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Here is a picture of a fm/23 rifle compared to a standard m/96 rifle. I found this one on the Internet. Heavy barrel, shortened wood forestock, solid top handguard, and lightened cocking piece/firing pin assembly.
When you have been collecting stuff, going to Gun Shows, Yard and Garage Sales, Auction Sales, and have people offering you guns and goodies, then you tend to accumulate a lot of "bubbaized" rifles and spare parts.
When I saw this stock advertised by a Canadian Dealer, I already had an order in with the same Dealer, so shipping was not going to cost me anything more. The defects and atrocities inflicted upon this stock were fully described, but the price was right, so I added it to my order, fully knowing and understanding what I was getting.
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Someone had shortened the front of the forestock about one inch, then proceeded to rasp the wood away and fit the front steel cleaning rod guide and band. BUT, the biggest thing was about a 5/16 hole completely through the wrist of the stock, (at an angle even, not vertical,) and a larger recess in the top for a nut to be attached. Then, the use of an angle grinder to grind off the top of the bolt and nut, but gouging the stock in the process. The present thought was that some type of sling swivel was mounted there.
I turned down a piece of wood dowel in the lathe so that it was a tight fit in the hole and the length was cut about 3/8 inch short. This was epoxied into the hole, and as I had to take some wood off the inside of the stock to fit the side safety, I saved the sawdust. This sawdust was then mixed with epoxy and put into the holes on the top and bottom of the wrist, and sanded down to contour when it cured.
My original intent was to make a nice Mannlicher type Carbine for hunting, but since the fore-end had been shortened, there would have been about an inch of barrel exposed from the barreled action. So, plan "B" was to cut the rest of the fore-end down to a similar contour of a fm/23 rifle.
The barreled action I chose had been a target rifle at one time. There were holes drilled for two different Diopter sights in the receiver, and there were already Weaver bases mounted on the action. The bolt had been bent to clear a scope, and the top half of the knob milled or ground off. The firing pin and cocking piece had been modified to a CG-63 type. I have a suspicion that this action was intended as a CG-63 rifle but modified by an approved Gunsmith instead of Carl Gustafs. It also had a new barrel on it, and no rear sights had ever been fitted onto the barrel.
I dug out a cracked top handguard, and cut slabs off the piece of wood from the stock's fore-end that was cut off. These were planed down to fill in the rectangular hole for the barrel mounted rear sight. The barrel was free floated.
The intent was not to make an ersatz fm/23, although I probably could have done that because I have some heavy take-off m/96 barrels. The plan was to have a distinctive and attractive "fun" range rifle, with the idea of Hunting as a secondary use. The idea was to use up some parts and a trashed stock to make up a rifle that would look good, be functional, and perform well.
Was the experiment a success? I took a box of my accuracy loads out to zero it in, and play with it. I shoot four round groups when testing a rifle. Since I had 14 rounds left after an initial zero, I shot three groups. EVERY round would have hit a Loonie at 100 yards. Not too bad for a "Bubba" rifle that probably cost me less than $100 fired by a 71 year old Grouch. I will also say that two Manitoba Gophers about 150 yards away, who were observing these proceedings, were severely harmed during accuracy testing of the remaining two rounds.
But then again, the President of FINLAND, Pehr Evind Svinhufvrid, in 1935, tried out a Swedish fm/23 rifle and made a respectable score with it.
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