MalleeFarmer wrote:This is possible but I'd have to change the mag well and follower and the bolt then a new barrel getting very close to a new rifle $$ now.
I was figuring if you were happy to swap one barrel to another action on top of rebarreling the first action, you were determined to throw money at it anyway
To recap:
You have a long action .308 Mauser and a short action .22-250 Winchester, both with the .308 bolt face.
You want to keep the .308.
But you also want something more potent than the .308. Do you want close range energy or long range accuracy?
I can see you've already put some research into this, and since the weather is atrocious you grabbed my interest.
Baseline .308 gives you a 200gn bullet at 2400fps.
One way is to rebarrel the short action to something bigger than .308 but keeping within the short action, and ideally the .308 0.473" bolt face. In proper rifle cartridges you're probably not going to get much better than .338 Federal for a ten-percent heavier bullet at similar velocity. .458 SOCOM is the heaviest bullet I can find, but in a Mauser action you can probably push a 250gn bullet at similar velocity to the .308 200gn. With the option of bullets up to 500gns at lower velocities.
Cost - a new barrel, threading, chambering, install barrel and sights, plus dies and brass.
If a magnum 0.532" bolt face is as easy as a bolt swap, that opens up your choices a bit more, although with some restriction on the heavier bullets due to the action length.
Cost - the above plus a replacement bolt?
The second is to swap the .308 barrel to the short action, re-thread, rechamber, install and reinstall the sights. For that much effort and expense I'd be inclined to go with a new barrel in something more useful than the .308, 7mm-08, 6.5x55mm or something similar.
Then rebarrel the long action to one of the .308 bolt face cartridges, of which .35 Whelen would be my choice. 8x57mm or 9x57mm are also good, but all are likely to have limited bullet choices.
Cost - a new barrel plus thread/chamber/install both barrels, install sights on two barrels, plus dies and brass.
Both of the above modifications have potential for problems with feeding, restrictions on bullet length and such.
The third option is likely to be the easiest and cheapest - sell the .22-250 and buy something else that does exactly what you're after.
Cost - potentially no cost at all depending on your sell/buy prices, but more likely a few hundred plus dies and brass.