I just returned from Namibia and the "Camp Gun" was a Mauser Model 66 chambered for the 8x68s and the gun had killed a couple truckloads of critters. The PH swore by the cartridge (not so much the rifle) and said it was a superb cartridge. Does anybody know if any US gun makers have ever built rifles in this caliber? I wouldn't mind picking one up.

Over here in Europe, the big 8mm is a well respected cartridge, introduced just before world war two and a personal favourite of Reichsjägermeister and Air Marshal Göring. I belive some of the European gunmakers chamber it, but if you want this cartridge in an American gun, I guess your best bet is to go to one of the custom gunmakers. I am pretty sure that Charlie Sisk, for example, would have no qualms at all about building you a quality 8x68.

[QUOTE]Originally posted by Bukken:
Over here in Europe, the big 8mm is a well respected cartridge, introduced just before world war two and a personal favourite of Reichsjägermeister and Air Marshal Göring. I belive some of the European gunmakers chamber it, but if you want this cartridge in an American gun, I guess your best bet is to go to one of the custom gunmakers. I am pretty sure that Charlie Sisk, for example, would have no qualms at all about building you a quality 8x68.[/QUOTe

With .338mags out there no major US manufacturer will ever chamber that round.
Would you mind spelling the name of that nazi pig with small letters next time?

For the same reason the 8mm Rem Mag never did well ,too close to the already established 338 mag.

The only gun I have ever found for it in teh use was one single Sauer 90. I scooped it up quisck too.

I love the cartridge and prefer it over the 338 mag.
I would love to see it chambered here if for no other reason than to bring the ammo cost down and cases in. They can be hellishly hard to find and VERY pricey.

quote:

Originally posted by strapman:
I just returned from Namibia and the "Camp Gun" was a Mauser Model 66 chambered for the 8x68s and the gun had killed a couple truckloads of critters. The PH swore by the cartridge (not so much the rifle) and said it was a superb cartridge. Does anybody know if any US gun makers have ever built rifles in this caliber? I wouldn't mind picking one up.

The only rifle I have ever seen chambered so was custom G&H sporter built on pre-64 Winchester action.
If you run across bolt gun by Blaser, Steyr, Mauser, Kirco, Heym offer very little for it as almost nobody in US will ever buy it from you should you tire of it. If I recall correctly last time I seen ammo it was Hirterberger imported by GSI South at about $80 per pack when quality .338 WM was about $30. If I found original .30 Newton or .35 Newton sporter then I would go through trouble of loading ammo for it but not 8x68S. The only good thing about 8x68S is that the brass can be converted into .35 Newton.

The fact that it was favorite cartridge of that fat pig nazi war criminal hermann goring make me want to vomit profusely.

I have a Blaser R93 in 8X68s. One nice thing about the 8X68 is that the long sloping shoulder makes it one of the slickest feeding rounds I have ever run through a rifle. It has to be felt to really apreciate it. Over all I think it is a good round, and if brass and ammo where not so scarce, it would probably be a little more used in the US. Even though it is a fairly large case, it seems to prefer powders like 4831 and 4350, over the slower burning stuff.

A very good friend of mine, whom I often hunt with and is a Canadian citizen, was born in Germany and just likes rimless cases. He had Ralf Martini's personal 8x68S here in my basement gun room last year and really wants a rifle so chambered....Ralf could not part with this favoured piece, a real beauty and so my buddy is still looking.

I am a HUGE 40+ year .338WM fan and have a P-64 .300 H&H and .375H&H set plus lots of 9.3s and whatever, but, I also would like a nice 8x68S German Mauser sporter, say on a 1935 Obie Brazilian, with a 25" tube and claw mounted Ziess or S&B scope. I would load 200 NPs at about 3000 fps-mv and be ready to rock.

I just bought another Brno 22H today, this an 8x57JS and I have a Husqy 1600 at Ralfs, getting a Wisner 3-pos/Timney combo installed and then probably a Bansner. I am getting kind of interested in playing with the "8"s and expect they would do well for my BC hunting.

A 7x64, a 8x68S, a 9.3x64 and maybe an 11.2 Schuler, all in original Mausers and done as a set by Duane in the old-style "Accrabond" stocks from the late Mel Smart....yeah, I could live with that!

Sometimes the big 8mm was quite popular in the red deer areas in Germany, but because it is a hard kicker, there are a lot of very fine bolt rifles on the used market. Guns like Mauser 66(S), Sauer 80 and 90, Sauer Weatherby... They are quite cheap (without scope in the +600€-range)because the modern german hunter must have a R93!

it would be a perfect rifle for Africa with a big double like my Searcy .470 NE. Throw in a matching rifle in 6,5x68S and you would be well set for any shots under 400 yards, perhaps even a bit beyond that.

I would love to see Remington or Ruger chamber it in a bolt rifle. That would be a real classic, with a matching 6,5x68S.

Great cartridge, the 8mm just never caught on here. There is a rimmed version of both as well. Nifty double or single shot.

Rich
DRSS

quote:

Originally posted by Idaho Sharpshooter:
There is a rimmed version of both as well.
Rich
DRSS

Rich, small nit, there is no rimmed version of the 8x68S.

- mike

It is also, along with the 8x64 an "eight" that can easily use the bulkier American powders designed for 30-06 capacity cases.

The 8x57 has always been handicapped by that and does better with Vectan SP7 and such like.

But as others say it is just to close to the US 8mm Remington Manum and the 338 Winchester to have much of a following in US I suppose.

I am currently assembling loads for an 8x60S I acquired a month ago. With a 25" barrel I am hoping for great things!

The big, big, advantages of the "eight" is that it has a useful bullet spread weight of 150 to 198 grains.

Pretty much all you need and certainly it "does" 150 grain bullets better than any 338 IMHO.

You need some load data for the 8x60S?

quote:

The fact that it was favorite cartridge of that fat pig nazi war criminal hermann goring make me want to vomit profusely.

My great uncle Hermann was not that bad. A trifle overweight and certainly over enthusiastic, but a dedicated hunter nonetheless.. I though the 9,3x70 was his favorite, but the 8x68S makes a little more sense.

Monastery Forester, I would be grateful for some 8x60mm data.

quote:

The only rifle I have ever seen chambered so was custom G&H sporter built on pre-64 Winchester action.
If you run across bolt gun by Blaser, Steyr, Mauser, Kirco, Heym offer very little for it as almost nobody in US will ever buy it from you should you tire of it. If I recall correctly last time I seen ammo it was Hirterberger imported by GSI South at about $80 per pack when quality .338 WM was about $30. If I found original .30 Newton or .35 Newton sporter then I would go through trouble of loading ammo for it but not 8x68S.

What is the best way to buy an 8x68S on the European market, and then getting it shipped over to the US? An average FFL and accept an import of a purely sporting after filling out just a little red tape. Thanks for the information.

LD

I never heard that fat Hermann was a fan of the 8x68S, hehas used a DR in 8x75RS,
@ Lawndart: you need some load data for the 60S? PN?

the 8mm just isn't popular in the US
8 and 7.92x57, 8x06, 8mmPMM, 8remmag, 325wsm .. lots of tries, just nevr seemed to be the big thing .. partly due to all commerical ammo is way downloaded for 8x57

Personally, I think the 8x68S is a splendid cartridge for NA and African plains game. The nearest things I can compare it to are the .340 Wby Mag. and the 8mm Rem Mag. I think it is actually a bit closer performance-wise to the 340 than the 8mm RM.

Anyway, Idaho Sharpshooter built a couple of very nice smaller bore wildcats on that brass about 15-20 years ago, and his write-ups of them can be found in "seasoned" issues of Precision Shooting magazine.

I know I'd like to have either a "real" Magnum Mauser or a Sauer 90 in that chambering. Or a Brevex so chambered would be nice too.

quote:

Originally posted by Monastery-Forester:
I never heard that fat Hermann was a fan of the 8x68S, hehas used a DR in 8x75RS,
@ Lawndart: you need some load data for the 60S? PN?

His favorite cartridge was 7,89/8,20mm in mg15 of ju-87. It was particularly useful in clearing women, children and old people from roads of war torn countries.

quote:

The nearest things I can compare it to are the .340 Wby Mag. and the 8mm Rem Mag. I think it is actually a bit closer performance-wise to the 340 than the 8mm RM.

[30/06, 300win, 8x68s,375ruger]

The Ruger is largest and superior in power to rest on the lineup. Ammo for the two on the left can be bought at Walmart. Second from the right has real potential be be wonderful money pit. Ammo is expensive and difficult to locate and rifles so chambered are next to worthless as trade fodder.

8x57 / 8x60S / 8mm-06 / 323 Hollis / 338WM



KB

quote:

Originally posted by Paolo9,5x73:
The Ruger is largest and superior in power to rest on the lineup. Ammo for the two on the left can be bought at Walmart. Second from the right has real potential be be wonderful money pit. Ammo is expensive and difficult to locate and rifles so chambered are next to worthless as trade fodder.

Paolo, you'd be surprised how much money I have made on rifles nobody wanted when they were easily available and therefore cheap to buy. Many were not wanted precisely because ammo was so hard to obtain or even completely unavailable except at collector's prices at the time.

I immediately think of my .470 double rifle I bought for $200 when nobody made ammo for it anymore. Ditto my Jeffery-made .404 Jeffery I bought for $60 Canadian and another for 400 RSA rand ($100 U.S. at the time). There were a couple of dozen original Gibbs 6.5 Mannlicher Schoenauer rifles (not carbines...no one wanted the rifles but me) I bought all in one summer in England at local auctions for $5 apiece....made me a bit of money too.

The smart rifle buyer buys rifles which perform well but which nobody wants. He shoots them for 15-20 years, enjoys their usefulness despite the nay-sayers, then checks what they are worth after that lapse of time, and gasps.

Remember when you could buy surplus Mausers anywhere for $10-$25 dollars? At the same time, I was finding commercial Mauser sporters in 9x57 and other relatively uncommon chamberings like .375 x 2-1/2"-R (uncommon to North Americans) for $30-$40. I even bought a couple of Jeffery Mausers in in .280 Ross (later called .280 Kynoch - same thing) that had been built for sale in Africa about 1905-1910 for the same price. "No ammo for those old boy, dontcha know?" is what I was told. Wasn't too sorry I bought them anyway.

In guns like everything else, one determines his monetary profit when he buys, not when he sells.

Try to buy an 8x68 cheaply 20 years from now. I doubt if what will then be "old classics" will be all that easy to find inexpensively.

I'm not doing that anymore because I am too old to wait 20 more years to profit, but if I was about 40-45 years old or younger, I'd be buying every one I could find that no one wanted (yet) and was willing to part with for a song.

It would be best if you kept this to yourself as some of us who know a bit about fine classic rifles are not eager to have more competition in finding and purchasing these "useless" pieces......

Do you remember "Lever Arms" in Vancouver here, back 40+ years ago, when there were double rifles selling for less than a new Remington 700 and British "name" cased bolt rifles selling for $60.00......and I was too young and foolish to buy and bought new Browning Safaris, Mannlicher-Schoenauers, and P-64s for $200.00 each. NOW, one can get about #800.00 for a nice P-64 Std,, same for a near-mint Safari and maybe $1400.00 for a choice MS....the old, cased Greeners, Gibbs, Hollands and so on, well, these go for 100 times what they cost then and are almost impossible to find...hindsight, eh?

The 8x68S is one of the BEST choices for BC hunting and I may well yet get one. Ammo and brass are a bit pricey, but, the RWS cases last forever and a 220 SAF at 2800 is a pretty fair combo for about anything I can think of.

... and Norma is producing now the 8x68S with Swift A-Frames!

quote:

Originally posted by Idaho Sharpshooter:
it would be a perfect rifle for Africa with a big double like my Searcy .470 NE. Throw in a matching rifle in 6,5x68S and you would be well set for any shots under 400 yards, perhaps even a bit beyond that.

I would love to see Remington or Ruger chamber it in a bolt rifle. That would be a real classic, with a matching 6,5x68S.

Great cartridge, the 8mm just never caught on here. There is a rimmed version of both as well. Nifty double or single shot.

Rich
DRSS

I like your thinking. No one has mentioned the 8x72R yet. Now there is a cartridge for a double or single rifle waiting to thump something.

quote:

Originally posted by Dewey:
It would be best if you kept this to yourself as some of us who know a bit about fine classic rifles are not eager to have more competition in finding and purchasing these "useless" pieces......

Do you remember "Lever Arms" in Vancouver here, back 40+ years ago, when there were double rifles selling for less than a new Remington 700 and British "name" cased bolt rifles selling for $60.00.......

I remember it well Dewey. Wasn't Lever's first name Al..? My memory is getting a bit foggy some days. But I also well remember how disappainted I was when he moved his shop in the mid '70s and his stock became much more slim. I made two trips a year to Vancouver for about 10 years before that, mostly just to pick up stuff from him. I always took a roomette on the train over the Yellowhead and back (CN not CP) and enjoyed the ride and the dining car too. No one ever questioned the number of guns in my compartment, nor stole any either. Would also go to that great bookstore just N of Burnside near the Burnside Bridge, which always had a lot of first edition African and other guns and hunting books for a song.
And always bought 10 or 12.

The other thing I liked about Lever was he was always to willing to trade, dicker on prices (grudgingly), and discuss gun and military histories.

Then, of course I'd either fly or take the ferry on over to Victoria and take a room at the Empress for a few days. High Tea in the afternoon on the Veranda, and evenings spent in the Bengal Room sampling single malts and good gins with some abandon. And of course that put one almost right next to the rifle range....

Them were the days, my friend. Oh for the old Canada, without all the PC bullspread, Women's and Original People's rights movements, and providing political asylum to half of Asia, all of the Caribbean, and 2/3 of Africa. It may be the right thing to do morally, but it sure has screwed the country around population-wise, financially, and politically.

Back then a guy could find classical culture in the bigger western cities, and absolute solitude and inner quiet along the Peace, the Skeena, the Copper, and darned near any other place north of Quesnel, Hinton, or Edmonton.

Hope your part of it is still that way.

Best wishes,

AC

8x68S is a bad ass. I had one in a Blaser R93. With the Syn stock it would rattle your eye teeth. My new 8x68S is in a Mauser M03 african, it is very pleasant. Going to try out some new 220 grain gameking loads in it this weekend.

One of the best all around game getters!!!!! Glad I bought 15 boxes of RWS brass before they stopped importing it!!!!!

Ed

Dewey, on re-reading your post, I see you mention Greeners...I had two Greeners I really, really liked.

One was a mint Greener "Club Rifle"...a very heavy barreled Martini "Cadet-sized" rifle in .310 Greener. Probably the most accurate small-cased centerfire I have ever seen out to 60 yards or so.

The second was an oak and leather cased Greener 12-bore with four sets of barrels, with some Brit Light Colonel's name on the outside of the case. Three of the barrel sets were immaculate. The fourth had a bit of pitting. I figured the pitting was from the corrosive caps in the Brit ammo, so was likely the one he had used the most. I tried it and found that with that 25" set of barrels the gun came up in a way which made one almost have to try to miss in order to do so. Of course, that was the set I decided to use too. Lord only knows how many Saskatchewan ducks, geese, huns, and "chickens" fell to that gun in my hands!

Another one of those guns I wish I had back in my dotage....

Do we have to wreck this thread with a lot of garbage about some historical figure that has been dead and gone for 65 years? I really do not care about Herr Goering and am interested in GUNS here, take the "history" to the Political Forum, eh?

quote:

Originally posted by Alberta Canuck:

quote:

Originally posted by Dewey:
It would be best if you kept this to yourself as some of us who know a bit about fine classic rifles are not eager to have more competition in finding and purchasing these "useless" pieces......

Do you remember "Lever Arms" in Vancouver here, back 40+ years ago, when there were double rifles selling for less than a new Remington 700 and British "name" cased bolt rifles selling for $60.00.......

I remember it well Dewey. Wasn't Lever's first name Al..? My memory is getting a bit foggy some days. But I also well remember how disappainted I was when he moved his shop in the mid '70s and his stock became much more slim. I made two trips a year to Vancouver for about 10 years before that, mostly just to pick up stuff from him. I always took a roomette on the train over the Yellowhead and back (CN not CP) and enjoyed the ride and the dining car too. No one ever questioned the number of guns in my compartment, nor stole any either. Would also go to that great bookstore just N of Burnside near the Burnside Bridge, which always had a lot of first edition African and other guns and hunting books for a song.
And always bought 10 or 12.

The other thing I liked about Lever was he was always to willing to trade, dicker on prices (grudgingly), and discuss gun and military histories.

Then, of course I'd either fly or take the ferry on over to Victoria and take a room at the Empress for a few days. High Tea in the afternoon on the Veranda, and evenings spent in the Bengal Room sampling single malts and good gins with some abandon. And of course that put one almost right next to the rifle range....

Them were the days, my friend. Oh for the old Canada, without all the PC bullspread, Women's and Original People's rights movements, and providing political asylum to half of Asia, all of the Caribbean, and 2/3 of Africa. It may be the right thing to do morally, but it sure has screwed the country around population-wise, financially, and politically.

Back then a guy could find classical culture in the bigger western cities, and absolute solitude and inner quiet along the Peace, the Skeena, the Copper, and darned near any other place north of Quesnel, Hinton, or Edmonton.

Hope your part of it is still that way.

Best wishes,

AC

I just hit 64 yesterday, so, I only met Allan Lever in '68 and knew him fairly well until he sold out about five years ago. He moved in '80, IIRC and then soon moved again to the current premises. Would you have known a gentleman by the name of Austin Moorecroft, a guy with a superb collection of Brtish falling blocks?

I cannot place the Burnside Bridge, do you mean the old Connaught Bridge on Cambie St? Would the bookshop, I used to own my own, be "Bond's Books" which was, forty years ago, on Hastings
St. and was a place I haunted whenever work and/or school brought me to Vancity.

I know Hinton well, did two stints on Athabaska 20 years ago and I loath Quesnel, Edmonton and all the resource towns...ghastly places full of money-crazed nobodies from all over the planet, drugs, booze, murders and like that. What you mention WAS/IS NOT ...the right thing to do...Canada is not a dumping ground for the riffraff of the Earth....the ...original peoples....well, I gotta watch my blood pressure!

Within a couple of years, we will move back to the Kootenays and it is now crowded with yuppie heli-skiers and such types from the western US and not what it once was....but, if you know where/how to hunt/fish there, it is still heaven compared to most places and it is "home".

Better move back here with all those neat guns and I will look after them for you, not many now have the good taste to collect and preserve such treasures and most want to buy a Tikka .300WSM.......sad, eh.

First off, I could not agree with you any more than I already do about the folly of accepting people with no skills, no morals, and no work ethic into Canada just because they cry hard. Doesn't matter WHERE they are from, even Auld Blighty itself.But there are some folks from each and every part of the world who are honest, hard working, thoroughly good people. Those people I welcome with my whole heart, regardless where they are from or what they look like, so long as they come in legally, in not overwhelming numbers all at once, and do everything humanly possible to assimilate themselves into OUR culture and pay their own freight.

And YES! It was Bond's Books! Though time may have distorted my spatial memories a tad, seems to me the approaches to the bridge I am referring to started just about a block behind Bond's. Everyone I knew at the time called it the the Burnaby Bridge because if you crossed it going away from downtown and continued on in a straight line, you ended up in what we all knew as the Burnaby area. Anyway, doesn't matter. That IS the store. (Sorry about earlier calling it the "Burnside". That is a similar steel bridge across the Willamette in Portland.)

The areas I loved in those days were that triangle of bush between Grand Cache and Ft. Assiniboine, with Lesser Slave Lake as its northern cap. Used to be lots of moose, grizzly,and Mountain Caribou in there as well as along the Little Smoky.

I also liked the area east of Wabesca/Desmarais, and from there clear east across the Athabasca Delta. Getting farther north, my favorite area was where the Nahanni flows out of the Rockies, and that pass too where you can cross the mountains from Norman Wells to Faro.

Until the native peoples B.S., I loved the far north, and am a charter member of the Arctic Society (which I now don't even know if it still exists as an organization).

But I'll bet much of that primo land has been devastated by the energy folks and the hard rock miners.

One of my nephews, BTW, is now the NCOIC of the RCMP detachment at Spirit River.

Anyway, hope you enjoy it back home. I think Vancouver is mostly no place for a guy who spent his developing and prime condition adult years in the bush.


BTW - You mentioned in another thread that I should send you my Musgrave .404 and let you use it for a year or two. You know, if it wasn't for our two assinine federal governments, I was tempted to do just that. But with those stupid bastards, we'd probably both end up in gaol and I'd be forbidden to get my .404 back or ever own ANY guns again.

What the Hell ever happened to freedom for responsible adults anyway?

quote:

Originally posted by Monastery-Forester:
... and Norma is producing now the 8x68S with Swift A-Frames!

It's the Norma brass I'm interested in. RWS has all but dried up over here. My stash of 8x68S brass was sufficient when I only had one.

I am getting closer to a Pre-64 in the little brother. It is comforting to look at three hundred unfired cases out in the shop.
If you think the 264 Win Mag is a cool plains game rifle, you would love the 6,5x68S!

Rich
DRSS

quote:

Originally posted by z1r:

quote:

Originally posted by Monastery-Forester:
... and Norma is producing now the 8x68S with Swift A-Frames!

It's the Norma brass I'm interested in. RWS has all but dried up over here. My stash of 8x68S brass was sufficient when I only had one.

You know, RWS and Norma are parts of the same company and I`m quite sure that the only difference of the brass is the headstamp!

quote:

Originally posted by Monastery-Forester:

quote:

Originally posted by z1r:

quote:

Originally posted by Monastery-Forester:
... and Norma is producing now the 8x68S with Swift A-Frames!

It's the Norma brass I'm interested in. RWS has all but dried up over here. My stash of 8x68S brass was sufficient when I only had one.

You know, RWS and Norma are parts of the same company and I`m quite sure that the only difference of the brass is the headstamp!

I would perhaps wait a bit before getting too exited about the prospect of readily available Norma 8x68S brass? Norma lists the caliber in their ammo lineup, but they don't list brass available for handloading... This is not unknown in the European arms industry (Swiss RUAG is a perfect example of this, curse their name!), where focus on margins seems to be even more pervasive than in the US - and, admittedly, handloading much less popular.

Although RUAG owns both the RWS and Norma brands, I have never actually seen any PROOF of what brass comes from what manufacturing facility. There are a lot of rumours about cross manufacturing between the different brands, but no hard evidence that I have seen so far. Both Norma and RWS had brass (ammo) manufacturing facilities when they were taken under the RUAG umbrella. I have not seen anything about either manufacturing facility being closed - in fact, on Norma's website, they celebrate a recent expansion of the Norma facility.

Apart from (now) common ownership of Norma and RWS, and apart from both brands being "premium" in terms of quality (and price! ), I have found quite a bit of difference between Norma and RWS brass in the past. IMHO, Norma brass tended to be on the soft side, and RWS quite a bit harder and not so flexible. So personally, I do not equate Norma and RWS brass, in spite of common ownership.

The RWS 8x68S brass is the toughest, meanest, son-of-a-gun brass I have ever come across. I remember endless trouble trying to trim this brass. If my experience is anything to go by, I expect this brass to last a LONG time!! Sadly, that brass is also hard (not to speak of expensive) to come across over here. Pity, because I like the 8mm calibers, they seem to offer a very attractive combination of larger bullet diameter and high speed. Because of the brass situation and price of components, it is probably easier and cheaper to get a big .300 (compromise on bullet diameter) or a .338 Win Mag (compromise on speed).

- mike

So far I have now found someone hoarding 300 pieces of brass I can not find anywhere.

And a fellow 8x68 entheusiast and custom gun builder who is 20 miles from me her ein Colorado.

Does anyone know where i can find a supply of the brass?

My only complaint is the gun (Sauer 90 really gives me a beating) It is worse than my 470 and my 416. I am thinking it is in large part due to teh european style of stock on the Sauer. I would love to restock this gun be so far it look like ti would cost me more than what I paid for the gun.

Any suggestions?

Hasher,

I'd sell you 2 are 3 Boxes-- it is RWS and it would be $55 + shipping.

Ed

Martini & Hagn (?) in BC were rumoured to be a North American source for RWS 8x68S brass for a while. Give them a call. I think they are in Cranbrook (sp?).

(later located the home page with phone numbers etc: http://www.martiniandhagngunmakers.com/ourhistory.htm )

Loaded Norma ammo may be available (at a price!) from sources such as Midway.

- mike

quote:

Originally posted by enfieldspares:

Enfield,
thanks for sharing that photo.
I see a guy with his hunting rifle out in the field, not out of place here.