Unknown .30 caliber pistol ammo

[spfd1903]

I have tried 10 different ways to download a photo here with no results.... anyway, a friend picked up a whole assortment of loose ammo at a garage sale. Only type I had never seen before, and could not find in any cartridge manuals was a rimmed, straight wall cartridge (0.885" case length), .308 diameter hollow base Lead bullet, which weighed 87.6 grains. No head stamp print at all.

[NoAngel]

7.63 Mannlicher for the Steyr 1901 pistol? Closest I know of.

[Outpost75]

RIMMED case, sounds like .32 Long Colt.

[NoAngel]

Doh! I could sworn I read rimless. Lol!

[spfd1903]

RIMMED case, sounds like .32 Long Colt.

I looked at the specs on the .32 Long Colt also. Case for the Colt is longer and the bullet of the mystery round is an even .308 from a micrometer reading instead of ,313.

[Earlwb]

They do have a list of handgun cartridges here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_handgun_cartridges
It pretty much covers all of the known cartridges made.
Italy and some other countries were known to make odd size cartridges for their civilian citizens to use too.

[spfd1903]

They do have a list of handgun cartridges here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_handgun_cartridges
It pretty much covers all of the known cartridges made.
Italy and some other countries were known to make odd size cartridges for their civilian citizens to use too.

Thanks Earlwb. Went through that site first, with nothing matching up to the specs. This will become an obsession!

[Earlwb]

Ok, I perused my 14th edition of the "Cartridges of the World" book. There are some good candidates.

The 7.7mm Bittner, this one is probably too rare and I doubt if many of these lever action pistols made it into the USA.

Now I think that the 7.5mm Swiss Nagant Army Revolver cartridge is the one you got. The case length matches up pretty good with your measurements. Plus they imported a bunch of the revolvers years ago too. You can make cases for it using the .32-20 cases cut down to about .89 to .895 in length. It is in the same class as the .32 S&W Long cartridge. Old surplus military ammo from that era could very likely be unmarked. One of the European ammo companies still makes the ammo to sell too.

[9.3X62AL]

OK--now I KNOW I am getting old and decrepit. COTW is in its 14th Edition?? Hijo la!

[Earlwb]

Well there maybe is a COTW 16th edition too. But I don't have that one or the 15th edition for that matter. I upgraded from the 6th edition I bought many years ago. It was getting pretty long in tooth and missing all the newer cartridges, etc.

[9.3X62AL]

Well, I did a bit of Google-fu right after posting yesterday, and COTW is in its 15th Edition presently. Having a 3rd and 10th Edition on hand, it seemed appropriate to get that tome updated. I ordered one.

[Huvius]

Sounds like it is probably the British 300 Revolver cartridge or possibly some variant of the 300 Rook.
The 300 Revolver cartridge has a case of .8"

This is a pretty handy chart.
Top row. The grungy one 16th from the right.
Probably can't read it once enlarged.

http://i251.photobucket.com/albums/gg312/Huvius/IMG_0088.jpeg (http://s251.photobucket.com/user/Huvius/media/IMG_0088.jpeg.html)

[spfd1903]

Thanks Huvius. Downloaded a pdf photo of the British 300 revolver. Close, but the case on this mystery ammo is still 0.1" longer, and the ? bullet is a longer nose type. Rim also shows a taper edge rather than squared off. Mighty close.

[bob208]

the French had a semi-auto pistol that fired a small .30 cal bullet. the only cade you could make them out of was the .30 Pederson.

[9.3X62AL]

The 7.65 MAS pistol? I have one, and reload for it. COTW doesn't seem to list it in its 15th Edition. I derived brass c. 1985 from a vendor in Shotgun News that lathe-turned the rim from 32 S&W Long brass and cut in a rimless head. 100 pieces was about $20 in mid-80s dollars. The cases work fine, and I use a 32 SWL die set to reload them. RCBS made a special shell holder for me, and I was in bizness. Triple K Magazines had aftermarket replacement mags, too. It is kind of a "32 Super Auto", running 85-100 grain bullets from 950-1100 FPS. Not a bad little varmint round, though nowhere near as accurate as my S&W Model 16-4 x 6" in 32 H&R Magnum.

My example is likely a Viet Nam bring-back. I was a few years too young to have been a part of that, but guys who went to The 'Nam have told me that M-1935 MAS pistols showed up from time to time in various places among actors on all sides of that conflict. In appearance it looks a lot like a SIG P-210 that got shrunk in the wash. It is recoil-operated with a Browning-esque toggle-link system. It came with about a dozen cartridges, which I still have. They are "sterile", lacking any headstamp or other identifier. It is a cool little pistol, and likes Lyman #313249 over enough powder to prompt 900 FPS to become reliable and not trap empties. I use just enough WW-231 or Unique to achieve that threshold, and no more.

If it is a weird mid-caliber handgun, I likely own one of them and reload for it.

[uscra112]

Colt .32 Long RIFLE cartridge had a .308 hollowbase bullet, to allow the bullet to fit inside the case. The original .32 Colts had a heeled bullet like a .22, at .312 nominal diameter. Outside lubed, which became a marketing liability. Hence the Long Rifle round which had the lube grooves covered. Hollow base was supposed to expand into the grooves like a Minie ball, but that left the nose free to get cockeyed. Needless to say it wasn't very accurate, by all accounts. I have two rifles that would take it, but I've never found any to buy/try.