7.62x25 what's the point?

[DrDeFab]

You may be right, but where do you get a TT33 for 200$...?

Here -> http://www.wideners.com/itemdetail.cfmitem_id=100000100&dir=700|1012|1027

OK, it's an M57, not a TT33, but after having worked on 3 CZ52's (...for a friend. Cleaned the cosmo out, replaced firing pins in all three, rollers on one, and the auxilliary trigger, a.k.a. decocker, on one.) I bought an M57.

I'm happy with the choice. The CZ52 isn't a bad pistol, but for roughly the same price, in similar condition, the M57 is a lot better.

 

[coalbed]

Id love to see someone make a modern version of either, high cap widebody with good sights and a rail, this round seems to have more of a following than most would think. Im really kind of suprised a small shop at least hasnt built one, even a custom just for curiosity sake.

 

[coalbed]

A quick note on loading over length rounds, it definately does increase pressure to load a bullet right up to the lands. This is another big reloading no-no.

 

[7.62 Nato]

@DrDeFab,

Here -> http://www.wideners.com/itemdetail.c...=700|1012|1027

Link not working.

 

[DrDeFab]

Link not working.

Sorry, looks like the forum software didn't like that. This one works for me:
http://www.wideners.com/itemdetail.cfm?item_id=100000100

 

[coalbed]

You guys that own the m57, what are the differences between it and the standard tt-33?

 

[Scimmia]

You guys that own the m57, what are the differences between it and the standard tt-33?

The obvious one is the longer grip/magazine. The M57 also has a different style safety than most of the other imported TT-33 clones, plus it has a mag safety. They also use a captured recoil spring with a full length guide rod.

 

[voicomp]

delete

 

[voicomp]

one of my favorites

YMMV but, as far as Cz-52 goes, here is a nutshell of my experinces trying to reload Tok cartridges for it, etc.:

500-ish rounds of 50-60 year old milsurp from various countries seemed to work OK with about one dud every three or four mags and about 1/3 to 1/2 of casings showing vertial split at neck/shoulder (but never a FTE).

Winchester white box (reputed to be in the neighborhood of 1550 fps w/ 85 gr FMJ) is attention getting recoil and muzzle blast. Resized .32 ACP 71 gr FMJ over about 10.5 of #7 will give you 250 fps or more better. 8.5 gr of #7 under 71 gr plated (.32 ACP slugs) had some feed problems and some stovepiping.

Supposedly, the .223 Timbs (a Tok round loaded w/ a .30 sabot and a short/light .223 slug can get to 2200 or 2300) but when I tried to make some, I had trouble getting workable OAL, trouble getting reliable feeding (sabot seemed to expand case neck diameter) etc. Eventually, I decided I really didn't want to have file sabots to be skinny enough to feed well so I made a few that were too long for the magazine (beacuse of the ballistic tip, which won't be prematurely engaging rifling if loaded as your one up the pipe).

Next time I get somewhere I can use my Chrony, I have a few resized .32 ACP --> .308 60 gr JHP's sitting on 10.7 of #7 to clock

Case life, for me, is three category: new, once fired and other. New is new and I will load at/near the top of the charts. Once fired, I hold to a max of about 5% under maxload. Other I keep even lower than once fired. Go too low and you won't cycle the action; sometimes even what I have seen as low end on published data cycles unreliably.

With modern casings I have more problems finding them than with them breaking, splitting, etc.

FWIW, since I am reloading for more than one firearm of the same caliber, I also resize the the "fat" part of the case with a 9mm sizing die (much like I and others use a .40 die for the fat part of a .357 sig case)....

... and, at least with a CZ-52, people in the next county will be dodging your spent brass. Seriously, I was cranking mine up at the range the other day and a senior club memeber came up and said "what the hell is that?" based on the casings bouncing off the carpeted wall separating shooting stations at about 7 or 8 ' altitude (from a weapon fired at about 5' off the ground) continuing upwards but moving L instead of R and then ending up hitting a wall behind and to my left by about 20' (while still at torso height).

My understanding is that in many places in the Far East, a question often asked about body armor is not "will it stop a .44 mag?" but rather "is it Tokarev tested?"

I am looking for an affordable M-57 and TT-33but havent tumbled over either since I decided I wanted them.

 

[Clark]

I have a Tokarev reamer

I put a Parker Hale 308 sniper trainer barrel on a Tokarev. I cut off the rear of the barrel and then reamed it out to 7.62x25mm.


I put a Rem 721 30-06 barrel on a 1903 Turkish Mauser. Again, I cut off the rear of the barrel and then reamed it out to 7.62x25mm.

And I have Tokarevs, CZ52s, and one C96 broomhandle Mauser.
I have Remling's book on Tokarevs. That is harder to find than a Russian bring back Tokarev.

 

[coalbed]

How did you attach that scope mount to the top Clark? And are you "the" Clark, the one that blew up the cz52?

 

[Clark]

I drilled and tapped the barrel.
The scope mount is two piece. The bottom part I made. The top part is an AR15 riser.
I can mill out Weaver rails, but it is more work than filling each little square on a waffle with syrup.

Here is a brief CZ52 synopsis:
I got a letter from Ted Curtis at AA in 2000 with the loads.
He was a really old ballistician that helped get Hodgdon started.
I blew up a couple CZ52s in 2000.
Then in 2000 AA published their load book number two, containing the loads in the letter.
Lots of other CZ52s blew up over the years.
I pointed out at the chambers of the CZ52 were too thin, and the quality control on the steel was horrible.
I stated that the load books were wrong, and that Tokarevs are stronger than CZ52s, from both an engineering point of view, and verified empirically.
I was almost flamed off the internet, but I stuck to my story and gained some allies.
Johan Loubser, Ballistic Lab manager, at AA revised their loads
a) The hot load from 2000: 11.7 gr AA#9 41,800 c.u.p 1688 fps
b) The wimpy load from 2005 8.5 gr AA#9, 34270 psi, 1248 fps

I pointed out that Quickload sees the revision differently, from 63,866 psi
down to 22,953 psi.

AA took down all CZ52 loads and AA was sold to Hodgdon.
The end

 

[coalbed]

I guess you have read some of the questions about the methods used in the testing of the pistols and loads used on this thread. Would you mind going through some of them, so this forum has more of the facts? I mean everywhere you go on the internet your test is quoted out of hand. I have no desire to flame you, but I would like to better understand. Do you consider the cz-vz52 unsafe to fire with the normal ammo it was designed for, or are you just stating the tokarev design is stronger?

 

[coalbed]

Voicomp, I had alot better luck using the short. 22hornet bullets with the sabots. I ran into the same problems with the. 223. It seemed to function fairly well with a heavy crimp and trimming the excess sabot plastic off from around the neck with a exacto knife. The extra plastic kinda flairs out and hangs on things.

 

[Shadow 7D]

No, the issue is pressure, it was designed to withstand the pressure of the round it was designed for. The issue come from twofold, poor QC on combloc ammo, and bad poop like the hot load Clark described. Toks withstood the hotload better, but if you got back 2? pages there was a discussion of which would have a longer overall life (fed properly) and not suffer a WEAR (fatigue failure) instead of a catastrophic overload.

 

[coalbed]

Gee here I thought I was asking Clark, seeing how hes now on the thread.

 

[OilyPablo]

I have a Polish Tokarev. Frankly, the ammo is better than the gun. That said, I love shooting the thing, the sights pretty much suck for such a flat shooting cartridge that is all about 50 yards with ease.

 

[Clark]

There are two separate problems:
1) What is wrong with the CZ52 design and manufacture?
2) How did the gun culture publish over and over the notion that the CZ52 is stronger than the Tokarev.

1) The first one is easier; sometimes bad steel [we tested RC25 to RC47 at JPL on their machine with a dozen CZ52 barrels], always thin steel [ ~ .060" thick where they made the relief cut on the bottom for the rollers].
It is not the thinnest semi auto chamber wall. That honor has been taken away from the CZ52 by the Kel-Tec P3AT. But the P3AT has something like RC47 and is consistent, and the case support in a P3AT is so poor than nothing like 7.62x25mm pressure is going to happen in there. The P3AT chamber is also a little smaller, and hoop stress is proportional to inside diameter.

2) The gun culture is more complicated. I will write a little, but I have details that go on and on and waste your time.

It seems to have started in the early 1970s when a consultant to the army wrote a paper for them about the CZ52, without having one to test.
(FSTC-CW-07-03-70), page 211, Table XI, Cartridge Data and Color Codes, in reference to 7.62 x 25 mm pistol ball type P;
"Do not use Czechoslovak-made ammunition in TT-33 pistols."

What seemed to confuse AA was that the Russian Tokarev ammo was low pressure, but all the other com block countries that built Tokarevs and made Tokarev ammo used the same pressure 42 kcup. As did the Czechs, 42kcup with their CZ52s.
They saw the CZ52 roller blocks, thought it is strong action. They saw the Russian low pressure ammo, and somehow think that the CZ52 must be stronger than the Tokarev.
AA could measure pressure and make joke, but they did not completely analyze the situation:
"This in spite of the "tribal lore" regarding this particular handgun and the ammo loaded for it claiming that shooting Czech ammo in any other firearm so chambered will causes spontaneous disassembly. The pressure data produced by the ammo tested certainly doesn't support this theory."
They contributed a little more to tribal lore.

When I wrote to both Sierra and when I wrote to Dr Jan Libourel of Guns magazine and ask them where they got the notion that the CZ52 was stronger than the Tokarev, both gave the same answer, "We just repeated what we read."

I was an engineer on a team in 1984 where a component was blowing up on jet fighters. There were three of us, including a physicist and a chemist. We had huge labs, schedules and budgets to get to the bottom of the question. We could not touch parts under test, because of the mass of our finger prints. Nowhere in the gun culture are there resources like that. So we do the best we can with gun culture folk lore.

 

[coalbed]

I've still got a bit of the czech subgun ammo, and while it seems fairly warm, it doesnt seem near as hot as the polish surplus. I havent chronographed it however, just going by recoil and muzzle flash. I agree that the army posting is probably where the rumors started. That being said, I still like shooting the vz better than the tokarev. It seems smoother running and faster back on target. The thinness of the chamber is known issue, as is the thinness of the slide around the rollers. The chamber is also not as deep as the tokarev and overlength rounds would really add pressure. Do you have a link to read the testing you carried out, I for one am interested in the details and it doesnt bore me one bit

 

[Carl N. Brown]

If it is Czech M48 it is not Czech SMG ammo: it is Czech 7.62x25mm SMG and pistol ammo.

The only thing SMG about Czech M48 is if it is preloaded in 8 shot stripper clips for the Czech 7.62 SMG. (Czech SMG were chambered for 7.62x25 first, then they developed the pistol to use the same M48 load.) Otherwise Czech SMGs and pistols in 7.62x25 are made for the same M48 round.

What makes the CZ vz52 pistol suitable for the M48 load is the fact that the slide and the recoil spring are heavy.

I would like to add: The idea of different loads for pistol v SMG was planted by the Italians inWWII. The Italians had three different types of 9mm ammo all on the 9x19mm Luger case: light 9mm Glisenti, standard 9mm Parabellum and heavy 9mm M38 for the Beretta 38A submachine gun. It did not work out well for their supply system in WWII. It is also clear from WHB Smith "Small Arms of the World" 1966 neither the Russians nor the Czechs had different loads for pistol or submachine gun. The Russian 7.62 submachine guns were adapted to use their standard pistol round. The Czech 7.62 pistols were adapted to use their standard submachinegun round.

 

[Robbins290]

i put 2 cases of the "smg" ammo thru one vz52. never had a issue.

anybody can make any handgun blow up by making hand loads. i dont listen do what people say about guns blowing up. saying a gun is weaker then the other buy over charging loads is like saying this snow mobile is better then that one couse it goes further down pavement in summer before it overheats.

 

[Clark]

I got some surplus Czech ammo on strippers in ~ 1999.
It chronographs at 1550, in the 80% that are not duds.

Polish Tokarev ammo chronographs between 1450 and 1550, but the all go off.

 

[barnbwt]

What makes the CZ vz52 pistol suitable for the M48 load is the fact that the slide and the recoil spring are heavy.

I'll second that; mine's not apart anymore, but I recall the slide sans barrel was heavier than just about the entire rest of the gun. I also had to put the 18lb spring from Wolf in to tame the slide battering (it was also taking near 1/8second to cycle ).

Clark, correct me if I misinterpret, but it seems the most important issue you had with the CZ52 was that the incorrect assertion of it's superior strength led to unsafe load reccomendations, no? That seems to be more a problem with the load manual guys than with the gun itself, which (as you demonstrated) can safely handle properly loaded (and even significantly overloaded) ammunition; just not to as extreme a degree as the Tokarev. It would be equally wrong and equally dangerous to publish overloads for the Tokarev "because it's so strong"

I just disagree with guys who seem to bash the CZ as an unsafe design based on out-of-hand summaries of your careful research. It seems that your experiment shows, if anything, that both guns, in proper shape, are well prepared to deal with any likely overpressure situations due to typical varience of milsurp. That one eventually fails sooner does not make it necessarily an unsafe build. Now, if the hardness differences you observed make or break the safety margin, that's something to check on, since hardness is easily tested. But the impact of quality control wasn't really measured (only two guns were tested), so we don't really know if those factors reduce the pressure capacity to dangerous levels.

At any rate, this argument is now moot for me, since I just scored a 9mm CZ barrel assembly (the rarest of all game ). I'll be sure to let ya'll know which is funner to shoot . I'd still sell my shirt for a CX4 in 7.62tok, though .

TCB

I got some surplus Czech ammo on strippers in ~ 1999.
It chronographs at 1550, in the 80% that are not duds.

Yargh, that's good to know, since that stuff commands a premium due to its rarity. I had been contemplating searching some out--until now

 

[coalbed]

Carl I understand they used it in both, it is usually referenced as subgun ammo because of the way its packaged.

 

[coalbed]

This is my last post on this thread, Clark I hope you post a link on your test, I really would like to read it. Other than that, there is little new information here and Im not going to hang around for the ones sitting around waiting on a small misphrase or technicality to pounce on so they can stoke their egos. ps. all my m48 ammo fired just fine.