Linstrum
07-05-2005, 02:25 PM
I don’t hear about the French MAS 36, MAS 49, and their variants anymore. In 1997 up to about 2000 it seems that these were hot items on the various milsurp boards. I guess the supply of these rifles was not nearly as big as the Com Bloc Mosin-Nagants, which of course makes sense because France did not control, influence, or have any big armies in half of the world, and their rifles also did not play any big role in the downfall of Nazi Germany and later in the Cold War era. Vietnam was the exception, but that was still small potatoes to what it eventually turned into. In fact, after the 1940 Dunkirk Evacuation, the German military took over production of the MAS factory and they issued the MAS 36 rifles to the German equivalent of the coast guard. Those rifles had a swastika stamped on them and get a premium price from collectors.
I was over at Gunboards checking out their French “connection” to see what kind of action has been going on lately with these rifles and it seems that now that they are gone, shooting enthusiasts are starting to wake up to the fact that they are good shooters. Now that the prices are way up they are suddenly desirable. Anyone in marketing will tell you that if the price of something really good is too low that it won’t sell! I remember getting queries to some posts that I wrote six or seven years ago from guys who would ask me what was so horribly bad with these rifles so the price was so low. My response was that I asked them in turn what was so horribly wrong with the ’03-A3 rifles that the CMP-NRA sold back in the early 1950s so the price for them was so low! According to a few posts I just read over at Gunboards, un-issued MAS 36s and 36/51s that used to go asking for buyers at $50 are now scarce and command $200. The 49 and 49/56 autoloaders are going for as much as $475 if a seller can be found. Or so they say. Around five years ago down in the Greater Los Angeles area, I seem to recall that Turners was selling MAS 49/56 .308 Win converts for about $200 (hey Dpty Al, was that about what they went for?). I thought about getting one, but my lack of finances at the time kind of got in the way. But for $50 each, I did get two MAS 36 bolt actions that were still in cheesecloth and Cosmoline, though. One is the second most accurate rifle I own. The other’s accuracy is worth just about what I paid for it, if that much, and it is a candidate to do what Buckshot did with his MAS 36 and make a .45-70 out of it.
The MAS 36 probably holds the world record for being the ugliest bolt rifle ever mass-produced! But it is a robust design that in France has been converted to a supposedly powerful sporting cartridge they call the “7.54mm”, but I’ve never heard of that before so don’t really know what it is. Another common MAS 36 convert is the potent 8x60S, so that one gives an idea of what the MAS 36 action will handle.
This last weekend I experimented with some new loads for my MAS 36. In its military configuration the 7.5x54 French cartridge was originally loaded with a 139-grain Spitzer to a velocity of somewhere around 2650 fps or ~ 810 meters per second. In the May/June, 1990 issue of Handloader Magazine (with a brief recap in the November-December issue) there is a comprehensive article on reloading for the MAS 36 that also includes a few brief comments about the MAS 49 and 49/56 autoloader as well. This article is where I got all my initial information on how to reload for the rifle. The cartridge capacity and shape are identical to the 6.5x55 Swedish Mauser necked up to take a 0.308-inch diameter projectile, and that is the parent cartridge I use for my loads. I have used Remington, Federal, Winchester, and Lapua 6.5x55 Swedish Mauser brass with equal success. The Swede cartridge is simply run into a 7.5x54 French full-length die and that is it! No trimming, no neck turning, nothing more! Resize, prime, load, shoot. That’s it. They can also be fire-formed with 7-grains of Red Dot with one square of folded toilet tissue over it and then topped off with grits or Cream Of Wheat, but doing it that way wastes a primer and reduces case life by one reload. For loads I use 7.65x53 Mauser loading data since those two cartridges are extremely close in shape, dimension, and capacity. Another one commonly used for 7.5x54 French load data is the .30-40 Krag since that cartridge is also pretty close in shape, dimension, and capacity. However, the Krag loads are much more conservative than the 7.65 Mauser. The neat thing about the French 7.5x54 cartridge and the rifles that use it, is that it uses a true 0.308” diameter projectile and the bore has a true 0.308” groove diameter, despite its 7.5 mm designation. This is a departure from the other European rifles and cartridges that are “fat .30s”.
For my serious boolit loads I use the Lee .309” 180-grain and 113-grain plinker in plain wheel weights and lubed with Lee Liquid Alox or FWFL. For other loads I use some old Sierra 150-grain Game Kings I have had kicking around for almost 20 years, U.S. military surplus147-grain fmjbt, and some U.S. military surplus 136-grain hollow base bullet jackets salvaged from the manufacture of illuminated projectiles. The 136-grain ones do not contain any illuminating compound and are of course inert. For the MAS 36, the barrel is 22.6-inches long and the rifling twist rate is 1 turn in 10.7 inches, so it is about half way between the 10 and 12-inch twists commonly used for other 0.308-inch bore rifles. Powders used are everything listed in my loading manuals for the 7.65 Mauser and Krag, along with full case compressed loads of WC860/WC870/WC872 that also have 4-grains of IMR4198 held captive against the flash hole for a booster. I also just found that my particular lot of surplus IMR7383 burns clean with the 147-grain fmjbt’s and 136-grain hollow base jackets. I use 39-grains of the IMR7383 with the 147-grain military fmjbt’s and 41.4-grains with the 136-grain hollow base jackets. I tried running the IMR7383 charges up higher above these loads but I started to get pressure signs and backed them down about 10% to be safe since IMR7383 is cranky stuff when pushed. The temperature when I did the IMR7383 loads was up around 85° F, so backed off where they are now they are probably okay even on hot days. I haven’t had an opportunity to test any of these loads for accuracy, yet, but I probably will in a few days. According to the Handloader article, the best powder for accuracy was Accurate Arms 2520 with IMR4350 and Winchester W760 close to it. The worst were IMR4064 and Reloader 7. I have a hunch that H380 and will also work well. Even though the cartridge is just slightly longer than the 7.62 NATO/.308 Win the load data does not translate well from that cartridge, except for helping determine what is a safe maximum load. However, the 7.65x53 is very close and it does translate quite well.
If anybody else has any thoughts, ideas, or load data on the French 7.5x54 cartridge, or the rifles that used it, I'd like to see it!
I was over at Gunboards checking out their French “connection” to see what kind of action has been going on lately with these rifles and it seems that now that they are gone, shooting enthusiasts are starting to wake up to the fact that they are good shooters. Now that the prices are way up they are suddenly desirable. Anyone in marketing will tell you that if the price of something really good is too low that it won’t sell! I remember getting queries to some posts that I wrote six or seven years ago from guys who would ask me what was so horribly bad with these rifles so the price was so low. My response was that I asked them in turn what was so horribly wrong with the ’03-A3 rifles that the CMP-NRA sold back in the early 1950s so the price for them was so low! According to a few posts I just read over at Gunboards, un-issued MAS 36s and 36/51s that used to go asking for buyers at $50 are now scarce and command $200. The 49 and 49/56 autoloaders are going for as much as $475 if a seller can be found. Or so they say. Around five years ago down in the Greater Los Angeles area, I seem to recall that Turners was selling MAS 49/56 .308 Win converts for about $200 (hey Dpty Al, was that about what they went for?). I thought about getting one, but my lack of finances at the time kind of got in the way. But for $50 each, I did get two MAS 36 bolt actions that were still in cheesecloth and Cosmoline, though. One is the second most accurate rifle I own. The other’s accuracy is worth just about what I paid for it, if that much, and it is a candidate to do what Buckshot did with his MAS 36 and make a .45-70 out of it.
The MAS 36 probably holds the world record for being the ugliest bolt rifle ever mass-produced! But it is a robust design that in France has been converted to a supposedly powerful sporting cartridge they call the “7.54mm”, but I’ve never heard of that before so don’t really know what it is. Another common MAS 36 convert is the potent 8x60S, so that one gives an idea of what the MAS 36 action will handle.
This last weekend I experimented with some new loads for my MAS 36. In its military configuration the 7.5x54 French cartridge was originally loaded with a 139-grain Spitzer to a velocity of somewhere around 2650 fps or ~ 810 meters per second. In the May/June, 1990 issue of Handloader Magazine (with a brief recap in the November-December issue) there is a comprehensive article on reloading for the MAS 36 that also includes a few brief comments about the MAS 49 and 49/56 autoloader as well. This article is where I got all my initial information on how to reload for the rifle. The cartridge capacity and shape are identical to the 6.5x55 Swedish Mauser necked up to take a 0.308-inch diameter projectile, and that is the parent cartridge I use for my loads. I have used Remington, Federal, Winchester, and Lapua 6.5x55 Swedish Mauser brass with equal success. The Swede cartridge is simply run into a 7.5x54 French full-length die and that is it! No trimming, no neck turning, nothing more! Resize, prime, load, shoot. That’s it. They can also be fire-formed with 7-grains of Red Dot with one square of folded toilet tissue over it and then topped off with grits or Cream Of Wheat, but doing it that way wastes a primer and reduces case life by one reload. For loads I use 7.65x53 Mauser loading data since those two cartridges are extremely close in shape, dimension, and capacity. Another one commonly used for 7.5x54 French load data is the .30-40 Krag since that cartridge is also pretty close in shape, dimension, and capacity. However, the Krag loads are much more conservative than the 7.65 Mauser. The neat thing about the French 7.5x54 cartridge and the rifles that use it, is that it uses a true 0.308” diameter projectile and the bore has a true 0.308” groove diameter, despite its 7.5 mm designation. This is a departure from the other European rifles and cartridges that are “fat .30s”.
For my serious boolit loads I use the Lee .309” 180-grain and 113-grain plinker in plain wheel weights and lubed with Lee Liquid Alox or FWFL. For other loads I use some old Sierra 150-grain Game Kings I have had kicking around for almost 20 years, U.S. military surplus147-grain fmjbt, and some U.S. military surplus 136-grain hollow base bullet jackets salvaged from the manufacture of illuminated projectiles. The 136-grain ones do not contain any illuminating compound and are of course inert. For the MAS 36, the barrel is 22.6-inches long and the rifling twist rate is 1 turn in 10.7 inches, so it is about half way between the 10 and 12-inch twists commonly used for other 0.308-inch bore rifles. Powders used are everything listed in my loading manuals for the 7.65 Mauser and Krag, along with full case compressed loads of WC860/WC870/WC872 that also have 4-grains of IMR4198 held captive against the flash hole for a booster. I also just found that my particular lot of surplus IMR7383 burns clean with the 147-grain fmjbt’s and 136-grain hollow base jackets. I use 39-grains of the IMR7383 with the 147-grain military fmjbt’s and 41.4-grains with the 136-grain hollow base jackets. I tried running the IMR7383 charges up higher above these loads but I started to get pressure signs and backed them down about 10% to be safe since IMR7383 is cranky stuff when pushed. The temperature when I did the IMR7383 loads was up around 85° F, so backed off where they are now they are probably okay even on hot days. I haven’t had an opportunity to test any of these loads for accuracy, yet, but I probably will in a few days. According to the Handloader article, the best powder for accuracy was Accurate Arms 2520 with IMR4350 and Winchester W760 close to it. The worst were IMR4064 and Reloader 7. I have a hunch that H380 and will also work well. Even though the cartridge is just slightly longer than the 7.62 NATO/.308 Win the load data does not translate well from that cartridge, except for helping determine what is a safe maximum load. However, the 7.65x53 is very close and it does translate quite well.
If anybody else has any thoughts, ideas, or load data on the French 7.5x54 cartridge, or the rifles that used it, I'd like to see it!