LD1:
I have never cased a '98 Mauser action......I rebuilt a bring-back as a young boy, but hot blued the receiver....the action steel was very, very hard, and turned a beautiful deep wine red...I remember polishing that action, the metal was so hard that it came out like "glass" with jeweler's rouge on the wheel, without "any" wheel marks.....other smiths have told me that the good Mauser's are so hard that they will commonly break diamond drill bits when drilling and tapping for scope mounts...... Since they were not originally "color" cased and are already extremely hard, I see no need to re-case an already fine hard receiver that had no color in the first place..?? ...I would guess the Germans hot oil cased those receivers, but I don't know, a Mauser collector would know ?? ........They 'are' the action that all others are judged by......and the most copied of course...
Best Regards,
