I have a 1905 Ross rifle. This is a Canadian-made straight-pull design; other than being straight-pull, it has many similarities to the Mosin-Nagant. It is chambered for .303 British.

The action was assembled from various bits from auction sites, and I have a thumbhole stock blank on order. "No classic military rifles have been desecrated for this project."

The only barrel I have on hand has been "bubba'd" with a hacksaw and randomly drilled (and sometimes tapped) holes that might have been intended for scope or sight mounts. I have decided to purchase another barrel and "stub" it to the unique Ross tenon.

The rifle is intended for target shooting, but it's not intended to be a serious benchrest toy. Just something to have fun with.

I'd like to stay with cartridges that would feed from the .303 magazine without too much work. There are three families of cartridges that are nearly interchangeable - .303 British, .30-40 Krag, and 7.62x54R.

There were some hopped-up variants - the .303 Epps and .30-40 Ackley Improved. I'm sure someone has done a 54R Improved somewhere along the way. Unless someone asserts a big accuracy gain from going to an improved cartridge, I'd just as soon save my shoulder and powder since I'll just be killing paper.

I'm not necessarily set on .308/.311 caliber. It looks like the 6 to 6.5mm bullets do well downrange. There are some fairly common variants for those - .25/303, 6.5x54R, 6mm Krag.

I'm open to opinions or anecdotes about the performance of any of these small-bore cartridges.

Some of the 7.62x54R in the spam cans shoots really well. I always thought it would be fun to build a real tack driver, and see what the stuff would really do. Lots of cheap, fun target shooting.

The 6.5X53R is the 95 Dutch Steyr military cartridge. It is very close to the Mannlicher-Schoenauer round with a rim added.
Of all the round you mentioned I would use the 6.5X53R if you don't mind forming brass. Otherwise if you don't mind an oddball make a .303 British with a .308 barrel and stamp it 7.62X58R. For reference the Japanese Navy used a version of the .303 British that was was designated 7.7X58R.

No problem with a .308 barrel. Actually, having priced .311 vs. .308 (or even 6.5mm), I've found .311 barrels are significantly more expensive than more common sizes. .308 blanks and take-offs are less than half the price... which makes a .308 much more attractive,

However, if you size a .303 down to .30 caliber, you basically have a .30-40 Krag. It's hard to justify the reamer and loading dies for a wildcat when it's nearly identical to an existing cartridge.

I have an m44 Mosin in 7.62x54r it is rediculousy accurate. It looks like it was machined w/ a rock and cold chisel but its something else.

I think that it will work well with the Russian 7.62 x 54R.

The Russians in fact converted leftover Ross rifles supplied to them as military aid to use in 7.62 x 54R as "Running Deer" rifles in a past Olympic Games.

There was an article about it in Guns and Ammo magazine in the 1970s. It gets a mention here on the Gun Boards site:

http://forums.gunboards.com/sh...oss-rifles&p=1375414

Good luck with your project!

I briefly owned a Ross that had been converted to 7mm Rem Mag. The action is amply strong, provided you don't assemble the bolt the wrong way so that its locking lugs don't engage!

quote:

The action is amply strong, provided you don't assemble the bolt the wrong way so that its locking lugs don't engage!

I owned a Ross too a 1905 in 280 and as far as I am concerned this bolt story is just that a myth as if you did assemble the "wrong way" it was pretty bloody obvious when you then put the thing back together.

In fact about as likely to use it the "wrong way" as to be able manually chamber a round in a SMLE and fire it with the bolt head missing! (In theory it could be done also).

At the moment I'm leaning toward the 6.5x53R. Though the .303 variants were very popular in Australia, and a lesser degree in Canada, it seems at least one of the Russian 6.5s was an "official" cartridge used by the Soviets in international marksmanship competition. (thanks for the link)

The Ross "bolt assembly" thing applied to the 1910, which was an entirely different rifle than the 1905.

Looks like it's going to be... 6.5 Mannlicher-Schoenauer.

Reamers, dies, and brass are easily available, it should feed through the Ross action without too much modification, and though the factory loadings are quite mild, they should be adequate for killing paper targets.

Ooo-kaaayyy...

None of my printed references cover the 6.5 Mannlicher cartridge. Net.lore seems oddly confused; not just lumping it in with the .257 Mannlicher, but I've found contradictory pages, some showing the cartridge as rimmed, some rimless.

Can someone give me the straight scoop? Was the 6.5 available both rimmed and rimless like the 7x57, or am I getting confused about two similar-but-different cartridges?

TRX:

You're not confused; there are rimmed and rimless versions. The 6.5 Mannlicher (aka 6.5x53R, or .256 Mannlicher in some British texts) is rimmed. It was adopted by the Netherlands and Romania as their infantry round in 1892. The rimless version is the 6.5 Mannlicher-Schoenauer (aka 6.5x53, 6.5x54 M-S) adopted by the Greeks in 1903, and by sportsmen all over the world shortly thereafter. According to the references I have, the case dimensions above the rim are similar, but not identical. However, according to the 1925 Knynoch catalog, ballistics for both rounds are identical: a 160 gr. bullet over 36 gr. of smokeless for 2395 fps; and a 135 gr. bullet over 40 gr. of smokeless for 2800 fps; both developing 21.5 tons / sq.in. pressure.

For further confusion, there is the 6.5x52 Mannlicher-Carcano, a rimless round adopted by Italy in 1891. This is very similar to the M-S round, but slightly shorter.

Hope this helps.

Cheers, Al

Thanks, Al!

That was enough to get me some more useful search results. It seems (at least some vendors) refer to the rimmed cartridge as the "6.5 Steyr Mannlicher."

Midway has the dies for about 50% more than the rimless Mannlicher-Schoenauer at $77. The only brass I've found so far is from Bertram at $64 for 20; it may be possible to form brass from .303, 54R, or Krag cases.

Looks like nobody rents a reamer for the Steyr-Mannlicher, though.

Hmm...

A modest amount of discretionary entertainment expense money became available today, so I ordered a Shilen 1:8 twist 6.5mm blank from Midway. Net.lore says 1:9 twist works fine with 140-160 grain bullets, but Shilen's web site recommended 1:8 for bullets over 130 grains, so I went with 1:8. Otherwise I'd've gone for the Adams & Bennett 1:9 barrel for $89... it was $79 last week. <sigh>

I then drove 35-odd miles to Blue Star's storefront. They used to sell only at gunshows and by mail, but now they take walk-ins. The place reminded me of a cross between a flea market and one of those fancy coffee shops where you pick your beans out of racks of bins. Except in this case, the bins were tables full of .50 caliber ammo cans full of bullets and brass. I snagged 100 160gr, round nose, flat base bullets for... I can't remember how much at the moment, but it wasn't too bad. Then a bag of 20 140gr spitzer tip, flat base from the closeout table for $4.

Someone had vacuumed up all the .303 brass in the whole place, new and used... except I managed to scrounge 21 once-fired cases from the sorting table. By the look of them they were fired in an SMLE, but they should be adequate for experimentation. I'll pick up some new brass later.

Since I was on a spending spree I ordered an RCBS Mannlicher die set from MidSouth for $51.25 and a Hornady .303 shell holder for $3.64.

I need to make a tool order soon, and I'll get a couple of pieces of O-1 drill rod while I'm at it. I've wanted to try my hand at a chambering reamer for some time, but didn't want to ruin a barrel should things turn out badly. While driving today I realized -

1) a roughing reamer would sure be nice

2) if the roughing reamer worked out well, I might make a finish reamer next

I'm going to try it the easy way first, with a D-reamer. If that doesn't work, I'll try a fluted reamer. For some reason the idea of cutting the flutes gives me the willies; I keep imagining the long, skinny reamer flexing and vibrating like a guitar string.

TRX:

FYI, since you have decided on the Mannlicher round, you should check out Ken Waters' Pet Loads article on the .256 Mannlicher, if you haven't already, from Handloader magazine in 1991 (republished by Wolfe Publishing as Supplement #5 to the Third Edition of the Pet Loads volume). He details some of the problems and solutions for reforming .303 British brass to .256 Mannlicher for use in a commercial rifle built on an 1895 Dutch action. He also gives plenty of loads with powders that are still available.

Cheers, Al