Why is this happening? Is this normal for a mauser action?

[Cintax]

I don't know about other people, but my safety has to be all the way forward to fire. If it is midway, it still won't shoot.

I couldn't get my gun to fire by pulling the trigger and moving the safety to the forward position.

As an aside, you shouldn't have the gun on safe when closing the bolt, the safety locks the bolt from opening so there will be some interference as you close the bolt.

 

[jbmauser]

I have no idea if I have the correct bolt.
The good news is that I fixed the problem by grinding down that bolt catch. It still functions as normal and written I close the bolt it just moved the safety forward a hair.

But now i have another question. For those of you who have a parker Hale trigger can you #### your bolt, put your safety in the half way position (I know this isn't normal but the safety may get bumped when you're in the field and end up in this position, maybe) ok now pull the trigger and then move the safety all the way to the fire position.
What happens?

It fires when the safety is pushed forward.

I'd have to take the rifle down and see if that can be eliminated by adjusting but I kind of doubt it. If you pull the safety back to the "safe" position before moving it forward then it doesn't fire. You can actually see the safety jump a bit if the trigger is pulled while it's in the halfway position.

I also tried this on several other makes of sliding safeties for the M98 and they did not fire when the safety was moved to off.

 

[Cintax]

It fires when the safety is pushed forward.

I'd have to take the rifle down and see if that can be eliminated by adjusting but I kind of doubt it. If you pull the safety back to the "safe" position before moving it forward then it doesn't fire. You can actually see the safety jump a bit if the trigger is pulled while it's in the halfway position.

I also tried this on several other makes of sliding safeties for the M98 and they did not fire when the safety was moved to off.

These are the same results I had trying my M1000.