most powerful surplus 8mm mauser

[gun_lover_87]

does any one know what the most powerful surplus 8mm mauser round is? from what i can gather i think it is the 50s yugo ammo which has a 196gr bullet, fired at 2600fps from 2942ft-lbs. i have shot 70s romanian ammo which fires a 154gr bullet at 2600fps from 2311ft-lbs. how much harder would the yugo ammo kick?(btw i am shooting a yugo m24/47) am i correct in saying that a rounds power is determined by its ft-lbs of energy.

 

[Ian Sean]

A while back there was a lot of Turkish 8mm and it was loaded hot!

196 grain and it kicked like a mule, I have no chrony so I don't have any true specs. on it, but after shooting some of the Turkish and switching over to Yugo stuff it was night and day.

 

[cracked butt]

Turk

 

[possum]

i used some yugo in my czech mauser and thought that was rough until i got a whole crate of turkish and that stuff is HOT, HOT like was said above, and i even had a chance to check it on the chronograph that a guy had out at the range and it was over 3000 fps IIRC, i know it was crazy fast and i could hardly believe it. pretty darn good for a bullet of 196grs, but not on the shoulder, firing the weapon!

 

[sumpnz]

Turk ammo is 154gr not 196gr. Or at least, my Turk ammo is 154 gr (I pulled one apart), and I have a hard time believing they'd make the different loads post WW2. I chrono'd it at between 2900-3000fps from my T38 Mauser.

 

[possum]

sumpnz,
it has been along time since i even owned my mauser, but now that i think about it i think that i remember the turk is 154gr and the yugo is 196gr maybe? it is been a while. thanks for the correction.

 

[cracked butt]

turk is 154gr and the yugo is 196gr maybe

yes.

Typically, the 154 gr projectiles work better in Mauser rifles, while the 198gr projectiles were designed around mauser carbines.

 

[cracked butt]

I've always heard figures around 2900-3000 fps for turk ammo, subjectively, it recoils harder to me than Yugo surplus. I recently purchased a chronograph, maybe I'll check some of the Turk ammo I have left with it.

 

[RockyMtnTactical]

I wonder what the FPS difference is between the 24" and the 29" barrels....

 

[sumpnz]

Without sawing off a 29" barrel it's hard to say for sure, but generally you can assume a difference of ~30fps per inch of barrel length change. So, chopping 5" off should give you ~150fps drop in MV. But, it could be as little as 50fps, or as much as 250fps. The 196gr bullets should see a larger change per inch than the 154gr bullets, but there's so many variables (bullet construction, powder type and charge, primer, twist rate, bore condition, etc) that it can be hard to predict.

And every caliber will be more sensitive to different variables. Just becuase a .243 has a certain rate of change means nothing when looking at the .260Rem even though they're both necked down .308 cartridges. Heck, even with the 8mm going from a Turk rifle to a Yugo carbine can introduce a whole lot more variables than just the shorter tube that it makes little sense to try to extrapolate how the barrel length change affected the performance.