Surplus 8mm Ammo

J

johnm1

New member
I have a Greek Mauser that just doesn't shoot the Turk surplus ammunition well. I have a hard time keeping the impact on the target stand at 100 yards. The Turk surplus is considerably hotter than the commercial stuff and I end up with a sticky bolt when I shoot the Turk stuff as well as terrible accuracy. Commercial ammunition is not bad as far as accuracy goes and there is no sign of a sticky bolt with the commercial ammunition. I can keep the commercial ammunition inside of 4 minutes and I'm not sure I could do any better with the sights on this particular rifle.

Is there any surplus 8mm ammunition available today that is not as hot as the Turk surplus?

I hate the idea of shooting only commercial ammunition and although I reload, the next person who has this rifle might not. The rifle head spaces OK. The gunsmith said it was close to being out of specification but still OK. I believe I can see some throat erosion from the receiver side of the barrel. Maybe not but the rifling appears to 'taper down' a little bit as it approaches the chamber (that's a tough sight picture to describe in words). The remaining length of the barrel looks fine. Dark but well defined rifling with a good crown.
 
What kind of commercial ammo, specifically, did you try? U.S. made 8mm ammo is horribly downloaded out of fear that some idiot will try to fire it in an old rifle with a J bore (.318) rather than the newer JS bore (.323). Fortunately, Europeans are not so concerned with such things and European commercial 8mm ammo like S&B, Norma, and Prvi Partizan are not under loaded. If all you tried was U.S. made fodder, you might consider trying some European ammo to see if your accuracy doesn't improve.

Also, Turk ammo uses, IIRC, ~149gr bullets. While this was the original weight for the cartridge, the Germans found that it produced an undesireable level of muzzle flash when fired in the shorter barrel of the K98 and wound up standardizing on a 196-198gr bullet as did most other users of 8mm Mauser. As such, most commonly encountered 8mm Mauser rifles will have their sights regulated for the heavier bullet and the lighter Turk ammo will often shoot to a different POI.

While there is still a bit of 8mm Mauser surplus out there, it's rapidly drying up and much of what's left is the "bottom of the barrel" insofar as quality is concerned. If you can handload or find a commercial loading that your rifle likes, you'll have a much more reliable source of ammo than you would relying on surplus.
 
Thanks Webley,

It was american commercial ammunition. At the time I was looking for an underpowered alternate to see if the rifle would respond better to a more sedate round. It did, but now I need to find something other than rather expensive commercial rounds that are still not as hot as the Turk ammo.
 
 
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