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View Full Version : Yugoslavian 24/47 K98 Mauser part 2



Linstrum
08-04-2005, 06:47 PM
A Thank You to all of you who responded to my first post on the 8mm Mauser I bought two weeks ago. Here is what happened next:

On July 30, I dashed the hopes and expectations of Sarah Brady and Handgun Control, Inc. along with their misguided cohorts. I did this by not abandoning my desire to own a Yugo 24/47 K98 Mauser rifle during the mandatory purchaser’s ten-day denial of possession and harassment period. I did not suffer the fit of infantile impatience that the gun haters must think all gun enthusiasts suffer from of not being able to endure the entire ten-day waiting period, and I did not prematurely go back to the place of purchase to demand my money back and thereby nix the sale. Nope, I did not have the anticipated break-down of resolve that HCI hopes will prevent United States citizens from exercising their second most valuable Constitutional Right.

As scheduled, I picked up my Yugo 24/47 K98 Mauser rifle from the Big 5 Sporting Goods Store and took it home. Like a kid with a new toy (and that sums it up pretty good!), I went over it with a fine tooth comb and everything turned out to be in a lot better shape than I had observed at first. When I first looked it over in the store it had been pretty well covered up with a gummy layer of 50-year-old Cosmoline like a bad coat of coffee-colored varnish. But as soon as I got the gunk off and things cleaned up, I found out that the rifle had never been issued!

I slugged the bore, which measures 0.3115” at the lands and 0.3235” at the grooves. Using a 10X magnification eye loupe (every reloader ought to have one of those!) I also examined the engraving profile left on the slug and discovered that Mauser rifling is pretty complex. The sides of the grooves that form the leading edges that take all the guff from making the projectile rotate are cut slightly deeper than the trailing sides of the grooves. Both the leading and trailing land sides are radiused at the roots (where the rifling lands are connected to the bore), with the leading edge outside corners of course being quite sharp so they can effectively bite into the bullet surface. Another nice surprise I found was that the chamber is also on the tight side, and I hope that translates into longer brass life. Since this is the only 8x57JS I own I suppose I can get away with neck sizing for most of my reloads.

The wood and secondary hardware for these rifles were recycled from old M24 rifles, and the stock has several inconspicuous repair plugs and wood putty patches, but there aren’t any cracks or splits in it and the upper barrel handguard is new. Once I got a look at the wood in natural lighting instead of the green fluorescent lights used in the store, the color match of the stock and hand guard are a little bit better than I had originally thought. After nearly sixty years of storage the bluing is still in excellent shape and seems to be right around 100%, even on the places like along the wood contact lines where rust usually shows up first. I pulled the handguard off of the top of the barrel and underneath it there was zero dirt and dust stuck to the gobs of cosmoline that had never been melted because the barrel had never been hot from being fired, which is more proof that it was never issued. Having a mix of new and rebuilt used parts is normal for the Yugo 24/47 K98 rifle because that particular model designation is for a specific arsenal rebuild, and according to the information on Allan’s Armory and other web sites these rifles were made in 1947 by disassembling old FN M24 K98 Mausers made in both Belgium and Kragujevac, Jugoslavia. The rifles made in both locations were identical because FN-trained machinists made them on the same FN machines that were used in Belgium with steel from the same source. The best receivers, front sights, sling swivels, and other parts were checked over and if they were still within original manufacturing tolerance they were re-blued, and new barrels were installed. According to what I read, a few other slight modifications were made to convert them into rifles very nearly identical to the K98k rifles, the only major difference between these and the World War Two German K98k version is that the receivers of the 24/47s are about 1/8-inch shorter (actually 0.127”), and the barrels are also shorter by the same amount. (continued below)

Linstrum
08-04-2005, 06:50 PM
continued from above: (I had to break this into two parts because of the photographs)

Some comments and reports I had run across had me puzzled about the 24/47 not being suitable to be re-barreled in .30-06 because the 24/47 magazine well being too short to accommodate it, but the loaded over-all cartridge length for the 8x57JS and .30-06 cartridges are within 0.090” of each other, and because of the cartridge lengths being really pretty close, then the .30-06 should fit. I checked out the magazine well dimensions in my rifle and it measures 3.253-inches long. The action length WILL accept all .30-06 cartridges loaded with cast boolits, and jacketed secant ogive flat bottom bullets weighing up to 150-grains. I don’t plan on re-barreling this rifle unless the accuracy is really bad, though, and if I re-barrel it, it will still be in 8x57JS Mauser. To make the 24/47 magazine well long enough so the maximum length .30-06 cartridge will fit is no big deal to do with a hand held die grinder.

About the 8x57JS Mauser cartridge itself, I had an old shooting buddy who was a World War Two vet who used it a lot and was very familiar with it. We used to talk about the various cartridges and guns used during World War Two and I remember what he had to say about the attributes of the 8x57JS Mauser cartridge. In civilian life he had used the 8x57JS Mauser for decades loaded to its original pressure specifications instead of the completely asinine peashooter levels mandated by SAAMI. He told me that it was an “easier shooting” cartridge than the .30-06 but in his opinion it delivered performance equal to it. He also had another 8mm Mauser rifle that he had converted to the 8mm-06 wildcat that he claimed was more potent than the .30-06. Out of curiosity I also took a look at the ballistics data for the 8x57JS and figured out that it has some rather outstanding characteristics that place it in the same league as the .300 Savage, .308 Winchester, 7.65x53 Mauser, and 7.62x54R Russian cartridges to name a few with really good inherent accuracy. Just like my old buddy had observed sixty years ago, it also has the added characteristic of having power equal to the .30-06. The reason why the power is equal to the .30-06 despite it having a fuel capacity that is somewhat less is because the 0.323” diameter bullet base has more surface area for the gas pressure to act against than that of the 0.308” diameter bullet of the .30-06, making the internal ballistics slightly more efficient than for the .30-06. With the great number of 8x57JS Mauser rifles that have come into this country since1918, it is really too bad that its true worth was totally sabotaged by one over-protective SAAMI ballistics engineer who mistakenly thought that the rare 0.318” J-bore Mauser was far more common than it really was. With all commercial 8x57JS Mauser ammunition loaded so as to not blow up a .31 caliber rifle by firing .32 caliber ammunition in it, there was no way that the potent as well as accurate 8x57JS Mauser could become recognized as one of the more outstanding hunting and 500-yard target cartridges that it is.

Now, just to find time to go shooting. I have several kinds of test loads already made up using the Lee 175-grain boolit plus I got my shipment of Hirtenburger 8x57JS non-corrosive Boxer primed 198-grain fmjbt ammo to take along and make empty for more brass to reload with boolits.

One last thing that was kind of nice happened when I went to the store to pick it up. As a result of the lazy salesman I dealt with two weeks ago who got fired for his indolence, I had an unusual sort of surprise when I got to the store. A man walked up and greeted me like an old pal, and he did look pretty familiar. It took me only about a second or two to figure out that the guy had been the manager of another Big 5 store where I had purchased my first French MAS 36 rifle six years earlier. Back then I got to know him because I used to hang out at his store while I was waiting for my wife to get out of class over at the city college. He briefly mentioned that after I had purchased the French rifle that he had transferred to another store up in Santa Barbara and had just returned to fill in temporarily for a guy who had been fired at this store the week before. When I used to hang out with him we used to swap lies and he used to tell me stories about when his grandpa had been the sheriff up in Santa Barbara County back during the days of Prohibition, The Great Depression, and World War Two. It was nice to see him and swap a few more lies again!

Bob S
08-05-2005, 09:36 PM
They are not the same. The 24/47 is an intermediate length action, the K98k a "full size" action. The Yugo 24/52 is also a full-length action, a re-arsenalled Vz 24. The difference between the OAL of 7.82 x 57 and cal. 30 M2 may seem inconsequential to you, but it is enough to make it a non-starter in the Model 24 action. The magazine is the easy part: in order for cal. 30 ammunition to feed from the magazine of a Model 24 or 24/47, the feed ramp of the receiver also would need to be shortened about 0.100" and reshaped.

Numerous full-length 98-type South American rifles were converted to 30-06, and with the full length action, only the magazine needs to be lengthened. This was frequently done by making a transverse saw cut immediately behind the front face of the magazine box, and simply bending the forward face of the box forward slightly. The inletting for the magazine box needed to be relieved to match at the front of the mortice. Sometimes the front of the mag box was tack welded to assure that it didn't get bent back. I have a reworked Columbian SR that was converted in this way.

The Yugo 24/47's lend themselves beautifully to rebarreling to the .308 family. Absolutely nothing needs to be done to make it work flawlessly.

Resp'y,
Bob S.

jethrow strait
08-06-2005, 01:15 AM
Aw shucks, Bob S., our bubba bretheren didn't stop with converting "full-length" South American 98 Mauser(kraut contract)actions, they did "intermediates" as well. I happen to own one such abortion, a nice 1909 Peruvian(ya know, the one with the MAUSER ORIGINAL banner and florid crest), with the original 29" 7.65 barrel, mit chamber reamed out to '06 and garnished with a full-buckhorn dovetailed into the barrel and a utility grade Bishop monte carlo-style stock with white spacers. Now, I'm no fancy-dancy sporterizer nor a milsurp nazi who thinks sporterizing any milsurp is a capitol crime, but gotta tell ya this one brings on involuntary convulsions. I bought it anyway, cause I like the action so much. And ya know, it sorta works, in spite of it's .312" grooves, with 30-06 condoms, once I changed the rear sight confuration a wee bit. Much prefers fat-30 bullets and boolits though, as you might guess. Aaan, it jus don't feed from the lil magazine well at all. It's my only 31-06 single-shot, til I get around to rebarreling it.----jethrow

Ricochet
08-06-2005, 02:18 PM
You got a nice one, Linstrum! It's a lot prettier than mine was when it came.

The stock on mine had no finish, and it was the same green-black color as poop from somebody taking iron pills. Took a bit of work to make that presentable, but it is now. (Much darker than yours, a reddish black, with a nice new oil finish.) It's a good shooter, with a wonderfully smooth action.

The old Yugoslavian carrying strap that came with mine was dried up, hard and brittle, with red Yugoslavian mud on it. The brass buttons were covered with verdigris. A bit of cleaning with saddle soap, followed by soaking it in vegetable oil and draining on newpaper, and even it's in serviceable condition now.

brimic
08-06-2005, 04:11 PM
they did "intermediates" as well. I happen to own one such abortion, a nice 1909 Peruvian(ya know, the one with the MAUSER ORIGINAL banner and florid crest), with the original 29" 7.65 barrel, mit chamber reamed out to '06 and garnished with a full-buckhorn dovetailed into the barrel and a utility grade Bishop monte carlo-style stock with white spacers

Does it have a notch milled into the receiver ring so that 30-06 rounds could still be clip fed and clear the receiver,sort of like a reverse clip guide cut?

I've seen a few S. American rifles done up like this and was told by the owner of one that some south American country(s) converted a lot of rifles to 30-06 because they could get surplus .30 ball ammo from the US a lot cheaper and easier than 7.65 mauser ammo. He might have been pulling my leg, but the rifles like this that I've seen have been in their original military stocks.

jethrow strait
08-06-2005, 07:45 PM
brimic---No notch, just domestic 'talent'. But, then I didn't do a heck of a lot better with my first milsurp, a brand new 03A3 from the DCM for ten bucks back in 1962, and I was guided by American Rifleman articles of the day.

Your point on the '06 in South American arsenals after WWII is well taken----jethrow