Need advice

[Beekeeper]

I will complete my 71/84 Mauser in the next week or so and want to shoot it with black powder and paper patched boolits as that is what it was designed for.

That said , I know absolutely nothing about black powder or paperpatching.
Reading the posts (to a newbe) makes even more of a science or black art.

I would like to start at the beginning with a couple of good books or manuals on paperpatching and black powder and learn it right from the beginning rather than start in the middle and have to do it over again.

I guess what I am looking for is someone to give me a starting point and point me in the right direction.

Any help from anyone will be greatly appreciated


beekeeper

[Lead pot]

Beekeeper.

It's a little hard to give you complete advice on your 71/84 Mauser because of the range of bullet diameters I think they ran from 9.5mm to 11.5mm.

If you haven't done this already I would make a chamber cast to get your lead length and bore groove diameters.

Your rifle is a tube feed?? so you will need a round nose flat point meplate bullet that will be patched to fit your throat just slightly touching the land. This will vary on the depth of your throat lead.
Don't kill the accuracy by first patching the bullet with a bad fitting bullet and running it through a die to make it fit. If you must size the bullet size it before you patch it.
It might take a custom made mould to fit the throat of that Mauser to get a proper fitting bullet that is the right length with out being below the case neck, you dont want the base below the case neck.
For your round I would use 2FG black or 1.5 Swiss just enough that you dont compress it more than .100. Use a thin card over the powder and 1/8" lube wad and a thin card under the bullet. You must keep the wad above the case shoulder and make sure that the powder is firm enough compressed so the wad wont have a chance to settle below the case neck.
You will enjoy shooting the 71 if you load it like you intend to.

Lp.

[pdawg_shooter]

For paper patching the best book I have found is The Paper Jacket by Mathews. It is available from Wolff Publishing. Covers most everything.

[Baron von Trollwhack]

The 71/84s were outstanding rifles. I first got one in the early 70s, new, unfired. Slug the bore and be sure of bore and groove dimensions. Mine was .432/.446. Get a RCBS 43-370-FN, which is a grease groove bullet specifically for the rifle. I sized mine to .447. As discussed in other posts, It is unlikely you can consistently compress BP in a bottleneck and get good results. Mine took 87 grains of GOEX ffg drop tubed to the base of the bullet at a cartridge 3.02 OAL. I did use a dense card wad of 30 thousandsth thick under the bullet, no crimp , case resized only to the depth of the bullet. fffg brought too much power, fg, too much fouling. I could double wrap with .0015 paper and size a soft bullet and treat the same as the GG bullet for cartridge assembly purposes. There are 3 sights on the rear sight. I slotted a seperate front sight for a taller blade and used the 250 yard leaf to get on at 100, thus the 350 leaf was low at 200 and flipping the sight ladder up and sliding the elevator up got me to 300 with room to spare. It would hold minute of 16 oz, drink cup at 300.. I also used pistol primers and a newspaper disc under the Blackpowder, and in hot dry conditions, duplexed to reduce fouling.

As I recall the groove diameter is visibly stamped on the breech of the barrel on the octagon and mine was right on when converted to inches. The Bullet above actually weighed about 410, plus or minus a little. That 9.5 mm story belongs to a later variation of the 71/84, the utter highest development of the military black powder cartyridge. Those German arms manufacturers were at their peak for these and the 91's. I could not see a real difference in accuracy between the PP or GG bullets, and that includes smokeless, duplex, or BP. Anneal the neck every other case firing and the cases are everlasting. Good luck, BvT

[jhrosier]

Beekeeper,
I had a 71/84, back in the days when they were affordable.
I did not PP but used the Lee 45 caliber minie boolit, sized to .445.
It was a little lighter than the original boolit for the .43 Mauser but was a fun plinker.

Jack

[Beekeeper]

Thank you for the information.
I ordered the book today and should get it in a week or so.

BVT,
The markings on the hexigon are11 which converts to.433 diameter which is right on for the bore slug I did. Thanks one more mystery of the numbers and letters on the hex cleared up.


beekeeper

[Baron von Trollwhack]

There are two good books on the 71/84 which cover the other Mausers too. One by Ludwig Olsen an one by Bell ( I forget his first name and initial). Both are great for details and the Olsen book even has velocity and dispersion charts, in addition to super detail on the guns. BvT