Blaser MOD. 93 LRS2 (any good?)

Doing my part

Sergeant of the Hide
Full Member
Minuteman
Jul 17, 2020
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Good afternoon all, I have been offered a Blaser 93 LRS2 with a second barrel for a reasonable price.

I have no trigger time on this gun, is it any good? I like the straight pull concentric action, but I'm a little concerned about things like spares. I understand they were reasonably popular for LEO a little while ago.
 
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Barrels have an amazing life and you can find after market barrels. Not much else to wear out. R-93 parts fit the LRS.

Factory barrels tend to have slow twists by today's standards.

Resizing brass needs to be done carefully or you will get the dreader "clicker."

Mine is the only rifle I own where I can see the bullet move on target with each quarter-moa click.
 
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I can't imagine what you might need for spare parts on an R93. Maybe a spring in the trigger or a screw that you chip the head on, but nothing really breaks in an R93. The R8 is much more finicky and a completely different story, but the R93 is a tank.

My son is the main gunsmith at a gunstore in Allgäu Germany that up until a few years ago, sold more Blaser rifles than any other gunstore in Germany. He rarely needed to order any replacement parts for an R93, and when so, mostly for Austrian professional hunters that really abused their rifles daily.

That's also a small part of the reason that Blaser stopped the manufacture of the R93 a few years ago, they never wear out, and they were cutting deeply into the sales of the hunk of shit R8. So Blaser stopped manufacturing them. My sons boss, wanted to buy the machinery, and continue making them, since the patent ran out, but Blaser just doesn't want the R93 on the market anymore, they want to sell R8s.

So my sons Boss, got together with Meinhard Zey, the weapons engineer who originally designed the R93 for the Blaser company after Horst Blaser sold it, and they developed a rifle even better than an R93, with many advanced technical and safety features. It is currently the most sought after production rifle in Germany, and is called the Jakele J1.

You can look at it on their website. Currently there are no plans to import it into North America, as they are having trouble keeping up with demand in central Europe.

But buy the Blaser R93, it will be the best and most accurate factory rifle you own, unless of course you buy a Jakele J1.
 
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I have a R93 I bought used in 2001 for what is now a stupid cheap price. I have a 223, 270, and 300 win mag barrels and two saddle mounts. They are all stupid accurate for a light very balanced hunting rifle. The 270 barrel is the only rifle I have that oddly shoots the same sized groups at 100 and 200 yards; I’ll translate, if the group is 1” at 100 yards, it’s typically 1” at 200 yards, not 2”. I’ll try to find some pictures of groups and post them.

LRS2 definitely buy it.
 
1st picture 300 win 200 Nosler Partition. 2nd picture 270 130 Sierra BT. 3rd picture 223 Sellier & Bellot 55FMJ cheap factory ammo.

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1st picture 300 win 200 Nosler Partition. 2nd picture 270 130 Sierra BT. 3rd picture 223 Sellier & Bellot 55FMJ cheap factory ammo.

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Three calibres from one action is mad, and a licensing nightmare over here in the people's Republic of England and associated hangers on... But I can actually accommodate what this has - 308 and 5.56.

I thought that 300 win would be a long action and the others are short action so... Cool. Weird. Cool.
 
I thought that 300 win would be a long action and the others are short action so... Cool. Weird. Cool.

It’s a very interesting and innovative design. The action is one length and the magazine inserts have different length bolt stops to limit the action reward travel to match the cartridge length. The action throw is much shorter for my 233 than my 300. To remove the bolt you have to push down in the mag insert to allow the bolt to slide past the bolt stop. Very simple and innovative design.
 
The barrels are made of some kind of supersteel that are notoriously difficult to re - thread (Euro threads).

Yes they are very hard and few smiths will cut and thread

Pete at PBW ^^ cuts and threads all my R8 barrels, times my suppressor brakes perfectly and without spacers. Properly torqued with precision fitment. I have run R8’s in Wyoming and Alaska in he harshest of conditions for over 15 years and have never had one failure of any kind - And have dropped over 100 animals = Deer/elk/moose/antelope & 1 goat and wolverine.
 
Thanks guys, I appreciate the help. Very interesting to hear the devolution from r93 to r8 as well.

So it's not exactly totally like that.
There were some issues in the R93 with action failure in the big cartridges such as .338LM that resulted in serious injuries.
Germans can't admit to ever being wrong so they discontinued them in favour of the R8 which has a much more robust and redundant lockup mechanism.

If you are shooting standard cartridges the R93 would be just fine and great.

If you are trying to shoot the highest end super magnum stuff, it would be better to look into the R8