question about turkish mil-surplus and my m1904/39 mauser

[rammy]

was at the range a week ago and found that the turkish ammo I was shooting seamed to me a bit "harsh" and that their was also a problem of getting the bolt to open after some of the more "harsh" rounds. "harsh" meaing I could feel a difference in the recole and kick. I run through 70+ rounds in one range trip with my rifle. It is a great shooter. This is the first time I have an bolt opening or extraction problem. Could I have gotten a batch of "hot" rounds. I have another 70 rounds that I plan on trying in a few days. Should I have a gunsmith check the rifle out just in case?

by the way when I had the hard to open bolt and extraction problem I stopped shooting then. did not want to risk anything. Other rounds extracted fine but felt to be hot. could this have built up to a failure point. do not want to have a bolt in the eye!!

 

[albanian]

The Turk Mil-surplus is supposed to be machine gun ammo that was loaded hotter than normal. I am not sure if this is true but I don't find it hard to believe since there must be tons of surplus machine gun ammo for the 8mm and very few 8mm machine guns eating it up.

I shoot the stuff in my Turk Mauser and my Yugo M-48A. I do get a sticky bolt on my Turk after it heats up or gets dirty but I have never heard of any Mausers not being able to take the load. Remember, the Mauser is one of the strongest bolt actions and they were re-barreled and re-chambered in some ultra powerful calibers. Many African big bore rifles have Mauser actions at their heart and they seem to take it.

I have shot about 1000 rounds of the stuff through just my Turk and the only bad thing that has happened was the stock begain to crack at the pistol grip. I can't say this was due to the ammo or just from being a 60 year old gun that was shoot 1000 times in a few months. My Yugo seems to eat the stuff up with no problems at all.

 

[spacemanspiff]

my m98 cracked in the same place, from turkish ammo.

very hot ammo. waaaaay hotter than the romanian ammo in green brass.

the only thing i'd suggest is to do a thorough inspection of the turkish cases before firing them. i tossed out a lot that had cracked cases, loose crimps.

well, actually, i pulled the bullets off and collected the powder. it creates a pretty fire.

 

[cracked butt]

That turk ammo is some really powerful stuff that has never been tainted by lawyers. In comparison, shooting remington 8x57 ammo is like shooting a popgun.

The bolt on my turk sticks when shooting this stuff, but more likely because the chamber is slightly pitted and the brass flows into the pits binding the case the the chamber- this usually smoothens out after shooting 20 or so rounds through it.

 

[rammy]

yep I find at least 1 with a split neck in every 70 rnds. I have fired 100's of rounds of the turk ammo through the rifle with no problems. I could have gotten some crud in the bolt... its possable. I love shooting the rifle so much I would hate to damage it if I could help it.

to give some more info the main problem was when i would try to open the bolt. would have to smack it with the palm of my hand. sorry for not including that in the original post.

 

[sumpnz]

I've shot about 1K rounds of Turk ammo through my Turk Mauser, and did notice a problem with a hard to lift bolt after the gun got hot/dirty. Usually giving it a few minutes to cool down cured the problem.

Personally I've quit using the Turk ammo, even though I have 3-400 rounds left. I just don't want to worry about the corrosive effects. Yes, I know, if I clean it right away it's no problem. But I just don't want to deal with that anymore. My FFL also does custom hand loads, and we just chrono'd the test rounds. We were getting an honest 3000 fps with a 150 grain Hornady soft point bullet. Actual numbers were 3006 fps average, 14.6 fps standard deviation. Upper/lower 95% confidence intervals were 3024/2988 fps. Based on the way the primers looked, it was a lower pressure load than the Turk ammo, in spite of being a little faster (I think, didn't chrono the Turk ammo). So, I think that will be my preferred load from now on in the Turk.

 

[albanian]

I know a guy that buys the Turk ammo by the case and pulls the bullets, power and primers. He then remeasures the same power but from his electronic scale and replaces the corrosive primers with modern non-corrosive ones and he has cheap, accurate, non-corrosive ammo. He says he gets better accuracy that way and doesn't have to worry about cleaning it right away. I think he uses new brass also.

 

[sumpnz]

That's great for him, but I don't have that kind of time, nor do I have the setup. Besides, that old powder is dirty compared to a lot of what's out there now, and buying new brass kind of defeats a lot of the potential savings (of course you'd have to get special equipment to deprime and re-prime that mil-surp Berdan style brass which would defeat most of the savings in re-using it).

At the price I paid for my Turk ammo at the time (about 4 years ago - $80ish for 1400 rounds and it's probably more than that now) it works out to about 6cents per round. From Huntingtons you can get Remington 185 grain soft points for 11cents each. Yeah its 2x the cost, but considering that for $220 I can load enough of those to last me a life time, who cares? Midway has saner sized lots available (100-500 rounds), at very little more on a per bullet basis. Plus then I can use the same bullets for practice and hunting.

 

[sumpnz]

Once I get into reloading, I can definatly see the point to pulling the bullets from my remaining Turk ammo and loading them into new brass above new powder and primers. That would allow me to actually use them at a reasonable savings over all new bullets. I still think I'd use modern powder though. I'm sure I could find a use for the old powder somewhere .

 

[telewinz]

Turk ammo is loaded about 150fps hotter than most 8mm ammo. It's not loaded with machine guns in mind. Since Turk cases were not annealed until after 1950, this is what accounts for the split necks and hard extraction. The cases just aren't as elastic as "regular" brass. Most mis-fires are caused by old weak springs, not bad primers.

 

[albanian]

It's not loaded with machine guns in mind. Since Turk cases were not annealed until after 1950, this is what accounts for the split necks and hard extraction.

All the Turk ammo I have seen has been been from the early 1950s. 1950-53 is what I have seen the most of. I have seen a few split cases but the splits were very small and since the ammo is not reloaded, who cares? Don't shoot the split ones if you are concerned about it, I probably have shot a few split ones without seeing them first.

When you shoot old C&R guns, you expect to lose a finger now and then. It is sort of the rish you take for buying a 60 year old beater for $40. Just kidding, mil-surplus guns are not any more dangerous than modern guns as long as you take the appropriate measures and use your common sense. Don't do anything with a mil-surp that you wouldn't do with any other gun, i.e., don't shoot split cases, don't overload your ammo, don't shoot a gun that is loose or seems to be in poor working condition, don't shoot at metal fence posts with a 8mm Mauser! Owch!

I did that even though I knew better. I thought because I was standing directly in front of it and about 50' back, there was no way the metal could fly straight back at me, wrong! I was lucky that I was only hit in the leg, I bled and my pants were cut but it was getting off easy for a moment of pure stupidity. Sometimes you know the safety rules but until you see them in action, you always wonder how much you can bend them.

Be safe, don't be a rule bender.

 

[sumpnz]

All of my Turk ammo is vintage 1949. Although I don't like shooting corrosive anymore, in a week or so I'll be meeting my FFL at the range to test the 6.5 Swede rounds he's loading for me and I'm planning to chrono a few (5-10) rounds of the Turk ammo and will post here with the results.

AFAIK the Turk ammo is 154gr FMJ spitzers, and should have a MV of ~2900fps. We'll see. As I mentioned earlier, his handloads of 8x57 were giving 3006fps with a 150gr Hornady soft point spitzer, for a muzzle energy of 3009 ft-lbs. Actually those were measured about 15' from teh muzzle, so I guess true muzzle numbers would be slightly higher.

Oh, and I have found very few, maybe 1 or 2 split necks in nearly 1k rounds of it I've shot. Then again, I probably didn't look as close as I could have either.