Re: sick of buying ammo online
bauer460,
I was going to respond the other day, but felt ORD covered it not only succinctly, but substantially. There are better Mausers that have already been hacked to build into customs.
Without pics I can't tell you what would be easier to do with your rifle. Fortunately for this caliber, a couple bullets stand out for medium and long range shooting. That is the original 174 gr. FMJ bullet or Hornady's 174 FMJ. These are ballistically efficient enough to get you to 1k. That's partly because the rifle actually has a tighter than 1-10" twist and 'over-stabilizes' them. The 1891 is a nice rifle, but if you seriously want to shoot an Argentino, the 1909 is the one you want to get.
The best thing to do for these is reload. Then you can tailor ammo to the rifle and if it's in decent shape, and you can shoot blade type open sights these things are killer.
For people who can't handle owning or hearing about Mauser's, i.e. throwing it off a bridge, don't respond to the thread. Your ignorance is showing like a whores pantaloons on a Saturday night. Try to keep in mind ALL of the accurate rifles you shoot today are based of the Mauser design....
Salmonaxe,
There are a number of gunsmiths around the country that can make that Chilean into either a wonderful shooter and/or make it into a great custom or back into what it was. If the action has solid metal, then there's no need not to shoot it. It does take some money to get it back into shape and no it's not ever going to be a super shooter like an AICS. But, it will be a solid shooter if you make it into what it could be. If it's a '95 (Mauser) or 1912 (Steyr) or 1935 (Mauser) it should be in 7x57. That's if they are original.
I will say this: Having grown up learning how to shoot in scopes only, it hurt my ability to shoot open sights immensely. I was lucky enough to have an S2 officer where I was stationed who used to be a competition shooter for the Army. He gave us a number of great tips for shooting the peep sighted M-16. Those tips helped me shoot expert (40/40 for 4 of 6 quals). I applied those principles to the Mauser sights and believe me, they can shoot well.