I know nothing about 8mm Mausers...

8MM in a 1903A3

A "friend" of mine asked me if he could shoot my '03A3. We were at the range and we each had several rifles on hand. I had a sweet little custom 03 that had been putting my handloads into neat little 1" piles at 100 yards. He reached into his pocket, retrieved a cartridge and says "this round is a little sticky going into the chamber."

No problem, (I thought) my handloads are only resized enough to barely chamber and sometimes are a little "sticky." "Sticky," however, is in the eye of the beholder.

Kaboom! He had a bit of trouble opening the bolt and the case that ejected had a very short neck! It turned out there was no damage to either rifle or shooter. I killed many a whitetail with that rifle over the next 20 years. Never did let him shoot any more of my rifles though. Lucky is as lucky... is.
 
Jesus... tell the guy to get a lawyer started on this immediately. Talk about gross negligence... and the fact that merchants present themselves as having knowlege of their goods. This could be a negligence claim without the extra facts, but the fact that a gunshop employee suggested this idiotic stunt makes it a slam-dunk.

The actual damages are slight, but the punative damages could be a whopper. Time to bleed them dry. Dangerous idiots need to be punished.
 
That may be true but saying "Sooner or later, if you keep giving advice like that, someone will be hurt or killed and the Lawyers will run laughing all the way to the bank while you spend your last years in poverty" is more reasonable. If they don't take sound legal advice like that, well, ya can't say ya didn't tell them when it does happen. THe word "lawyers" should be pronounced with a tone of voice combining venom, hatred, and awe.
 
.308 Win in 8mm Mauser?

Is that right? If that is what happend, the .308 case should not look normal. It will be blown "straighter" in the 8mm chamber, likekly running out of brass about where the neck of the 8mm chamber starts. Not a good thing, but not likely dangerous.

The .308 case is a few thousandths wider at the shoulder than the 8mm (7.92mm) case is at that point. The .308 round becomes a crush fit at that point, and when fired, the .30 cal bullets happily wobbles down the .32 cal bore. No real risk of damage, BUT this only applies when both the brass and the chamber are in spec. If you have an oversize 8mm chamber (and/or undersize .308 brass) the .308 case may not seal against the 8mm chamber, and rupture, semding gas (and bits of brass) back into the action, and possibly the shooter. Very Not good.

The old lady at the "gun shop" made a mistake. Perhaps she doesn't know what she is talking about, or perhaps she had the rifle confused with another one (some 98 Mausers are (rebarreled) chambered for the .308 Win). But I would expect anyone working in a gun shop to know the difference. Now, an old lady working in a pawn shop probably won't know, or really care.

8mm Mauser, 8x57mm, 7.92, and 7.92x57mm are all the same round. Originally loaded with a .318" dia bullet, it was changed to a .323" dia bullet before WW I. Sometimes you find 8mm ammo as 8x57 I (or J) and "S". the change in bore diameter was made in 1905, and the "I or J" was used to indicate the larger bore size. "S" is used to indicate a spitzer bullet.

DON'T shoot any more .308 in your 8mm Mauser. And don't take that old lady's advice anymore, even if it is cheaper.
 
Nearly everyone is assuming that this rifle was 8mm, and the gunshop owner was irresponsible. A lot of these Spanish Mausers were rechambered for .308 NATO, and marked as such. It may have been mismarked, or if they shot it with .308 Win, it was too powerful (.308 Nato is quite a bit less powerful) and it had bad headspace and jammed.

I wouldn't shoot .308 Win in my Spanish on a bet, NATO even scares me with those relatively soft receivers.

Dave
 
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The gun store owner should have known better. On the other hand, it is the rifle owner's responsibility to know what ammunition to shoot in his/her gun. The gun owner may have said something like "I need some bullets for a Spanish Mauser". If that was the case, then the gun store employee is not at fault since a Spanish Mauser could have been chambered in 7.62 Nato.
 
Ladies and gentlemen,

For all interested DO READ FRANK DE HAAS' book BOLT ACTION RIFLES.
He tells an excellent story about a "converted" Arisaka rifle, Chambered for 30-06, bored for 6.5 mm (.264).

Do read it.
 
Arisaka

Sirs:
DUTCHY is right on! Ackley chambered bbls. that had smaller bores - as long as he relieved the neck area so the cartridge would chamber, he could fire 30-06 in a 6.5 bore with no excess pressure indicated!
The bullet was swadged down. It takes about 2000 pounds to start a bullet into the rifling anyway.
Of course as long as the neck of a cartridge wasn't constricted this was done with several calibers!
Rifles just don't "blow-up." There is a reason for it - luck doesn't exist - it's the coalesence of events that seem like, "LUCK.' It doesn't exist - there is a reason for it.
Most rifles blow up due to a mechanical fault, or, handloading by some idiot who wants to squeese the last bit of velocity out of his rifle! They are idiots and should be labelled as such!
Harry B.
 
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