Primer could be brass colored (hard to tell), and if by large you mean .240-.245 than yes (same size as the 303Brit 8mm Label and 11mm Vickers (French Gras) that came from the same source.

Bob - does your cartridge have a large flat brass primer?
I have a specimen similar style to yours only the date is 14 and the figure may be a u or maybe an n.

My cartridge is identified as Yugoslav manufacture , use of the cyrillic style headstamp suits the Yugoslav style , maybe yours is too .

I cant offer any suggestions on the bullet style .

Very interesting to say the least.

I looked up the Cyrillic alphabet so I understand what the letter looks like,I have not been able to connect it to any arsenal or factory yet.

The only arsenal in Serbia that was tooled to produce the
7.62x54R cartridge case that I'm aware of was the Military
Technical Institute in Kragulevac.They were only capable of producing 120,000 rounds per day in 1915.I do not know what their headstamp was.

Montenegro was only able to reload cartridges,not manufacture cases.

MTI was under Central Powers occupation for a good portion of WW1 so were unable to supply the Serbian Army at that time.

England supplied arms and ammo to Serbia in WW1,7.62x54R was
loaded by Kynoch.I don't know from other sources they may have received ammo.

At the start of WW1 Montenegro had 55,000 MN-91s and Serbia
had 150,000,all were supplied by Russia.

The above information was found on the internet.Some sites quoted sources others did not.

WC

Murray
Thank you, sir.

TG and others - the cartridge is a pre 1930 Armour Piercing round with cupronickel jacket and copper washed tip cap - 10.7 gramms in weight , according to Huon p.103.The bullet jacket is mildly magnetic due to the cn component.I dont know what core composition was used .

The manufacture is Yugoslavian , 1917 , cyrillc headstamps are hard to decipher at the best of times .....

it's a moisen nagant, 1891 round....
762x53r and x54r are how it's called, its the identical round.

This was used by tzarist troops until the revolution, and is STILL in use, in soviet hands in light machine guns and SVD, and in the low interest to the soveit 1891 drop offs into countries that the soviets dont care to leave Aks.


I did find some 303 british marked in metricxxx R.,...

jeffe

I will agree that the cartridge description indicates an AP round with a copper washed tip.

The cartridge could not have been manufactured in YUGOSLAVIA in 1917.The country was formed in 1918 and was called The Kingdom of Serbs,Croats,and Slovenes,it was not called Yugoslavia until 1929.

WC

My guess would be the round was manufactured by Remington in 1917.U was one of Remington's headstamps and they did manufacture 7.62x54 ammo in 1917.



If my memory is correct,approximately 280,000 M-N 91 rifles were retained in the U.S.A. after the start of the Russian Revolution in 1917.Many of these rifles were used for training by the U.S.as we were short of rifles and ammo at that time.It would have been easy for Grampa to have brought home some ammo if he had trained with it.



I doubt many U.S."Doughboys" would have encountered 7.62x54R while overseas.



MO

WC

Thank you Jeff, although I think I had that part figgured out. Any ideas on the main part of my question, what the bullet designater stands for? (the rest was simply for dating / origion purposes, to help narrow the possabilities down)

Looking more closely at the 'n' --forward OR backward-- it looks more like two vertical lines joined by a 'tilde'; ie: it looks more like the Greek letter 'pi'. This is more likely, since it represents the sound of the latin 'p'.



the_captn

Perhaps my discripition is the problem, it's a single raised mark, when it's in the 12 o:clock position it most resembles a flat bottomed square "U" ( |_| ) with the open part right up aganst the edge of the rim. If it was in the 6 o:clock position it would look more like a box (with the edge of the rim being the bottom.

Sorry that my discripition is so poor.

The 7,62x53 Russian, whith is the same as the x54R is still used as a millitary cartridge in finland ( and I suspect russia as well)

Is the cyrillic n printed backwards?

That would be equivalent to our 'P', which may be the manufacturer in Yugoslavia. I have several (different) cartridges with nny which are from Yugoslavia.

I'll look up what nny stands for.

Can't help on the tip color.

the_captn

The cartridge headstamp is a raised cyrillic "n" without the upstandy bit on the left leg . I have never seen a Remington 7.62 x 54R with anything other than an impressed headstamp , but stand to be corrected here .

My own specimen of the cyrillic cartridge has a 14 date and a cyrillic "n" as well . Even if it is upside down , it still isnt a "u" as we know it , and is lower case anyway.

I stick with my previous offering as to the origin and designation , accepting that it was made in the country that later became Yugoslavia.

Good discussion here , guys .

Dosing

Symbol is square, not rounded. Picture 3 sides of a box with the open side aganst the rim edge. There are only 2 markings, the "U" or "n" and the 17, both are raised.



Muzza

As I won't be near the computer that has the photos on it until Friday night, perhaps you (or Captnemo) could forward your copy of the photos to WC and Dosing for me? This way all the interested parties will be seeing the same things we are.



This is turning out to be VERY interesting indeed, and I thank all of you for your assistance and ideas.

So the consensus is that this symbol is rounded, not like a square with one side missing?
if it looks like a small n (rounded portion pointing towards the rim I would guess Luganski Patronny Zavod, Lugan
Russian manufacture. I only have seen dates with lot #s infront of them, but those are from the 20s, so it could be during WWI that they did not use the lot #, just the small n symbol and date.
If it were like a square missing one side, I would guess St.Petersberg, with it being the Cyrillic symbol for P.

quote:

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Originally posted by captnemo:
Is the cyrillic n printed backwards?<br /><br />That would be equivalent to our 'P', which may be the manufacturer in Yugoslavia. I have several (different) cartridges with nny which are from Yugoslavia. <br /><br />I'll look up what nny stands for.<br /><br />Can't help on the tip color.<br /><br />the_captn

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nny = PPU Prvi Partizan Uzice,
can't be seen on a round made in 1917.
Tito seized the manufacture and the name became PPU

quote:

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Originally posted by Thomas M:
The 7,62x53 Russian, whith is the same as the x54R is still used as a millitary cartridge in finland ( and I suspect russia as well)

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I was wrong on this one. The russian version uses a .311 bullet and the finnish version uses a .308 bullet. Othervise they are interchangeable. The Lapua reloading manual states that it might not be safe firing steel jacketed x54 in the x53 version.