I posted this under reloading but maybe I should have posted this here. I'm new at this! I am trying to get a safe starting load data for my 9x56 M.S. using 250 grain bullets and IMR 3031powder.Any help would be great. Thanks kenr

I just PM'd you data from two different Handloader magazine articles. Hope it helps!

Hawk bullets sells 200 and 250 grain bullets in .353", .354", and .356" diameter options, as well 200, 225, 250, 275, and 300 grain bullets in .358" diameter. You might want to slug your bore, to determine the best bullet option. I hear some folks shoot .358" bullets in these, but if proper bullets are available, why not use them? Good luck!

quote:

Originally posted by ColoradoMatt:
I just PM'd you data from two different Handloader magazine articles. Hope it helps!

Thank you ColoradoMatt I found the information very helpful. kenr

Glad to help.

How about a picture of that classic little rifle. I really like those Mannlicher Schoenauers especially in the old classic cartridges.

IIRC, the Austrians measured from the extractor groove, not the base like everyone else. Is this the same cartridge as the German 9x57?

Rich

quote:

Originally posted by mart:
How about a picture of that classic little rifle. I really like those Mannlicher Schoenauers especially in the old classic cartridges.

mart: I wish I knew how to post a photo but I do not at this time.It is a take down model with a 22 inch barrel with the sporting half stock.I belive it was made somewhere around 1915.It has a low four digit serial number and on the barrel it is marked Watson brothers bond street London. If anyone has any way of telling exactly when it was made I would like to know. It has NO Austrian proof marks but it does have a lot of british proof marks.

quote:

Originally posted by Idaho Sharpshooter:
IIRC, the Austrians measured from the extractor groove, not the base like everyone else. Is this the same cartridge as the German 9x57?

Rich

Idaho Sharpshooter To the best of my knowledge the 9x56 is slightly shorter than the 9x57,But was told that the 9x57 can be shortened a little with a trimmer with no other alterations to the case. I am using 8x57 mauser brass necked up to 9mm, and trim the brass back.

Not the same as the 9X57. Head space on the shoulder is shorter. See the diagrams below.

I would stay away from .358 cal bullets. Make sure you have the right bullet diameter. I think the nominal is .354. Keep the pressure down to around the 45000 CUP. 250 gr bullets loads were originally around 2050 fps I think. It is definitely closer to the 35 Rem than the 358 Win. You will damage the rifle if you go too hot as the split bridge action of that time will not handle high pressures.

Later modes from the 1950s took modern high pressure cartridges.

These are beautifully made classic rifles and handle like they are part of your arm! I have a 6.5MS & a 9.5MS - you can search in the archives for lots of pics I have posted in the past.

I am carzy about MS rifles and the subject never fails to get my heart pumping!

https://www.google.co.nz/imgre...QKHU8QCbsQMwhtKEswSw

https://www.google.co.nz/imgre...QKHU8QCbsQMwgqKBAwEA

Thank you Nakihunter for the information. I am new to reloading so I am trying to get some safe starting data for this gun,I do not want to damage this beautiful rifle.When I bought the gun the owner gave me a set of rcbs loading dies and one box of Kynoch 9x56 m.s.ammunition,I bought some .356 bullets 250 grain but have yet to fire the rifle,I'm somewhat apprehensive.

Be sure to measure your bore, I have a rather early model 1905 and the groves measure a tight .353. I size down .358 Hornady round nose bullets with Lee size dies in 3 steps,they shoot just fine. As for powder 4320 and 4064 work but I like H335.

Thanks for the information rglenz. If I have a .353 bore what is the maximum diameter bullet I can safely use?.355 .356 ?

The fellow I bought my rifle from was shooting .356 bullets,so I think it would be okay to do so,(with lead core bullets) as long as a bullet slips easily into the neck of a fired case. I've tried .356 bullets in my rifle and accuracy was lost,had lots of copper fouling also.

If it was me, I would get a competent gunsmith to slug the bore and make sure you know the bore size. For Example - My 6.5MS has .269 bore & so I use 6.5 Carcano bullets & the give good groups. The standard 160 gr RN .264 bullets gave 3" or larger groups!

Check if Woodleigh make the right size bullets. Can you get pistol bullets of the right size? Since you will be keeping velocities down, pistol bullets may work on deer - just a thought (no experience here).

PM me with email & I will reply & you can send me photos which I can post for you. I'd love to see pictures of the tifle.

Nakihunter: Thanks for your input to have the bore slugged. At the present time I do not have any photos of this rifle. One thing I noticed about this gun is that under the pistol grip cap there is some filler material that filled a manufactured cavity for a cylindrical storage piece. I would like to find a replacement for it. kenr, from the mountains of Northeastern Pennsylvania

quote:

Originally posted by rglenz:
The fellow I bought my rifle from was shooting .356 bullets,so I think it would be okay to do so,(with lead core bullets) as long as a bullet slips easily into the neck of a fired case. I've tried .356 bullets in my rifle and accuracy was lost,had lots of copper fouling also.

Thank you rglenz for your update on bullet diameters, I guess it is trial and error to find the right combination! What puzzles me about this, is that when ammunition manufacturers were making this round, I don't believe they were taking individual rifle bore diameters into account, but using an industry standard of .356. Any thoughts? kenr

Just checked in and saw your post.
#1 HAVE A CHAMBER CAST MADE AND SLUG YOUR BORE. I have seen barrels that measured.354", one at .359" and all sizes in between. I've been lucky; my first measured .3566 and my current 1911 made MS 1905 measures .357".
Steve Schroeder (619-423-3523 or 619-423-8124) will make you bullets in the diameter you need.
But until you have a chamber cast made and slug your bore, you have no idea where to start. CH-4D makes dies but last I checked, there was a 6 week wait.
If your rifle is pre-WWI, I would suggest starting with upper end .35 Remington loading data. If it's of later manufacture, start slightly under starting .358 Winchester loads. Remember, these rifles are old treasures and hard to replace. There's no sense in stressing their old metal any more than necessary. If you need .35 Whelen power or .358 Norma power, buy a Whelen or Norma.
Good luck.

By the way, if you use oversize bullets, you may or may not increase pressure. But it is guaranteed you will get SEVERE copper fouling which is very difficult to remove.
You also might contact Missouri Bullet Company after you slug your bore. He may be able to make some special sized powder coated lead bullets in the diameter you need. They are good for velocities up to @2100 fps with no leading.

steyrsteve: Thank you for your information. Assuming I have a bore of .354 what would the proper bullet diameter be for this rifle. I think there is to be a somewhat tight fit between the bullet and the bore, I'm new at this so any information is a big help. My rife has a serial number of 2926 stamped on the bolt handle,the barrel, the action and the stock.It has no Austrian proof marks that I could find but does have English proof marks, and the top of the barrel is marked (Watson Bros. Bond Street London. Any insight on the gun would be appreciated, Thanks, kenr

Here is my 1910 MS take down model in 9.5X57MS



You can see a stippled imprint saying "NOT ENGLISH MADE". This was standard on rifles sold by H&H, Jeffery & other British Gun Makers. Mine is from a less well known maker & was pre 1924.

You can find a 7 page thread in the AR archives on my rifle when I restocked it a few years ago.

Nakihunter: thanks for the photo.
I noticed that there seems to be British proof marks on the gun like mine, are there any Austrian proof marks.Mine has none. kenr

Hi also nakihunter. Hope all is well with you and your family.

I'm going to excerpt some things from an article I wrote that was published two issues ago in the Mannlicher Collectors Assn Newsletter. I'll try to make it as short as possible.

The reason making a chamber cast is important is that the nominal case diameter of 9x56 MS, as well as 8x56 MS, 7x64 Brenneke, and 8x64 Brenneke is @.465" rather than the nmore familiar .469" of 8x57, 30-06, .270 Win, etc.

Of the two 9x56 MS's I've owned, both have readily accepted reformed 8x57 brass but I have heard of folks saying their 9x56's would not chamber "normal" brass and they had no idea what caused the problem.

So, make a chamber cast and you will know where to go from there. If your chamber is the smaller size, simply go to gunbroker.com and buy some 7x64 brass. It is very plentiful. If your chamber is the large one, simply use new 7x57 or 8x57 brass of your choice. I suggest new as new has not been work hardened as has fired brass.

The four brands of 7x64 brass I use all measure right at .460" as base diameter. Form, pushing the shoulder back in several stages. Imperial Sizing Die Wax is my proven brand of case lube.

That should solve the case situation.

Bullets: If your rifle measures .354" groove diameter, you might start off with .355" bullets designed for the 9x19 or 9mm Luger. They probably won't shoot to the sights but at least you can "road test" your rifle.
For heavier bullets I would recommend, as I mentioned, either contacting Steve Schroeder to have some bullets of you choice and weight made or contacting Missouri Bullet Company to see if they could make some powder coated cast bullets made to your specs.

For loads, I would suggest you load to no more than 2200 lbs-feet of energy in deference to the age of your rifle. This would equal a 220 grain bullet at around 2130 fps. Compute other bullet weights to equal 2200 pfe and you should be on the safe side. I've used the pfe method for years when loading for cartridges for which little or no loading data is readily available. Factory loadings can usually be gleaned from old, sometimes pre-WWII catalogs.

As far as the provenance of your rifle, I can't add much. You might look up the maker on the internet. I know most of the big name English gun makers offered a Mannlicher-Schoenauer. Sometimes they imported only actions, preferably commercial, but often from military overruns. Then they rebarreled from their shop. Or they had the rifle barreled by Steyr and stamped their own credentials and called it their own creation.

Hope this info is helpful. And I hope you will consider joining the Mannlicher Collector's Association. We are having our yearly convention this July at the Steyr USA factory in Birmingham, AL. It should be a great get together.

Steyrsteve: Thank you for your abundance of information and knowledge, the more I learn about these wonderful rifles the more I seem to value mine. I would like to join the Mannlicher Collectors Association as
Steve Schroeder has sent me a sponsored application form. Please keep the information coming. Thanks again kenr

Steve

Thanks for the info.

I am surprised you are with MCA. I am sorry if I have forgotten our past correspondences.

Sending you a PM.

Regards

quote:

The reason making a chamber cast is important is that the nominal case diameter of 9x56 MS, as well as 8x56 MS, 7x64 Brenneke, and 8x64 Brenneke is @.465" rather than the nmore familiar .469" of 8x57, 30-06, .270 Win, etc.

When I discovered this problem with my 9X56 M/S, I happened to have some unfired R/P .35 Whelen brass on hand. Out of idle curiosity I measured their diameter at the head and found it to be .465". Forming cases from that brass proved to be effortless.

I also determined that .358" bullets passéd into the case mouths of brass fired in my rifle with no resistance, so I have been using .358" bullets with no ill effects since then.

Thank you xausa for your input on having a chamber cast done. I have found that the 8x57 brass that I am using seems to fit the chamber without forcing the bolt to close. I have some original Kynoch 9x56 M.S. ammunition that seems to close with the same amount of pressure.

People been using 358 bullets for years in the 9x56 and 57...The folks I know and there have been many, didn't seem concerned about it..

personally I would opt to mic the bore first of all, then go from there and decide if I needed to form 358 bullets to fit my bore. If your an experienced reloader I would think 358 Hornadys or speer would work, but I would cut all loads about 5% below book starting loads and work up from there.

I had one many years ago, and I shot 358 Speer bullets in it, as I didn't know better and the internet didn't exist, and some gunsmith told me "oh yeah, shoot 35 calibers bullets in it" I did and never had a problem but I have no idea what that bore miked..?????????

I have read Ken Waters who had a 358 Win in a MS rifle & it had a .366 bore (ie. a 9.3!!)

My 6.5MS has a .269 bore!

quote:

Originally posted by Nakihunter:
I have read Ken Waters who had a 358 Win in a MS rifle & it had a .366 bore (ie. a 9.3!!)

My 6.5MS has a .269 bore!

I checked my MS 358 Winchester and it's bore seems as tight or tighter at it's muzzle than my Savage 99 F .358 Winchester. And it shoots just fine.

quote:

Originally posted by Atkinson:
People been using 358 bullets for years in the 9x56 and 57...The folks I know and there have been many, didn't seem concerned about it..

personally I would opt to mic the bore first of all, then go from there and decide if I needed to form 358 bullets to fit my bore. If your an experienced reloader I would think 358 Hornadys or speer would work, but I would cut all loads about 5% below book starting loads and work up from there.

I had one many years ago, and I shot 358 Speer bullets in it, as I didn't know better and the internet didn't exist, and some gunsmith told me "oh yeah, shoot 35 calibers bullets in it" I did and never had a problem but I have no idea what that bore miked..?????????

In my experience, the critical factor in bullet diameter is whether or not there is sufficient room in the neck portion of the chamber to allow the cartridge case neck to expand and release the bullet.

Years ago, the American Rifleman carried an article relating how an ignorant amateur gunsmith rechambered a 6.5X52 Japanese Arisaka rifle to .30-'06 and fired it with no ill effects other than excessive recoil. The rifle was sent in to the NRA for testing and found to be safe to fire, although generating extreme pressure. The recovered bullets were noticably longer than the unfired ones.

A bullet only has to move a fraction of an inch in a barrel to be resized to the barrel dimensions. From then on it behaves exactly as though it was the correct size in the first place. As long as excessive pressure is not generated during the resizing process, there should be no problem with using a slightly oversize bullet.

I used to suffer from lack of proper .505" diameter bullets to use in my .505 caliber rifle, and resorted to resizing .510" bullets to .505". One day I noticed that an unsized .510" bullet passed into the mouth of a fired .505 case with no resistance, so I decided to give shooting the un-resized bullets a try. The experiment succeeded, and I have been shooting the full size bullets ever since, with absolutely no ill effects.

Well, the longer this post goes on the more I find opinions are all over the board. I guess the only way to know what will SAFELY work in my rifle is to fire a factory made 9x56 M.S. cartridge and go from there. Thanks to all!

quote:

Originally posted by xausa:

quote:

Originally posted by Atkinson:
People been using 358 bullets for years in the 9x56 and 57...The folks I know and there have been many, didn't seem concerned about it..

personally I would opt to mic the bore first of all, then go from there and decide if I needed to form 358 bullets to fit my bore. If your an experienced reloader I would think 358 Hornadys or speer would work, but I would cut all loads about 5% below book starting loads and work up from there.

I had one many years ago, and I shot 358 Speer bullets in it, as I didn't know better and the internet didn't exist, and some gunsmith told me "oh yeah, shoot 35 calibers bullets in it" I did and never had a problem but I have no idea what that bore miked..?????????

In my experience, the critical factor in bullet diameter is whether or not there is sufficient room in the neck portion of the chamber to allow the cartridge case neck to expand and release the bullet.

Years ago, the American Rifleman carried an article relating how an ignorant amateur gunsmith rechambered a 6.5X52 Japanese Arisaka rifle to .30-'06 and fired it with no ill effects other than excessive recoil. The rifle was sent in to the NRA for testing and found to be safe to fire, although generating extreme pressure. The recovered bullets were noticably longer than the unfired ones.

A bullet only has to move a fraction of an inch in a barrel to be resized to the barrel dimensions. From then on it behaves exactly as though it was the correct size in the first place. As long as excessive pressure is not generated during the resizing process, there should be no problem with using a slightly oversize bullet.

I used to suffer from lack of proper .505" diameter bullets to use in my .505 caliber rifle, and resorted to resizing .510" bullets to .505". One day I noticed that an unsized .510" bullet passed into the mouth of a fired .505 case with no resistance, so I decided to give shooting the un-resized bullets a try. The experiment succeeded, and I have been shooting the full size bullets ever since, with absolutely no ill effects.

I think you are right on, especially with lead core, soft jacket bullets.(i.e. Not steel!) However, I would like to add that P.O. Ackley tried to blow a lot of guns up on purpose to gauge their relative strength, and of all of the pre-WWII military rifles, one of the arisaka's proved to be toughest by a wide margin. So, while a few thousandths of an inch in bullet diameter may not be much to worry about, a few hundredths of an inch is playing with fire!

That will only tell you that factory ammo works in the rifle!!

You need to slug your bore. Even have it inspected with a bore scope to see if any corrosion is present in the throat etc.

quote:

Originally posted by kenr:
Well, the longer this post goes on the more I find opinions are all over the board. I guess the only way to know what will SAFELY work in my rifle is to fire a factory made 9x56 M.S. cartridge and go from there. Thanks to all!

quote:

Originally posted by xausa:

quote:

Originally posted by Atkinson:
People been using 358 bullets for years in the 9x56 and 57...The folks I know and there have been many, didn't seem concerned about it..

personally I would opt to mic the bore first of all, then go from there and decide if I needed to form 358 bullets to fit my bore. If your an experienced reloader I would think 358 Hornadys or speer would work, but I would cut all loads about 5% below book starting loads and work up from there.

I had one many years ago, and I shot 358 Speer bullets in it, as I didn't know better and the internet didn't exist, and some gunsmith told me "oh yeah, shoot 35 calibers bullets in it" I did and never had a problem but I have no idea what that bore miked..?????????

In my experience, the critical factor in bullet diameter is whether or not there is sufficient room in the neck portion of the chamber to allow the cartridge case neck to expand and release the bullet.

Years ago, the American Rifleman carried an article relating how an ignorant amateur gunsmith rechambered a 6.5X52 Japanese Arisaka rifle to .30-'06 and fired it with no ill effects other than excessive recoil. The rifle was sent in to the NRA for testing and found to be safe to fire, although generating extreme pressure. The recovered bullets were noticably longer than the unfired ones.

A bullet only has to move a fraction of an inch in a barrel to be resized to the barrel dimensions. From then on it behaves exactly as though it was the correct size in the first place. As long as excessive pressure is not generated during the resizing process, there should be no problem with using a slightly oversize bullet.

I used to suffer from lack of proper .505" diameter bullets to use in my .505 caliber rifle, and resorted to resizing .510" bullets to .505". One day I noticed that an unsized .510" bullet passed into the mouth of a fired .505 case with no resistance, so I decided to give shooting the un-resized bullets a try. The experiment succeeded, and I have been shooting the full size bullets ever since, with absolutely no ill effects.

Exactly--

Extruding 2 to 3 tho is always relatively easily done a less than magnum pressures--

NECK tightness is far more critical than projectile diameter

One of the problems I noticed with my 1905 9x56 m.s. was that when I tried to load 200 grain bullet cartridges into the rotary magazine I could only get two cartridges to go in, It seemed they were to short and the bullets were getting stuck on front edge of the magazine. When I tried the longer 250 grain bullet cartridges they worked fine. Any thoughts

Seat the 200 grainers out longer. Don't worry about the crimp groove, as they shouldn't need to be crimped.

quote:

Originally posted by ColoradoMatt:
Seat the 200 grainers out longer. Don't worry about the crimp groove, as they shouldn't need to be crimped.

Thanks ColoradoMatt I will give that a try.