Small ring M95 in .358

[kens]

What are your thoughts and musings of taking a Midway m98 barrel .35whelan and turn it down to small ring threads & chamber to .358? For a M95 carbine size boolit launcher?

Is .358 too much cartridge for this? I intend to shoot boolits.

[williamwaco]

I used to have one. receiver sight. no scope.
It was a tiny little thing but I really loved it.
.358 is all the case you need for cast bullets.

[Bjornb]

That will depend entirely on the individual action you intend to use. Some SR actions are hard enough for modern pressure cartridges, others are not. Goodsteel recently built a 30XCB rifle for me on a Spanish Oviedo SR action (1916), it was plenty hard.

[nekshot]

keep your pressure in line with the original chambering and enjoy!

[kens]

It's a Ludwig Leowe M95.

[Reg]

Something to consider, the pressure levels of the .358 run upwards to 50,000# and sometimes plus while the time honored acceptable pressure levels for the 95 action have always been down around 45,000# and some even say as low as 42,000#.
Ackley chambered a bunch of 95's in the .358 and even a bunch more in the .308 Winchester, a real pressure machine running up to 55,000#.
There are also those who use estimated pressure loads running to 70,000# and plus and due note, most never have any problems.
The question remains, is it really smart ? You have a 100 plus year old action and you don't know it's history. The .358 exceeds the recommended pressure levels for the action and the action doesn't have the gas handling capabilities of the 98 and more modern actions.
Yes, if you keep the loads in the cast bullet realm you will never approach any dangerous levels but what happens if you decide to sell the rifle, will you remove the barrel so that a full house .358 load is never fired in it ?
Why not consider the .35 Remington ?
In the cast bullet world especially in the field, you will be hard pressed to notice any difference between the two. It is very compatible in the 95 action. It has a known reputation for accuracy and best of all---- there is no doubt whatever about the safety factor.

[reed1911]

Reg beat me to it and stated it more clearly and succinctly than I would have. Plus 1 (I agree)

[kens]

But, I read that .35 remington is difficult to feed through the mauser magazine & feed ramp

[Reg]

But, I read that .35 remington is difficult to feed through the mauser magazine & feed ramp

Nope, the .35 Remington should feed as well as anything through your 95.
I have made up several, own one myself and have seen many more. Not one didn't feed right out of the box so to say.
The .35 Whelen barrel from Midway that you spoke of is exactly the barrel I used on my own. Cut off the large ring extension and recut for the small ring. This also got rid of the extra , unneeded, chamber length. Just make sure who ever fits it up to put the correct radius on the end of the chamber and polish it nicely. I have never seen or heard of one that required more than that.
Mine feeds everything from the 150 factory loads to the 200 gn. RN cast ( I forget the number ) and have even used 158 gn. SWC pistol bullets. The 200 gn. cast will generally clover leaf at 100 yds.

[pietro]

.

I wouldn't recommend chambering any cock-on-closing SR Mauser for any cartridge that develops more pressure than the 7x57 round they were designed to handle.

While YOU might only shoot low-powered cast boolit loads through a .358, I would respectfully suggest thinking about what might happen should the rifle be fired in your absense with full-power commercial ammo, by some innocent person.


.

[kens]

Ok, what if I take the Midway 35whelan barrel and shorten the chamber end to 358 chamber on a small ring M98?would I lose my barrel threads?

[Reg]

The ,358 on a 98 would be a great and safe way to go. If the rifle was in 7 or 8 m/m there should be no magazine mods needed and should feed, if anything the modifications would be minor.
The Midway barrel in the 35 Whelen would still be a excellent and reasonable source for a barrel and just cutting off the threaded extension might be a good place to start but you need to follow it up with a chamber cast to make sure all of the Whelen chamber will clean up.
Any barrel new or used can be a source for use on another action but the installer needs to make sure that the new chamber is properly and fully cut and the threaded extension is fully and correctly cut. Headspace needs to be properly held and also take into consideration twist, bore and groove dia. etc.
A chamber cast at any stage of the game then back figgeren will tell the story.

PS

Another consideration is the barrel diameter itself. At the chamber end, with any 98 design, the contacting face must be .100 larger than the threaded section to get a good solid "face lock up". This goes along with the compression on the inner ring.
For what you are talking about unless you are considering a featherweight barrel contour it should not be a problem but work out the math first.
I think the Midway barrels are short chambered a bit and you can get the rest of the dimensions you need from the Midway catalog and SAAMI specs. Extension length dimensions are dependent on the exact action.
There are at least two extension lengths I know of and I think there might be more.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

The Swedish Mauser is basically an M95 too, albeit one which is very well made from excellent steel. The 6.5mm. Swedish round and the 7x57, which was very widely used in other M93 and M95 rifles, is listed by SAAMI at the same pressure as the Swedish round. The 8x57 is a very untypical example, since SAAMI list it as having very low maximum pressures, which were far exceeded by late German and other military loadings.

There were two principal reasons for this, both deriving from the existence of the M1888 German Commission military rifle. One was the relative weakness of this action, and the other was that some people would surely use the more modern .323-bulleted ammunition, not only in this rifle with its .318 grooves, but in some of the sporting rifles, including Mausers, which adopted its bore dimensions. This doesn't prevent a good M95 rifle being acceptable for the .358.

The question is what is good, and the answer is not nearly all of them. I would trust an unabused Swedish action, but I would look long and hard, and consider magnaflux testing etc. for even a very convincing-looking Spanish one. There have been times when Spain worked under desperate war emergencies, labour unrest and key workers travelling for their health. Drilling for scope mounts can tell us a lot about the steel. Loeuwe was mostly a good maker, and if they ever deteriorated during war emergencies, it wasn't when the M95 was being built.

I know of very few accidents, for example, involving the South African Boers, with their Loeuwe M95 rifles. Explosions were reported when the 7.5x53 Belgian or Argentine case was used to load cartridges in the Transvaal state factory. In theory the bullet can swell up and be swaged down. But Deneys Reitz, who describes killing some eight or ten British soldiers in "The old war" and finished the First World War as an extremely popular colonel of the Royal Scots Fusiliers in France, tells a story that might come even further from any fault of the rifle. An African informant of his worked in the factory, and was quite seriously afraid of the casual work and smoking habits of the recently imported Italian workers. When the inevitable happened, the African was among those killed.

[sbowers]

I have read this thread with a lot of interest as a working gunsmith for about 40 years I have never found nor have I ever read a report of a Small Ring Mauser being destroyed using factory ammo. even when chambered in such cartridges as .243, 22-250 .308. I have also never know one to be chambered in any of the long case cartridges. This being said if any one can provide with a written report of one that gave way in or around the chamber bolt area I would really appreciate it.
Steve

[justashooter]

I am debating having a 6.5 carcano carbine converted to 358. It would require dismounting the barrel, brooming back the receiver ring and the breach face of the original barrel by about 3/16" (to get correct indexing), then having it sent out for boring and chambering with a full clean up. Getting it cleaned up on a 35 rem would involve more set-back than I am comfortable with.

The books all say the carcano action is strong enuf, and the boring smith says there is enuf meat on the profile, but it would be a soda straw with about 12.5mm muzzle against a 9mm bore. pleanty of chamber end mass, and this gun is already nicely re-worked with a floor plate conversion. Looks like I can have it done for about $250. Would be a hell of a smasher in a very small and light weight package with 250 grain bullets smoking out at 2300-2400 fps.

Discussed earlier with pix at end of thread:
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?257367-looking-for-gunsmith-to-rebarrel-carcano-to-35-rem

[justashooter]

I would defer to Hatcher's Notebook for an assessment of the potential of this 1895 Ludwig and Lowe action, which is heads and tails over most 93 and 95 Spanish actions. Wish I had my copy handy. Who has one?

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I am debating having a 6.5 carcano carbine converted to 358. It would require dismounting the barrel, brooming back the receiver ring and the breach face of the original barrel by about 3/16" (to get correct indexing), then having it sent out for boring and chambering with a full clean up. Getting it cleaned up on a 35 rem would involve more set-back than I am comfortable with.

The books all say the carcano action is strong enuf, and the boring smith says there is enuf meat on the profile, but it would be a soda straw with about 12.5mm muzzle against a 9mm bore. pleanty of chamber end mass, and this gun is already nicely re-worked with a floor plate conversion. Looks like I can have it done for about $250. Would be a hell of a smasher in a very small and light weight package with 250 grain bullets smoking out at 2300-2400 fps.

Discussed earlier with pix at end of thread:
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?257367-looking-for-gunsmith-to-rebarrel-carcano-to-35-rem

I believe most books say it can be strong enough, which is quite different. Other books say it can't be trusted for more than low pressures. Personally I believe the first is more likely to be true. But it wouldn't be true enough for me to do this.

PO Ackley described most ferociously abusive overpressure tests with the Dutch Mannlicher, which is actually very similar in load-bearing dimensions. I don't remember the figures, but it failed only under pressure it is hard to imagine any reloader inflicting, and the bolt didn't part company with the receiver. The Dutch Mannlicher is in turn very similar to the original (aka real) Mannlicher-Schoenauer, in which I have a great belief. The trouble is, there is no telling what the Italians did in wartime emergency conditions. Arms manufacturers, to be safe, really need bosses they can tell "Can't meet the quota".

When all is said and done, even if it turns out safe, that is a lot of work to do or pay for, and still end up with a converted Carcano, in a weight that would very likely be uncomfortable to fire with that cartridge, and difficult to equip with a telescopic sight. If you do it, I wouldn't want to silver solder a front sight onto a barrel that thin. Soft solder would probably hold. I don't know if you could get a barrel band front sight in that diameter, but silver soldering the ramp to a correctly fitting tubular sleeve should be fine.

A reborer almost certainly cuts his rifling, but in this case I would call it pretty well essential. With button or broach rifling, the tool is likely to expand the thin end more than the thick end. You should also consider rebarrelling for something like the 6.5x54 round, which is actually very similar indeed to the Carcano one, and is very unlikely to give problems with the unaltered magazine and receiver rails.
But I wouldn't chamber for the 6.5x52 with a .264 groove blank, in case someone yet unborn shoots solid bullets of the slightly larger Carcano diameter.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I would defer to Hatcher's Notebook for an assessment of the potential of this 1895 Ludwig and Lowe action, which is heads and tails over most 93 and 95 Spanish actions. Wish I had my copy handy. Who has one?

I am several thousand miles from mine at the moment. There used to be a free download on Castpics, and possibly elsewhere, but it vanished some years back. I believe US copyright extends for fifty years, and that General Hatcher died in the early 1960s, so it may be ripening somewhere around now.

That manufacturer, if you do web searches, falls into something of a trap. Like most or all German words with that letter it can be spelt "Löwe" (which will probably show up on searches with an ordinary o), or Loewe (which probably won't.) My wife is German, and my impression is that the correct one is whichever I'm not using at the time.

The story I love about the Loewe company is that after the First World War they sent Vickers Sons and Maxim a very large check. It was the royalties on the Maxim patents, for they had built a small number of them before the outbreak of war, and an extraordinarily large number afterwards. Of course it isn't exactly the same sort of honesty which keeps rifles up to specification. But I find it encouraging. I can't see the Spanish doing that.

[leadman]

I have 2 of Ackley's books and in the destructive testing he did and wrote up in these does not include the Dutch Mannlicher. It did list the 6.5 Arisaka as the strongest of the guns he tested. He did say he was going to continue testing but don't know if he did. I will try to research this.

[kens]

I heard somewhere that the Italian Carcano feeds .35 Rem and 7.62x39 without feeding alterations. The rim diameter is about the same in all those.
Barrel fitting is always easy compared to altering feeding issues.

[RU shooter]

If there is worries and concerns about chambering in 358 win would a 9x57 be a better safer option ?

[kens]

Because of the availability of .357 pistol boolits, and so on, can be launched in a .358 rifle.

[flounderman]

If you have a small ring action, there is enough material in the thread area of a 700 Remington barrel to cut the small ring threads over where the Remington threads are. I have used a lot of them on the Turk 98s. Takeoff 700 barrels are cheap and plentiful. There are not many 35 caliber Remington barrels, however.

[kens]

yeah, but my '98 is a small ring outside, with large threads inside.
I also have a '95 small ring action.

[hicard]

I had a 35 Rem barrel installed on my 95 action and it works great. I was afraid to do a 358 Win on it.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I heard somewhere that the Italian Carcano feeds .35 Rem and 7.62x39 without feeding alterations. The rim diameter is about the same in all those.
Barrel fitting is always easy compared to altering feeding issues.

The .35 Remington, I am fairly sure it would. It is a considerably better choice (assuming you can't be sure all future users will restrain their loading below factory pressures) than the .358. The 7.62x39 seems very doubtful. I have seen it done with a Lee-Enfield, but the Kalashnilov magazine was grafted in.

[justashooter]

I heard somewhere that the Italian Carcano feeds .35 Rem and 7.62x39 without feeding alterations. The rim diameter is about the same in all those.
Barrel fitting is always easy compared to altering feeding issues.

most carcano will feed the 30-06 family cases also, as the bolt faces are not cut so damned tight as to notice the 10 thou difference. fitting a barrel to them is another matter. the thread pitch and diameter are proprietary and difficult to replicate, as the thread pitch is just under 14 TPI and the OD is about 1.065".

[nekshot]

I have carcano's in 7.62x39 and 35 remington that I converted. I could not get the conversion to feed 100 percent clean off the stripper clips. I am no gunsmith so I went the crude way and made a spring and follower and attached rails onto the reciever of the 7.62x39 using the original bottom and works fine, and did away with bottom and used a sav 340 clip on the 35 rem and that works fine. If you gotta pay some one to do that conversion it would be salty for sure but for me it was my time so who cares. I love the carcano's, its just a shame their prices are taking them out of my reach.

[nekshot]

Ok, My mind is a little clearer now that I am totally awake. You say you have a sr95. Have you heard any of us with sr95's complaining about how they feed 35 remingtons? I like the conversion on a 95 and the brass can be made from 308s all you have to do is google the process and any one can do that. The mauser will be very cheap compared to a carcano if you must pay for help! If someone has a carcano that does the 35 remington in the original magazine, I am all ears and would love to learn how they did it.

[FrankG]

yeah, but my '98 is a small ring outside, with large threads inside.
I also have a '95 small ring action.

Is this a Mexican 98 ?

[kens]

It only says Erfurt and Kar 98
small ring outside, large threads inside, with 98 length trigger guard

[John 242]

It only says Erfurt and Kar 98
small ring outside, large threads inside, with 98 length trigger guard

Is it a Kar. 98a? That's what it sounds like. My Kuhnhausen book is at school or I'd look it up.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

I have carcano's in 7.62x39 and 35 remington that I converted. I could not get the conversion to feed 100 percent clean off the stripper clips. I am no gunsmith so I went the crude way and made a spring and follower and attached rails onto the reciever of the 7.62x39 using the original bottom and works fine, and did away with bottom and used a sav 340 clip on the 35 rem and that works fine. If you gotta pay some one to do that conversion it would be salty for sure but for me it was my time so who cares. I love the carcano's, its just a shame their prices are taking them out of my reach.

For the 7.62x39 I would have expected as much, and I did something similar with my derelict 7.7x60R straight pull Mannlicher M95 sporting rifle, from which the original magazine was missing. But did you mean there was difficulty with the.35 Remington in a Carcano as well? If so, with only about .008in. difference in the rim, I would have thought that modified or home-made clips would have been an easier way of dealing with it.

[nekshot]

its been awhile but heres what I remember. The 7.62x39 would not come off the stripper clip clean and the cartridge would stove pipe. The thickness of the rim kept them from sliding freely. I ruined one clip by trying to open the rim groove and relieving the metal off clip that made contact with the bolt face. The 35 cartridge would not fit into magazine, they were to fat and I simply could figure out how to relieve that much metal. I wanted a light weight gun any how so I eliminated the trigger guard mag assembly and fit a savage 340 magazine in and that really saved weight. There is a picture here somewhere of both thos guns, I simply don't know how to get you to them. Concerning this post here I am totally out in left field as I was thinking from the beginning the 95 was the one with the flat bottom of bolt ussually in 7mm so I missed it. Not the first time I did that.