Joe, you got the magic recipe for this one? Got me a new clean-bored gun, likely around .331" bore diameter and seems I remember you having success using IMR 5010 to launch a certain nameless large cast slug with good accuracy.

How much did you use? Case full, or reduced some?

Oldfeller

I sent you an email on it.

Joe

Don't people talk much on this site anymore? It's not moddyrated to death and the whole thing is a free discussion "Humor and off topic permitted" board (last time I was on it, anyway).

Or do we have folks here who don't like discussing things like booster charges and such-like?

We are discussing IMR 5010 and getting it to work in a large displacement low pressure case in an antique Austrian-Hungarian horse trooper saddle rifle.

A really weird throat on this gun, it will eat a full diameter .338 cast and lubed slug, size it down to .333 diameter and spit it out the muzzle.

If you use a very slow BMG powder like IMR 5010 you get a very consistent chamber start pressure -- the PSI it takes to force the size down on the soft lead slug.

You never get any higher pressure, as the burn drops off dramatically once the slug sizes down. 5010 natural leaves huge chunks of unburned powder if fired without a booster.

Joe used a booster charge to get a more complete burn on the powder in his Steyr 95, not a new trick by anybody's guess.


Oldfeller

OK, what would happen if I put a case full of IMR 5010 behind a .338" soft core jacketed slug?

Remember, this rifle has a very long gently tapered throat that will take and hold a .338" jacketed ogive completely in the long gently tapered throat.

Have any of you ever sized down a soft core jacketed slug for an oddball caliber using a reloading press? Same order of force would be required, and the IMR 5010 would pressure up to this level, then drop off sharply when the bullet began to move.

Comments?

Oldfeller

Kelly, I've used IMR 5010 in my '06, 7.5 Swiss, 7.62 x 54R and 8mm Mau., with heavy CB's, mag. primers and a small amount of case filler (poly-shotgun filler is better than powdered bran, but the latter is much cheaper & as near as your supermarket). My best performance in all rifles was with 48 - 49gr. (to the neck-shoulder junction), and enough filler* to allow mild compression when the CB was seated. Accuracy was excellent and little unburned powder fell from the fired cases, but there was unburned powder in the bbl.


*as little as 0.3cc in the 8mm., but 1.0cc in the '06 and 7.62 x 54R, and 0.7cc in the 7.5 Swiss.

Okay Kelly, you asked for it, hehe. I've done a tremendous amount of shooting and exprimentation with that rifle. First let me say I chronographed my original Nazi ammo. If my memory serves me right it was pushing that 207 gr bullet out well into the 2700's fps. So, I bought a box of Hornady 210 gr .338 flatnoses meant for the old 33 Winchester. I believe Hornady discontinued them now. I sized them down to my groove size and with my chrono I worked up a load that about equaled that factory load. What I concluded were two things, one that 8x56R is ever bit an equal of 338-06 and two that M95 is a brute strong rifle.

Then I went to work on cast bullets. My main bullet was the Lee meant for the 338. Like you mentioned the rifle has a long and very generous throat. The bore also has very very deep rifling grooves. Then I shot many of your various Frankenstein bullets. I shot all these with just about every powder I have stocked. I ended up with a case full of 5010 with a little booster. The best I ever got it to shoot with receiver sights was a 7/8ths inch group at 100 yards. The rifle is very punishing on the shoulder because it's very light.

Like Paul I've shot 5010 in everything, but I use only Dacron or Kapok fillers. In my M95 I don't get that much unburned powder, just a few kernels. The powder is as you say Kelly, White Powder, in reference to being the dirty black powder of smokeless powders...it is dirty.

If the metal on these rifles is up to snuff and of quality, which I think they are because Steyr made many of them, I then believe they are the equal of a 98 Mauser in strenght. In fact the bolt lugs are bigger and thicker then the Mauser and do not have the ejector cut through the one.
All in all a very fascinating rifle, accurate, and a great cast bullet shooter.

Joe

Oldfeller; I size the 150 gr Speer and 130 gr WWPP to .272" for the 6.5 Carcano, just run them thru a Lee .272" push thru sizer they made for me. I also size the 7mm Soup Can, a cast bullet designed by you, down to .272" for the same rifle and the Lee 277/125/r, they all size down relatively easy with just the rockchucker press. My guess, and that is just what it is, is that the barrel will size your 338 bullet down .005 to groove dia just fine with a SLOW powder like 5010. Strap her down and try a couple, then let us know. And yes I feel a lot more freedom here than at the other place.

Well, goodie -- we got conversation.

Now how crazy is it to let the long generous throat resize the .338" soft core jacketed slugs "on the fly"?

Oldfeller

I don't know if it is crazy, but I do believe powder selection and load developement are important. Once before I mentioned this with little response, but a guy who pioneered a stock laminating process, Mel Smart/accubond, and I used to shoot together in the late 1980's, he accidentally loaded a 8mm ball cartridge into his 30/06 and fired it, the round must have headspaced off the ogive of the bullet, on fireing he exclaimed wow that kicked, we got the bolt open with a little force and ejected a 06 case with a very short neck. A local gunsmith had gave him some 06 ball to shoot up, and on inspecting we found several 8mm ball cartridges mixed in, the rifle was an Interarms MKx with his very first lam stock on it, the rifle was checked for headspace to see if setback had occurred, or chanber was stretched, nothing was found wrong with it, that was sizing down a .323" bullet to .308, wow .015. I don't know about the strength of the 95 Steyr compared to the IA MKx, metalurgy of the MKx should be superior, but I think it would be an interesting experiment with all safety precautions applied. You could lose a rifle in the process but I doubt it IMHO

I accidentally conducted an "experiment" along that line without even knowing it while I was doing it a few years back. First Turkish Mauser I bought came encased in cosmoline as one would expect. I scraped and scrubbed it off the outside with gasoline, and proceeded to do the same on the inside. Pushed tight patches soaked in gasoline through the bore, then brushed it vigorously with a bronze brush, then patched some more. At some point I switched from gasoline to Hoppe's #9. I was immediately disappointed to find that the rifling just wasn't there! There were gentle ripples where the lands should be. I couldn't imagine how one had gotten that worn out in service but it did have a dot of bright red paint on the butt (which came off with the gasoline), and I thought it might mean that it was an unserviceable rifle to be used only for training purposes, and they might not have given a rat if it could hit anything as long as it would shoot. Anyway, after I'd cleaned it I checked the bore by just sticking a caliper in the muzzle, not thinking it was worth the time and energy to slug it. Got .334" across one set of grooves and .338" across the other, as I recall. Took it to the range and shot it a good bit to see if I could hit anything. Bullets were all over the target board at 100 yards, probably a 3-4 foot diameter pattern. Shot it maybe 20-30 rounds. It was a little stiff opening the bolt, and the primers were very flat. I blamed all that on the "hot Turk ammo." Took it home and cleaned it up throughly, and went back at least one more trip to the range shooting it and cleaning it up as before. Decided I was going to have to replace the barrel. Bought a takeoff on eBay and went to remove the old one. Was having trouble removing the old one without using a pipe wrench. Decided to try heating it with a propane torch, first applying SAE 30 oil all over the action as a heat indicator so I wouldn't ruin the heat treatment. (The oil smokes at about 500°F, which I didn't think would unduly soften the action when applied briefly.) Heating the receiver ring didn't release the barrel enough that I could break it loose, so I put the heat to the barrel with a wet rag around the receiver ring and really let the barrel get hot. Smoke came out the muzzle and a little debris fell out of the breech. I went to clamp it back in the barrel vise and just happened to get a glimpse down the bore in the process. Holy smoke, it had nice sharp lands and grooves! They had been full of dried cosmoline all the time, that stayed there through all that cleaning and shooting, and didn't come out till I got it smoking hot! The muzzle had been worn by cleaning rods, and was belled. That fooled me into thinking I was seeing what I thought I was seeing, traces of rifling in a worn-out barrel, when in fact I was seeing slight ripples in a hard varnish that filled and covered the rifling. I was in fact squeezing those jacketed bullets down to bore diameter or so on each shot! No wonder I was seeing signs of pressure!

After cooking out the cosmoline and cleaning it again, I went back to the range. No high pressure signs. It's still no tack driver, but it'll keep all the shots on paper at 100 yards for sure. 5-6" groups are about average. Worn muzzle could probably benefit from counterboring, but I doubt I'll get around to it.

Well, I've been doing the .338" down to .332" trick with hard cast lead slugs for a while now, so I don't see a thin copper jacket over a dead soft core being all that severely different.

I took my new gun and looked at it a bit -- nice bore, clean wood and I have a reluctance to drill holes in it because it is so durn pretty.

I'm actually going to keep the old virgin as an antique "original" -- imagine that if you will.

I know these guns really aren't virgins, they were all cut down from full length guns and they were re-arsenalled at least twice since the actions were made. Mine has a replacement barrel on it -- there are signs that the barrel to action marks are restruck with a different tool and the barrel serial number is a different style of text than the other marked components.

But I have a scoped one for distance shooting and I'll keep this one for short range open sight shooting.

Love an old gun in great shape -- they are really getting rare now.

Oldfeller

Oldfeller, you should buy mine then, really unique nice piece of wood on it too.

I was going to try a booster charge,but couldnt figure out where to hook up the cables. OOOpppsss---was I off topic?

Ray,

The negative goes anywhere on the metal portion of the rifle, the positive goes on the firing pin. Let me know how that works for you.

Joe

Joe I tried it and used the scope for the negative---nothing happened couldnt get the bolt closed must be that I have to use the rifle not the scope???

Ray,

You sure you used the Remington electronic primers when you loaded the cartridges?

Joe

You're lucky Ray, I hooked the negative to my scope once. The rifle would fire, but I fried the reticle in my scope.

Joe

Now Uncle Ray, my scopes each have two ends, the in-looking end and the out-looking end.

With these hard kicking short carbines you have to be careful to keep a proper introspective "objective distance" while trying to keep your outlook positive.

Failure to do this can lead to shattered glasses and a bleeding eyebrow.

<grin>

Hey Uncle Ray, good chatting with you a bit. Reminds me of the old crew, back in the day when one could have a little fun without hair-lipping the mayor.

Kelly