lar45
10-13-2020, 10:48 AM
Years ago I thought I'd try my hand at sporterizing a surplus Mauser. I found an 8x57 Turk real cheap. I cut the barrel to 24" and gave it an 11deg crown. I'm a big fan of Timney triggers, but the idea behind this one was to have a super inexpensive truck/loaner gun, so I welded on the trigger to convert it to a single stage vs two stage trigger. I only have $135 into it including a 3-9 Bushnell from the used box at the gunshop.
I cut down the Military stock, which looked okay, but found a stock that needed some work at a gunshop for $10. The stock has been sitting unused for about 15 years until I recently rediscovered it and decided to put it on. I had to do some minor inletting to get the bottom metal to fit.
http://www.lsstuff.com/pics/8x57turk/turk-01.jpg
http://www.lsstuff.com/pics/8x57turk/turk-02.jpg
When I initially fired it, I loaded some 150 Speer's and got about a 12" pattern at 25 yards. I slugged the barrel and was very surprised to find the groove measurement was .328". The rifling was very shallow also.
http://www.lsstuff.com/pics/8x57turk/turk-04.jpg
I was going to put a new barrel on it, but someone here suggested that I try a longer bullet. I loaded some 170 grain Speer's and was able to get around 1.5" groups at 100 yards.
I looked at the Hodgdon site and saw that CFE223 gave much higher velocity than with my old load of IMR 4064 that gave 2630ish.
Here's a target with 55gns of CFE223 and the 170 Speer going 2866fps.
http://www.lsstuff.com/pics/8x57turk/turk-03.jpg
The main group looks great, but the two higher holes sort of ruined an otherwise good group.
The inletting for the action was done kind of sloppily, not by me, so I mixed up some Devcon 10210 and glass bedded the action. It's had 2 days to cure, so I loaded up some more ammo and hopefully will have a chance to shoot it again today to see if it helped.
I cut down the Military stock, which looked okay, but found a stock that needed some work at a gunshop for $10. The stock has been sitting unused for about 15 years until I recently rediscovered it and decided to put it on. I had to do some minor inletting to get the bottom metal to fit.
http://www.lsstuff.com/pics/8x57turk/turk-01.jpg
http://www.lsstuff.com/pics/8x57turk/turk-02.jpg
When I initially fired it, I loaded some 150 Speer's and got about a 12" pattern at 25 yards. I slugged the barrel and was very surprised to find the groove measurement was .328". The rifling was very shallow also.
http://www.lsstuff.com/pics/8x57turk/turk-04.jpg
I was going to put a new barrel on it, but someone here suggested that I try a longer bullet. I loaded some 170 grain Speer's and was able to get around 1.5" groups at 100 yards.
I looked at the Hodgdon site and saw that CFE223 gave much higher velocity than with my old load of IMR 4064 that gave 2630ish.
Here's a target with 55gns of CFE223 and the 170 Speer going 2866fps.
http://www.lsstuff.com/pics/8x57turk/turk-03.jpg
The main group looks great, but the two higher holes sort of ruined an otherwise good group.
The inletting for the action was done kind of sloppily, not by me, so I mixed up some Devcon 10210 and glass bedded the action. It's had 2 days to cure, so I loaded up some more ammo and hopefully will have a chance to shoot it again today to see if it helped.