I have the opportunity to purchase a Drilling of an unknown caliber. I was able to inspect it today and found that it is marked 8,7 m/m over 72.

What is puzzling though, is that the grooves measure .360 and the lands measure .345.

Can anyone point me in the right direction? My cartridges of the world does not list any 8,7.

If you post this in the European Hunting part of our forum I thin you'll get quite a few answers and probably even bullet weight and type.

Good luck with you quest on your 9x72R drilling!

8.7mm is .343" IOW the nominal BORE size, before rifling.
.360 is 9.14mm
The case length is 72mm.
If I had to guess, I'd say it was something along the lines of a 9x72R or 9.1x72R (look up the 8x72R and 9.3x72R to get an idea of the era/type)

As a list of all cartridges ever made, COTW manages to only show about 25% of them, and that average really drops with the older (pre-"normalized" dimension) European rounds

To follow on from Tailgunners post - Dixons "European Sporting cartridges " list a 9.2x72R which would fit with your case length.

However you might also consider that many European riflemakers chambered rifles for the English .360 x2 1/4" cartridge and others based on that BP round.Whilst there are more than a few of those 360-based cartridges there is also a host of variants in case dimension which render many of those calibers to be not interchangeable... fun , huh ?

best thing to do is take a chamber cast and then get some specific measurements for us to work on .

Thats what I love about european cartridges - they are tough to identify.

Forgot to mention - imho "COW" is the worlds worst cartridge reference - ever , end of story .

The rifle barrel was stamped roughly as such:

8.7m/m
72

5.26
235

I figured 9.14, but have never seen such a cartridge.

muzza, missed your post somehow. Thanks for the tip on the 9.2. Problem with all this is, this drilling is VERY nice, and I had hoped to hunt and shoot it. It was advertised as a 7x57 which first peaked my interest. I would be equally thrilled with 9.3x74R. However, an oddball that is impossible to find ammo and components is not what I wanted.

It is cheap though...

I agree... COW leaves much to be desired.

No worries mate.

i dont know that brass would be a big issue , Horneber and others make a variety of euro-caliber brass , probably Bertram makes a basic that will work too .

If the price is right go for it , and worry about the ammo later . It wont be impossible , maybe just a mite challenging.

There are no makers markings on the gun, only proof marks (Nitro so post 1912 pre 1939?) and these caliber markings.

After some searching I found this drilling:


The markings are almost identical for the shotgun and rifle barrels.