What to do with 100+ year old 7mm Mauser ammo

[jakharath]

Howdy! I have 70 or so rounds of 1913 DWM 7mm Mauser ammo on 5 and 6 round stripper clips. These are the long boolit rounds and have been crimped. Some of the rounds have some corrosion. Most looks to be in good condition considering their age.

Has anyone had experience with this? Should I just pull the bullets and recycle the brass?

I'm going to keep a full stripper clip to add to my ammo collection.

Thanks,
Jason

[bouncer50]

I find old ammo like that i just shoot it. Some of it will click then bang fire delay. The duds take apart and reuse the powder and bullet. In my 8mm Mauser i reuse duds all the time. I bought 50 rounds of french 32 longs 49 were duds. One of these days i am going to reuse them make or find some brass. that i can reload.

[jakharath]

Have you had any issues with case/head separation?

[gnoahhh]

I would have to be pretty desperate to fire 100+ year old ammo. You don't know what's going on inside that brass. I shot a lot of ammo from that era, 40-50 years ago and got a ton of hangfires, misfires, cracked cases, etc. then, and now the stuff is half a century older still. Mauser, Krag, .30-06 Ball, etc.- we shot it all, because it was dirt cheap (and performed like it).

[williamwaco]

It is certain to be highly corrosive - I would NOT fire it in my guns.

[leebuilder]

Any questions at all, dont fire!!! Not worth the hassle and possiblity of injury to you or the rifle. Save some for your collection, and give some to your buddys for thier collections and recycle the rest.
be safe

[jugulater]

i can only imagine the clean up. im sure those are Mercuric primers, and god knows what kind of powder is in them. these are pure collectors items, firing them could very well be suicide.

but maybe im just picky considering i dont even like to shoot modern factory ammo out of my guns.

[jakharath]

The good news is that I don't own anything in 7mm Mauser. :)

[jakharath]

So I'll keep some and then pull the bullets on the rest. Thanks for the suggestions!

[country gent]

One thing to remeber is that ammo is corrosive and the rifles need to be cleaned starting with hot soap water to dilute break down the salts, cases would benifit the same soapwater batch right after firing. On brass that old annealing would be a big plus to reduce te age hardening that may have occured also. Watch cases when fired if cracks or seperations occur stop the brass is probably gone.

[Adam Helmer]

jakharath,

Ammunition that old is not worth fooling with. I suggest you put it in a dumpster and shoot only modern Non-Corrosive ammo in any 7mm arms you treasure.

Adam

[Larry Gibson]

Keep some of the stripper clipped for your own collection. I suggest pulling the bullets, dumping the powder and reseating the bullets. This will prevent further corrosion as the powder deteriorates.

I had a bunch of early 1900s 7.57 also. I did pressure and velocity test (I and everyone was at a safe distance from the gun) 5 of the loads that showed no corrosion or deterioration of the powder. However the primers failed to fire so those were pulled and the 172 gr cupro jacketed RNFMJ bullet and powder put into Winchester 7x57 cases with WLR primers. The velocity (22" barrel) was 2295 fps and the psi was 54,500.......just about what it was supposed to be.

Thus with the rounds you don't keep The bullets may be pulled and used but I would dump the powder and cases.

Larry Gibson

[Dutchman]

Second from left is DWM 7x57 dated 1913:

http://media.fotki.com/1_p,rrtrqkkqwfggfqrxwfqbfsgtwfb,vi/rtftwsbfxrkgkfkkgsxbsqdtbfbw/2/28344/3886627/c010-vi.jpg

Must've been a very bad year for corrosive primers...

http://media.fotki.com/1_p,sqffgbdqrbdqgskxwfqbfsgtwfb,vi/wwrdgksxrtqgrtk/2/28344/3886627/c011-vi.jpg

[N4AUD]

I shot a bunch of Turk ammo in 8mm that was at least that old. It all went boom, no clicks. It was dirty. I used proper cleanup for corrosive primers and neither the rifle nor I suffered damage. I don't know why people think it's going to explode or something.

[gnoahhh]

One instance of successful use of ancient ammo doesn't speak to the general utility of the entire genre.

[leadman]

I had some of the Turk 8mm that split the necks when fired. To unload the cases I pulled sideways, not very hard, on the bullet and the necks split and the bullet could be pulled out.

Ran into a weird situation with some WWII 6.5 Carcano ammo a friend gave me. These showed signs of very high pressure in his gun so I pulled the bullets on a few. The core was 3 seperate pieces and they were loose in the jacket. As the base of the bullet was open with clearance around the core I think the bullet jacket was expanding as it left the case and then had to be swaged down to go thru the bore. My friend had pulled a couple of bullets and used a starting load of 4895 and the high pressure still presented itself with the case forming to the bolt face. A carcano is not the gun to mess around with high pressure.

[MtGun44]

I have fired old DWM ammo with good results if it is clean, no corrosion and
in good, dry, undamaged cardboard boxes.

I shot several hundred rounds of UMC 7x57 and it was great stuff.

If you won't shoot it, I will. If you would like to sell it, let me know.

Bill

[303Guy]

Wow, 100 year old ammo! I would keep them, those are collectors pieces. Get a machine gun belt and load it up and hang it somewhere interesting. 8x57 machine gun belts would do just fine. I happen to have a piece of such belt that someone loaded with 303 Brit cartridges and nowhere near as old as yours. If shipping restrictions did not apply I would ask for some of yours to fill my belt segment. How cool would 100 year old 7x57 cartridges be!

[Multigunner]

I have an old Remington UMC 7mm military cartridge in my collection. Cupro-nickel jacketed bullet much like the DWM pictured.

I'd check around to find if these cartridges have any collector value before breaking them down for components.

[Hardcast416taylor]

I inherited 2 boxes of 50 each of 7mm Mauser made by Kynoch in Britain. The original boxes are yellow and white with the factory printed labels still very clear. The bullet loaded in these rounds is an 150 gr. fmj spire point. I`m guessing early part of last century manfacture.Robert

[ascast]

I would not hesitate to shoot them. They are not going to blow up your gun or you. That said, WHY WOULD YOU ? They are corrosive, and if they go bang, I am sure they will vertical string. If you plan to salvage the brass, etc it is best done before firing. Mercuric priming compounds weaken brass. Might be Berdan primed as well.

[Hang Fire]

It is certain to be highly corrosive - I would NOT fire it in my guns.

Use H2o and swab the bore/chamber, nothing detrimental about using corrosive ammo, just clean the weapon properly.

[Frank46]

If steel jacketed bullets try a kinetic bullet puller first. I had some 1933 Kynock (british) 7mm with 175 grain round nosed bullets. Before the puller broke I did get a couple pulled. The bases were pretty rusted from the powder fumes. Funny thing is that on the outside the ammo looked great. Maybe evapo rust to get off any rust first before loading and firing. Frank

[james23]

Years ago I bought 1500 rounds of 8 x 56 R on stripper clip, mostly 1938 headstamps. Shoots great. Same with the 1943 8 x 57 German. Its all corrosive but heck so is all the surplus 7.62 x 39 and 7.62 x 54 imo.