Tokarev fun

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Doc Hoy

New member
Took out a Tokarev with some surplus ammunition.

That is a hot pistol. Consistently above 1400 FPS and very noisy. Pretty blinkin accurate though. Nice sight picture. This pistol would be easy to get used to.

It sure isn't a handloader friendly pistol. Of fifty rounds I only found three spent cases. The rest landed in a different zip code. I lay tarps around my shooting bench to catch the spent cases and they are all twelve foot tarps.

I can catch most of my .45 ACP, but that Tokarev throws the brass a long way.

I might say as well that of the three I found, two of them were split at the mouth.

All in all a fun day.
 
They are fun pistols to shoot. I wish the cheap Romanian ammo was still around. I have 3 TT-33 types, a CZ-52 and a PPS-43C. I can go through a lot of ammo. I thought I had enough to last for many years until I purchased the PPS-43C. I had to dial back on shooting that one.

The Polish, Bulgarian and Yugo all had neck splits. I find that the brass travels somewhere between 15 and 20 feet.

TK
 
TK

Thanks for the wink back....

I am going to put up some screen around the shooting bench to stop the stuff from going into low earth orbit.

I had reloaded some cut down .223 cases for the pistol but they did not pass the plunk test. The case works but the case and bullet does not. I think the shape of the bullet I am using is interfering. May just try seating it lower. Back to the drawing board on those.

Another problem would be that I am casting the bullets and I am afraid my hardest bullet metal isn't enough for the speeds this pistol gets.

It won't kill me if I don't shoot this pistol much. I like to experience the shooting of each of the firearms I have. But once I see how they shoot, I can hang them up an just admire them. (reluctantly).
 
If you are using cut down .223 or similar brass, make sure the case necks are trimmed/reamed to be of normal thickness for a pistol case. If they are too thick, the round won't chamber and if it does the pressure can go pretty high because the neck can't expand to release the bullet. (This issue is usually addressed in terms of rifles, particularly in regard to firing 8x57js in an unaltered 8x57j chamber, but the same is true in a pistol.)

Jim
 
Good info James....

I reamed the cases but I have no idea that the neck thickness is right, only that it is much less than the original thickness of the .223 case.

I have some more work to do on these reloads.

Just between us girls, I probly will do the work to get them shooting right, just so I can say I did it. Then I'll hang it up and just look at it.

It is a darned impressive pistol though. Smooth action. User friendly. Pretty accurate. Fun to shoot from an emotional standpoint.
 
I was at the range with someone and had one with me. We were shooting at the pistol line. I had a rifle set on a bench right next to the pistol line. At the 100 yard line, I had a piece of 5"x8" tablet paper taped up. Nobody else was there, so I stepped over and cranked off 3 rounds. ALL three were on the paper. It is definitely a hot round. A .45 would probably have been in the dirt. I had used very little holdover with the .30 caliber. I had one years back and could not get ammo for it. I used to fire 7.63 Mauser ammo in it. If you have a loose chamber, you will get away with it. Once and a while I would get one that would not lock in, but not often. The neck on the Mauser ammo is straight and the neck on the Russian is tapered, so if you have a tight chamber, it may jam a lot. Anyway, the Mauser ammo is loaded way under what the Russian ammo is.
 
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Last week Star Line brass sent me an e-mail that 7.62x25 brass was going into production soon.
I ordered 2,000 rounds of brass.
I Still have 2 full crates of ammo and one unopened tin plus a 50cal ammo can full but as much as I love to shoot my Toks that's not a lot of ammo.
5.56 brass is a premium for me as I load that round as well so I hate to cut them down to make pistol ammo.
 
Thanks guys...

It is nice to learn that folks agree with me on the quality of this pistol.

I owe it to one of you for getting the surplus brass to me.
 
Those are fun pistols to shoot.
My empties initially landed behind me about 20 feet; sometimes they bounced after that and who knows where they ended up.
I think that when fired a lot of the surplus ammo casings crack where the bullet is crimped.
 
I might say as well that of the three I found, two of them were split at the mouth.
Click to expand...

Some of the Polish have a different type of crimp to hold the bullet, sort of like they are staked with a punch. These tend to split at the location the bullet is staked in the case.
 
Some of the Polish have a different type of crimp to hold the bullet, sort of like they are staked with a punch. These tend to split at the location the bullet is staked in the case.
Click to expand...
Yeah, those pin pricks were a really dumb idea. Could not have possibly helped accuracy, and this old, brittle brass loves to propagate cracks from the holes to the neck (enormous stress riser right there). It does seem to be fairly reliably though, at least in the case of my spam-can (quite foul/dirty, of course).

Every time I shoot the stuff through my CZ52, I think of the poor, oppressed shmuck who had to tie all those little strings around the 16-round packages all day.

TCB
 
Yeah, those pin pricks were a really dumb idea. Could not have possibly helped accuracy
Click to expand...

Actually I don't see any difference in accuracy from commercial vs the stab crimped surplus stuff. I don't find the surplus to be much dirtier than the Sellier & Bellot stuff either. I treat it all as though it's corrosive, even if the commercial stuff says it isn't.
 
In 1996 Century would put cases of Polish Tokarev ammo on my doorstep for 7 cents a shot, the cheapest center fire ammo out there.
Until 1994 the Chinese 7.62x39mm ammo had been cheap like that, but by 96 the Tokarev was the route for cheapskates.
And the ammo stayed cheap for a long time.
I have some of the 9mm Tokarev barrels, and that is a little cheaper now during the shortage.

I have Tokarevs from 4 countries, but if you get a copy of Remling's book on Tokarevs:
1984
81 pages

Contents:
Introduction ...1
Feodor Vasilevitch Tokarev..3
Russian Tokarevs ..9
..specifications ..35
..exploded view..36
..field stripping ..37
..design comparison with M1911A1..41
..performance comparison with the M1911A1..49
..inspector's marks..51
Polish Tokarevs..57
Hungarian Tokarevs..59
Chinese Tokarevs..65
Yugoslav Tokarevs..75
Selected references..79

I have Chinese, Russian, Polish, and Romanian Tokarevs.
The book mentions Korean, Egyptian, and even 22LR Tokarevs, but Romanian does not show up in the book.
 
"I reamed the cases but I have no idea that the neck thickness is right, only that it is much less than the original thickness of the .223 case."

Doc, it's pretty easy to figure out if you've reamed the proper amount.

All loading manuals should give a maximum neck diameter with a bullet seated.

If you're over that, you didn't ream enough.

If you ream too much, however, you can run into issues getting enough neck tension hold the bullet.
 
"Yeah, those pin pricks were a really dumb idea."

Actually, they're a pretty good idea.

They're effective, and believe it or not they have virtually no effect on accuracy because the are of the bullet that is affected is so tiny.

The cases cracking at the point of the crimp is something the original consumer didn't care about. They were going to be fired and not reloaded.
 
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