Can anyone shed some light on the 7.62x54r?

A new rifle chambered in 7.62x54R would be cool. But would it shoot .308 diameter bullets or .310 or .312? I think a lot of the issue is that most of the ammunition is relatively old military surplus. A modern rifle bored to accept the array of .308 bullets would be a fine shootin' piece of work. But if you're going to go that route you might as well buy a .308.

Same reason 7.62x51 (aka 308) replaced 30-06 in military use, 7.62x51 allows for a shorter action making the gun smaller and lighter and more reliable especially in semi & full autos.

Economics has stopped people from doing things.
Glock is not likely to tool up for 7.62x25 and Remington is not going to tool up for 7.62x54R so you can shoot Iron Curtain surplus.

Yep, one day the surplus will possibly either dry up or be prohibited from import.

W L Johnson said:

Same reason 7.62x51 (aka 308) replaced 30-06 in military use, 7.62x51 allows for a shorter action making the gun smaller and lighter and more reliable especially in semi & full autos.

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With a 3.04" OAL, 7.62x54r is like many WWI/WWII era cartridges in that it is inbetween the current short and long action standards. I think it is too long to fit in most short actions though.


You can rechamber a rifle in 7.62x54r if you like the round: http://www.shotgunnews.com/2013/10/23/rechambering-savage-110-7-62x54r/


Three big reasons why we won't see any major manufacturer chambering for 7.62x54 though...

Rimmed case, people are afraid of them for some reason and seem to believe that merely mentioning a rim on the rifle range will make rifles jam up.

.311 bullet diameter of surplus ammo. You'd need a .310 bore to shoot surplus without wearing the bore excessively, but then your bullet selection is limited for hunting ammo or reloading.

Low cost supply of Mosins. A x54r Savage Axis would have to compete against a surplus Mosin at less than half the price.

The 54r is still in current production, as it is still in use by the Russians, and several former Soviet satellite states. I'd like to see a new production 54r of some sort, although it might be a tad redundant.

.7.62x54r holds no advantage over .308 to me for anything except with cheap corrosive surplus range fodder. I do not and legally can not hunt with fmj's though.
As soon as you start looking at hunting ammo or reloading components, .308 is cheaper, more available, and has more options, thanks to plentiful surplus brass and .30 caliber bullets.
So basically I can pay $200 for a mosin nagant and surplus ammo and have a range toy that I won't cry over if the bore rusts,
Or I could pay $400 for a remington m700 and pay as much for noncorrosive or hunting ammo in 7.62x54r as I would .308, have a harder time finding it, and have less options for loads and reloading......or shoot corrosive ammo out of a new rifle, and why would you shoot 3moa surplus fmj out of a new rifle? Why not just shoot a mosin?

That's how I see it

Saiga, Molot , CZ and others offer new rifles in 7.62X54r.

It took awhile , but American maunufactures started makeing sprting rifles for 7.62X39 (Ruger, Remington, ect, as well as CZ and other foreign makers, I think domestic 54r will come along someday.

Theres several types of Milsurp rifles out there in qualtity.

theres no domestic production of the round, "Winchester" brand is made by Seilor and Bellot and imported. The milsurp is corrosivly primed and alot of American shooters cant seem to deal with that.

I would cater to what's available in the current ammo market.

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Yes, but the current ammo shortage is only a temporary thing. To do the R&D, tooling, marketing, and other setup for 54r rifles, it's a long-term investment and commitment. Why spend that much, when in another year, .308 ammo could be just as plentiful as it was in the pre-Newtown era? It's a major commitment with not that much chance for long term payoff.

I don't wanna spend 1000 bucks on a rifle I can't put rounds through.

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You don't have to buy a $1k rifle to shoot the larger calibers. Plenty of sub-$500 rifles in 308, 30-06, etc with ammo available in most big box stores.

Atlantic Firearms has been taking orders for PSL dragonov clones. I'd really like one, but my budget is kind of tough to squeeze out $900 plus $70 mags all in one drop. Plus I already have a long range .308 bolt action set up.

I opted to build an AR for about the same money, but spread out the cost over several months.

A Modern Sporting Rifle is considered a semi automatic intermediate cartridge based military design. The 54R fails on two counts - it's far from modern -1891, and it's not intermediate.

An AR that could handle it would be a specially designed large receiver AR10 - not 15. It would have to have special magazines to handle the extreme curve of the rimmed round. And it would have issues in rapid fire with that rim - self loading actions rarely use rimmed cartridges, they have an additional risk in feeding that is a known cause of jams.

There are plenty of inexpensive import rifles designed to handle the 54R and very few traditional shooters would spend the money for a newer civilian design modified to do it. It's a military round, not a modern American one - the designation is decimal/metric, and traditional cartridge shooters shy away from military descriptions with foreign cultural associations.

Lots of mechanical and marketing negatives.

Look for it on the shelf - I've heard no reports of it being hard to find or price gouging over it. It really hasn't much public demand, it's in the medium class of recoil, like a .30-06. People don't shoot 500 rounds of it at the range on the weekend, any more than they would .308. At best it would be a precision target long range round, but that's pretty well covered already. It's a niche gun in the Dragunov sniper, which doesn't have much other than looks going for it.

This should all be pretty obvious once the dots are connected.

The Ruger No 1 might be your best bet. They even made some in .303 British, so if you and all your buds let them know there would be a market, they might run off a batch of .30 Commie Long. No magazine to have to set up for a rimmed round.

I would mention the VEPR can be chambered in 7.62x54r and DSA stated they might do an RPD in that caliber which would make me uber happy.
As has been stated though the cheap ammo is surplus that will one day dry up and the fact that it's a rimmed cartridge (hence the 54r) makes it kind of a pain.

silicosys4 said:

Or I could pay $400 for a remington m700 and pay as much for noncorrosive or hunting ammo in 7.62x54r as I would .308, have a harder time finding it, and have less options for loads and reloading......or shoot corrosive ammo out of a new rifle, and why would you shoot 3moa surplus fmj out of a new rifle? Why not just shoot a mosin?

That's how I see it

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Third option is a new rifle chambered in 7.62x54r with a .308 bore. The Finns made many of their Mosins with .308 bore barrels so there are vintage ones out there as well. Of course, now you are looking at a rifle you'll need to reload for as I don't think any commercial ammo uses .308 bullets. Of course, there are precious few people who are going to buy a new rifle that they'll have to reload for doesn't offer much over a .308 rifle and doesn't have the history of a Mosin or PSL so you're back to a position that has limited practicality in the market.

As far as domestic manufacture of 7.62x54r, I just don't see it taking off. x39 has the benefit of being THE AK round. As long as the AK vs AR debate remains unsettled, x39 will continue to be in demand. Heck, even if the platform debate dies, AK's and AR's are both available in 5.56 and in x39 so the caliber debate can go on and ammo will be made to fuel it. The only thing I see on the horizon here is that 300BLK or 7.62x40WT challengine x39 as a .30 cal intermediate cartridge.

When you look at x54r though, I don't see many PSL vs AR10 debates going on. I dearly love the PSL because it looks like evil incarnate, but the prices are nuts. Poor iron sights, less than ideal optics options, lack of barrel selection, and so on means that for the price I'd rather have an AR10 and it seems most other people make the same choice too. I just don't see x54r going anywhere aside from range toys and historical appreciation. Ultimately, it will go the way of .303 British, even if that does make me sad...

http://www.winchesterguns.com/products/catalog/category.asp?family=015C

Here is an opportunity to own a unique part of the Winchester legacy. A rifle like this comes along only every 100 years or so. It was the first model to incorporate a non-detachable box magazine. This is the rifle Teddy Roosevelt called his "Big Medicine." This is the rifle that became the preference of major powers worldwide, with Russia alone purchasing nearly 300,000 1895s just before World War I. It has a scalloped receiver, two-piece lever, Schnabel forearm and straight grip stock. The barrel and receiver have been polished to give it a glossy, deep black/blue appearance. The walnut stock and forearm have been precisely fit and finely checkered.

Czarist Russia used 7.62x54R in Winchester lever action rifles box magazine fed.
Now that is a Rifle I'd like to see!

Meet my Vepr 54r. No optic as yet (Will be getting a posp from Atlantic)

There is lots of different milsurp out there: This one really likes the heavy Hungarian stuff (180 grain). Benched in at 100 yards it gets right around 1 MOA.

With match grade milsurp I get even tighter groups.

Problems with the vepr: You simply can't find 27" barrels anymore. The slant-cut receiver doesn't take standard AK furnature (Though you can get an adapter widget) IF you like the wood (Which I do, very much) it isn't an issue.

It uses an RPK receiver, stiffer and stronger than a standard AK receiver, this results in the optic being offset a bit. Depending on the optic you can get cowitness with your iron sights.

The iron sights are quite nice, for AK sights.

Currently there are only 5 round factory magazines, and 10 round SGM magazines. Singlestack. There is talk of other magazines being made or adapted, but I would not count on that.

Now with crappy quality milsurp (All the normal light ball out there, 146-150gr) I get roughly 3 Moa.

To echo another post: Go buy a Dragonov clone. A Dragon mysteriously does not have a problem feeding rimmed cartridges as was dreamed up by another poster and they are a complete joy to shoot! There are alternatives available for almost anything you want if you simply look!!!