Yugo 50's 8mm Case Separations?

[Shrinkmd]

Widener's just had some more 50's Yugo 8mm ball in stock. I was reading on some other boards about some case separation failures where shooters had some gas blowback, with warnings to "always wear safety glasses". The pictures were of rear splits, not the neck splits you commonly see with steel case surplus.

How serious a worry is it to shoot this ammo in a bolt action rifle? I have read that the Mauser bolt has a "gas shield" to direct gas away from the shooter. Do Mosins or K31's or other surplus bolt actions have similar features? I know in theory any ammo could fail, but there have been more internet reports of this particular batch having problems.

I guess the question is, using standard surplus ammo, do bolt guns ever go kaboom?

 

[Z71]

Bolt rifles can kaboom. Usually when that happens, a case head separates from the case body. Gas blows back through the action and bolt. Gas might blow the mag coverplate and contents of the mag out on the ground, maybe break up the stock a bit.

More rarely hear about the bolts failing for some reason or other. Lugs let go, probably from pre-existing cracks. Have seen pics of a guy with a Swedish Mauser of all things, that the bolt lugs cratered on. Didn't look like it did much damage to his rifle. I would think that a failed bolt could be quite dangerous.

Crappy ammo, reloaded brass thats been reloaded too many times, and excessive headspace are the most common causes of a boltaction having a burst case/casehead separation type failure. I suppose a blown primer could count as a failure, but that usualy a reloading problem.

 

[dstorm1911]

actually its not all 50s Yugo ammo, the failures and if ya track the stories ya will find it is a result of repeated stories rather than thousands of actual failures. As far as case splits it was prevalent in a particular year I think was 53 but can't say for sure I bought 2 pallets of the stuff last year and have been using it quite a bit while saving my other 8 mm Surplus, I've used 3,000 rnds of the stuff in Turks mausers, Czech mausers, German mausers, Yugo mausers as well as in an MG34 and two MG42s with zero issues other than an occasional split neck have yet to see any case head separations, a few months ago there was a big uproar about the neck splits etc.. someone brought up an internet story about a shooter that had a batch that was very consistant about splits closer to the case head after all the back tracking of stories it turned out that all these cases of bad ammo were actually based in like 8 real cases which simply kept getting retold and retold the story changing a lil with each telling.......

As far as I know nobody has had any damage done by 50s Yugo other than a blast of hot gas........

Sure wish I could remember which year it was, it was a particular year and a particular month of production I'm pretty sure it was 53 I have batches of all of the years but haven't had any problems and haven't avoided any particular year etc...

 

[Shrinkmd]

That's comforting

Nice to hear it. I was hoping to enjoy what I have and not worry too much about it. I always wear my eye protection, so besides for rejecting an obviously damaged case prior to shooting it, I will plink away. I really need to get a Mojo sight as well, since shooting 6 inches high at 100 yds gets old...

 

[.45&TKD]

I bought 1200 rounds of 50's yugo 8mm from Cheaper than Dirt this year and have had no problems.