewood, Colorado, had one of those machines for duplicating a gunstock. I selected a lovely piece of European blonde walnut from his supply and explained just what I wanted: A nice deep re-bluing of action and barrel, a streamlined ramp front sight to replace the clunky original, and the stock to be cut in the original pattern, minus the aperture in the handguard for the rear sight.
A few weeks later, I picked the gun up, and it was a neat thing to behold.
The results you can see here: Unfortunately, this was in a time when digital cameras were in their infancy, and this photo is pretty low-rez, but it does show off that nice blonde walnut stock. 
The gun shot better with the new stock as well, maybe because of the better front sight, maybe because the action and barrel were more carefully bedded into that lovely blonde walnut, or maybe just because I spent some time messing around with loads for it. Lots of older guns are a trifle finicky about ammo, which shouldn’t be surprising, since lots of us older people are finicky about lots of things.
I hunted some with the rifle, taking at least one plains whitetail with it – that was a long time ago, and my memory is less than perfect. In those days I harbored some notions of establishing myself as a custom rifle builder, and so carried that little Swede around to a lot of gun shows.
Then, the inevitable happened. I was set up with a table at one of Denver’s big old Tanner Gun Shows and had the little Swede in pride of place at the front of my table. Another exhibitor fell in love with it, offered me a couple of other guns in trade, then some ammo, and he kept sweetening the pot until I gave in.
See Related: Sunday Gun Day Vol. II Ep. XXIII - Guns I Wish I Had
It probably says a lot that I don’t remember exactly what I traded the Swede for, except that I’m pretty sure an old Smith & Wesson M&P .38 Special revolver with “Lake County (Colorado) Sheriff’s Department” stamped on the side was one of the guns I got in exchange.
Anyone who has been into guns has had guns they kept too long, guns they wish they’d never bought, and guns they’d like to have back. Some of us have even fallen into the famous gun nut trap of buying a gun at a show, taking it home, breaking it down to clean it, and realizing we’d owned it before.
But boy, I sure wish to this day that I’d hung on to that sweet little M1894 Swede.
