8mm mauser ammo tin

[sta500rdr]

So I inherited an 8mm turkish mauser, and along with it came a tin of ammunition. I decided to take it out and see what it could do. Well every round that I loaded and tried to fire just went click and would not fire. I am sure it is very old and just must be no good any more. My question is what can I do with it? Can I disassemble the rounds, re-load it with a modern safe load and shoot them? Are these most likely berdan primed? Are these cases even brass? They are the dark green color. Let me know. Thanks.

The tin has these markings:

7,92 PS-GS
V408-71-22
MD 71
VT 302/70 U

Each piece of brass has the numbers 71 and 22 stamped on the bottom. I have no idea what all this means.

 

[rcmodel]

I believe the ammo is Romanian steel core/steel jacketed.

Try a magnet on the case to see if they are steel or brass.

You could pull the bullets and re-use them.

I'd dump the powder in the yard. Makes good fertilizer.

The "brass" is most likely Corrosive Berdan primed, which you can tell by looking after pulling the first bullet.

rc

 

[sta500rdr]

I thought about re-using the bullets. They are nice copper jacketed boat tails. Should be decent shooters. Thanks!

 

[rcmodel]

Try a magnet.
I believe they are steel jacket / steel core bullets.

rc

 

[NCsmitty]

Have you shot this gun before? Did it give a good impact to the primers that did not fire?
If not, then you may need to remove cosmoline from the bolt's interior.

NCsmitty

 

[NuJudge]

What did the indentation on the primer left by the firing pin tip look like? If you have a light strike, they may have just not gone off.

I believe you will find there is just copper plating on the steel jackets of the bullets.

If you transfer the powder and bullet to a primed Boxer case, reduce your powder charge by 10% and work up. Berdan primers are usually milder than Boxer, but not always.

 

[sta500rdr]

I am getting a good primer strike. Looks like a regular dimpling. The cases are sealed really well with that red stuff that looks like loctite, so its hard to believe that they would have gotten wet, plus they were in that tin. The rifle shoots new ammunition just fine. I may just pull all the bullets and load them in a boxer primed case, that way I know the exact load that I will be shooting.

 

[NCsmitty]

From your information, it seems as though you do need to pull the bullets and powder. Weigh about 10 powder charges from the surplus and take an average. As NuJudge recommended, drop the charge 4gr and load a few to try in your boxer primed cases. You just recrimp the old bullet in place.


NCsmitty

 

[Afy]

Pics of cartridges?
You sure the green isnt the brass corroded?

 

[sta500rdr]

I was hoping that it was corroded brass, but unfortunately a magnet sticks to them. So they are steel cases. Maybe I should just quit being so cheap and buy some fresh ammo rather than trying to resurrect this old stuff.

 

[GaryL]

The Turkish 8mm ammo likes a solid hit to the primer. It will work flawlessly in 1 rifle, and hardly at all in another. Romanian 8mm, on the other hand, is usually good stuff in any rifle.

Before you do anything with the ammo, make sure you don't have cosmoline in the bolt as NCsmitty suggested. Take the bolt out, disassemble, warm it up good, and put it in a can of odorless paint thinner. A couple times doing that will help get the cosmoline out of it. On a cool day, the cosmoline will make a Mauser unreliable.

 

[jwr747]

after many thousands of rounds of the "Turk" stuff,only problems like yours was from a crudded up bolt .stripped the bolt and cleaned,oiled,back together and shoot some more. jwr

 

[fatelk]

I haven't used the Romanian ammo, but I have used some Yugoslavian ammo from the 1950's. It worked fine in my M48 rifle, but had mostly all misfires in my Turk Mauser. Commercial ammo worked fine in both of them. I cleaned the bolt like others have said and it definitely improved but I still had a lot of misfires.

I bought a Wolff extra power striker spring ($8.29: http://www.gunsprings.com/RifleShotgun/Mauser_RsNF.html#1898)
It now shoots the Yugo ammo with no misfires.

I even had someone give me nearly 100 rounds of Yugo ammo, all with dented primers, that they figured I could just use for components since they tried to shoot them and "they were all duds". I put them in my rifle with the new spring and IIRC all but one shot fine.

So before trashing the ammo, you might just try a new spring. That 70 year old rifle might could use one anyhow.

For what it's worth, if I salvage the bullets on actual dud rounds, I only trash the powder if it looks or smells bad. Otherwise, I do exactly what a couple others have said: drop the charge a little and load them in boxer brass. Works great!

 

[Nugilum]

An important question would be how was this ammo stored? How hot did it get where it was stored before you inherited it?