Hello Briman. Please allow me to disagree. The Red Banner Works is the oldest continuous military foundry on earth. They used some of the best machinery in the world when they built the M48. The M48 being lacking is a myth. The only discriminator is that for some reason, the Serbs shortened the M98 action about1/4 of an inch. This makes it difficult torebarrel the action to '06 length cases. If you do some research on the Zavodi Crevna Zastava factory, I think you'll agree. They also built some high end sporters in the late 50's early 60's for theHerzegovinaforest barons that essentially copied many of the Steyr characteristics including sensational double set triggers. Some of these fine rifles found their way to the US, however, Kennedy halted these imports after the Cuba fiasco. They built the InterarmsX10, Charles Daily actionsand currently are building the new Remington 798/898 sporters.
From the few dozen Mauser 94,95,96, and 98 rifles I own, the Yugo M48s are the most poorly put together of the bunch. I've owned 2 of them, one that had had rough bolt lugs that where it was difficult to extract a fired round. The other one which I still own has a safety that doesn't work- some part of the bolt or other is out of spec and won't allow the safety to go into the 'safe' position. The stocks are/were covered with chatter marks from the stock making machines, and thefrontbarrel band on the one I currently own looks like it was fitted using a sledge hammer. It almost seems that the Yugoslavians either didn't care about what they were doing or weren't very good at what they were doing.Having the best machineryfrom belgium is one thing, but having highly skilled machine operators to take advantage of the machines is entirely another. The 24/47s and captured K98s on the other hand are a differetn story- they were at least made right to begin with.