todd, my gunsmith (who gave up the trade just because he liked to eat regularly
) always had a penchant for odd things which always appealed to me, and vice versa. I always knew he had some interesting/cool thing to share if he just grinned at me when I came in the shop or hit his table at a show. He'd turn around, go in the back (of the shop) or duck under his table (at a show) and present some franken-mongrel, or a beat up older revolver and share. Everyone else would look at us like we were idiots when there were so many other cool, new guns to drool over.
One day at a show, he drug out a Chilean '95 action, with a Swedish 94 carbine barrel screwed onto it and all set it into a cheap, Choate, blind-mag stock.
I asked "how's it shoot?"
"I d'know! I just stuck the parts together and head-spaced it!"
When someone asked him to rebarrel a '94 Swede, the take-off barrel inspired him to grub around the shop and find the other parts the day before the show. I take it that a couple of his friends lost a bet that he could sell it the first day. He knew I'd be in.
I ended up trading something for Spanish Mauser hinged bottom metal, 1916, I think, and hogged out a hole in the bottom of the Choate stock, which took more finesse than I'd anticipated, and had the coolest mutt around. It did not feed for beans, but I handed it to my dad and he brought it back the next day and it fed slicker'n snot. He always was good with feed rails.
This ugly, light little gun shot five into an inch and a quarter at a hundred yards with Hornady 160s and a moderate dose of one of the 4350s. I miss that gun. I sold it cheap to a park ranger who'd come to my house and split all my firewood one day while I was at work, and then wouldn't take anything for it. So, I lied about what I had in the mutt when he needed a rifle to go black bear hunting in some other state. If he ever offers it back, I'll snap it up even though I don't need it.
I offer all this, because the Chilean WAS a 7x57 at one time, and the contrast between my old Chielan and a Swede barrel in your case v. mine is dramatic. Looks like yours will be a real looker, but mine was butt-ugly.