Prediction: Soon Chainfire will post that he has shot .308s in his, with no issues, and that it is perfectly safe, as per a magazine article he will post a link for, and that proof loads ran higher pressures back in the day.
And then someone will point out that we are talking about a 124 YO action, with steel from the day, which may not be up to the task.
that's how this conversation ALWAYS goes.
And yes, I have read, and have a copy, of the article, but i'll part ways with this one now, and let Chain have the fun of posting it.
So many myths in this thread. Don't feel singled out if I pick one for a start.
Model of 1893 is when Mauser released the design. That is not the year the guns were made by Spain. In actuality Spain began by buying some from Mauser and also got a license to make their own too. Their carbine version was known initially as their Model 1916. Again that is not the cut off date of their manufacture. I believe they initially had 3 locations making them prior to the Spanish Civil War. Spain continued to make them through WWII. In the 1950s the CETME arsenal (owned by the Spanish military then) converted some of the 1916s into the FR series guns, but also made some new ones too. So we are talking 20th century steel, not 19th century steel.
The soft steel myth or Headspace; whenever buying ANY used military bolt action (or semi too actually) do a headspace gauge check before laying your money down, or accept that the purchase may need a trip to the gunsmith. All guns have parts that wear with use and some of the M93 actions saw much service in both 7mm and 7.62mm. Checking headspace is a requirement of used Mauser 98s and Mosin Nagents or Ariskas too.
The weaker Spanish 7.62 loading for Spanish guns Myth: This one was researched well by Ian of the Forgotten Weapons channel on YouTube and he went right to the source (CETME) for his info. Go there and watch his video about the Spanish light load for the CETME. Yes, CETME originally developed a special light loading for their CETME/G-3 type rifle however it never left the experimental stage and it was never adapted for any service use. ALL of the bolt actions converted to 7.62mm by the Spanish military were specifically designed and intended to work with any 7.62mm NATO round that may fall into the hands of Spanish troops or auxiliaries (Spain had a Foreign Legion and the Guardia Civil also used these rifles) armed with those rifles. They were also proof tested with much higher than normal pressure cartridges and each of them passed the proof test before being accepted.
The result, as Ian states is any commercially available .308 Winchester round from a mainstream retailer (i.e., Winchester, Remington, etc.) made to SAAMI specs should work just fine in a good condition Model 1916 or FR-8.
Moving on, we saw similar bad mouth myths flood the market in the 1870s when both Colt and S&W had committed to Single Action handgun designs and were tottering on the edge of bankruptcy when suddenly a flood of much less expensive ($3 vs $12 - $16) Double Actions of the Webley RIC & Bulldog pattern came in from Belgium. S&W and Colt joined forces and in the 1870s and 1880s jointly paid for newspaper ads around the United States declaring the new imports to be unsafe, unreliable and suicide specials and possibly indicative of anti-American tendencies if someone purchased one. Only a few listened so that in America's 1880s those little Belgian revolvers (and the American knock offs of them) were much more common than the absurdly expensive Colts and S&Ws. Eventually the American makers who had believed Double Action was just a fad and began going broke because of the erroneous belief began offering their own Double Actions.
We saw the similar hoopla when Japanese Nissans and Datsuns landed here in the 1970s with Detroit advocates claiming buying one of the lower cost imports with much better gas economy was unAmerican. The ever increasing popularity of the imports forced Detroit to rethink how cars were made. Today the muscle cars of the mid 20th century are as obsolete as the 19th century Single Actions.
In the mid 1980s when floods of the $60 surplus M1916s and FR-8s suddenly arrived in the US cracks had already begun to appear in the financial foundations of most major American gunmakers. A .308 from Remington or Winchester in that era easily always cost at least $150. Americans tend to be savy consumers and quickly began snapping up VG condition bolt action .308s for a price that could allow buying 3 of the surplus guns for the same cost as a single new Model 70 or 700. LoL, I bought 2 of them for $69 (wish I had bought 10, but then again I was also buying up $99 stocked Broomhandle Mausers and $85 Inglis pistols too). Century Arms offered a very nice little drop in sporter stock for them too. After about a year suddenly (source never identified by me) a (completely untrue) rumor began sweeping the gun communities (we used IRC back then, also early FIDO boards) that the Spanish imports were only intended to be used with a weak CETME round and using commercial .308 Winchester ammunition would make them burst and kill the buyer. It was claimed the rifles were inferior because they lacked the third locking lug. That there exist no known examples of a 3 lug rifle that had 2 lugs fail only to be saved from disaster by the 3rd lug was never mentioned. In fact in 40 years no one has ever shown me a Model 93 where the locking logs specifically failed while firiing identified, commercial factory ammunition. In reality the Mauser 1893 M1916 bolt lugs don't fail.
Noting also the virtually identical Mauser 1896, aka Swedish Mauser doesn't get the bad press, I am left with the conclusion the rumors of the guns not being safe even when in excellent condition were started once again by an American gun maker who saw their sales continuing to slide or nose dive.
Any gun's receiver may yield with an over pressure load, but 99 times out of 100 that usually turns out to be someone's bubba handload and not ammo made to SAAMI specs. Even then if it is a bolt action, the bolt lugs usually hold and the failure manifests someplace else. Split barrels have nothing to do with the bolt lugs and everything to do with bore obstructions.