Shooting a "drain pipe"?

[Nora]

I've got a GEW 88/05 (S) that's been displayed proudly on the shop wall for a long time. I'm looking at loading for it to shoot just for fun. Over all it is (IMO) very nice shape, with all matching #'s. It has also got one of the smoothest bolts that I've ever run across in any rifle. The chamber and throat are bright, and shiny with out even so much as a scratch. However the inside of the barrel was, well, very dark and cob ruff as any drain pipe can get. The past few days it's been soaking in about every brand and type of penetrating oil and petroleum jelly known to modern man. Now I can pass a patch threw it with out any drag. It feels smooth and can see that there is rifling left... but the groves are still very visible pitted (gee go figure).

Aside from loading light, in the 10 to 12 gns of Unique and shooting the proper sized boolit, in this case an NEI 165gr .316 to fit a .315 bore. Are there any other concerns I should take into consideration before feeding a 118 year old rifle live ammo? (1891 Danzig)

Thanks in advance

Nora

[Buckshot]

.............I've got a M88/05/14 that had been gifted to Turkey. It still has the barrel jacket and the original barrel. Mine gave the best accuracy with cast sized to .323". It actually has a quite fine barrel. I have a M95 Chilean Mauser (7x57) with a dark barrel. You can wear a 7mm bore brush down without too mush scrbbing :-) The lands appear to be worn enough to be somewhat rounded. Bore riders are a waste of time but the Lyman 150gr Loverin shoots pretty well (1.5" at 50 yards) if kept to about 1600 fps. The throat must end somewhere under the rear sight as it's virtually endless.

I don't get any leading, per se' like slivers and similar at cleaning. Instead the first couple of patches push out some glop that I guess is boolit lube, powder residue and tiny bit's of lead dust. I say lead dust as out in the sun if you wipe your finger across the blob it has tiny sparkles in it like super fine metalflake paint. My only guess is as I say, lead dust/tiny tiny flakes.

..............Buckshot

[Ricochet]

Nora, yours slugs to .315"?! That's exceptionally small! Original G88 barrels' groove diameters are supposed to be about .321". (And were used with .318" bullets.) There are reports of very tight Czechoslovakian replacement barrels on some of the South American G88s. Was this one of those from the batch that got brought in just a few years ago? I told the story a day or two ago of being fooled with a Turkish Mauser that I thought had the rifling completely shot out to gentle ripples in the bore. I didn't want to waste time slugging a trashed barrel and stuck a caliper in the muzzle. Got something like .334" and .338" across the "grooves." Shot it several times with nonexistant accuracy and cleaned it normally. I was trying to remove the barrel and replace it when I applied heat with a propane torch. Smoke came out the muzzle, debris fell out the breech, and there was sharp rifling! Hardened cosmoline had filled the grooves that was absolutely impervious to cleaning solvents, and even shooting with Turkish milsurp ammo! Pressure must've been sky high. The bore was belled at the muzzle from cleaning rod wear, which reinforced my conclusion that the bore was worn out. I wonder if you have something like that going on?

[Beekeeper]

I have 2 of the 88's that came out of the south american cashe.
Both slug out .310 land and .318 grove.
I have refinished them with the original barrel jackets and intend to shoot them with paper patched boolits .318 in dia.
Have the boolits made just haven't shot them yet

Jim

[bruce drake]

Numrich has new replacement 88 barrels for $60 if anyone is interested. They are the CZ factory barrels that a lot of the South American 88s were rebarreled with in the 30's.

http://www.e-gunparts.com/DisplayAd.asp?chrProductSKU=4060&chrSuperSKU=&MC=&CatID=4233&mySort=2

bruce

[Nora]

As far as I can tell it still has the original barrel. Mine didn't come from South America though, it came from an antique store in southern MN, over 15 years ago. :kidding: It too had been farmed to Turkey at some point in it's existence. From what I can tell it's first unit of issue was a training unit of some type. Rear band marked "ATA.2.32" before being upgraded and reissued to the 118 Infantry Div. 5th Co (I however can find no actual reference to such a unit being in existence in the Imperial Army) Front cap marked "118.R.5.72".

Nora

[Ricochet]

If it's truly the original barrel, something's wrong with the measurement, or something's built up in the bore to narrow it down. The Germans never made them that small, not even as small as .318". The Turks, however, rebuilt them and mixed parts up as you've noted with the bands. Many if not most of these rifles had the bolts taken away by the Allies at the end of WWI, later replaced with new bolts made for the Turks by the Czechs. The Czechs made barrels for the Turks' various rifle refurbishment projects in the '30s, and maybe the Turks got some of the too-tight barrels, too. The Turks never used different ammo for their various 8mm rifles, they all got the hot JS loads. Don't know how many Turkish soldiers may have been blown up that we've never heard of, but I think the old G88s and M93s are a lot stronger than most folks nowadays give them credit for. Anyway, I think your barrel needs a really intense cleaning.

[Nora]

Ricochet

I like your idea of heating the barrel with a propain torch. I tried it and did get most of the remaining crud out. It now slugs to .3175

I disagree with you on the bullet diameter though. The origianal "Patronen 7.92x57mm" was .3188" until it was changed in 1897 to .321" and shot threw a .323 bore.

[jonk]

I have ONE gun that has such a pitted bore, it just tears up lead bullets horribly- a Greek Mannlicher schoenauer. It shoots jacketed just fine though. Go figure.

I'd try some lead and see. Worst happens is, you have to shoot jacketed.

I might also firelap it to clean up some more of the mess.

[Ricochet]

I disagree with you on the bullet diameter though. The origianal "Patronen 7.92x57mm" was .3188" until it was changed in 1897 to .321" and shot threw a .323 bore.
I know that. But the bore was never rifled to .318". The Germans followed the common practice of rifling to a larger groove diameter than the bullet, which was still being done intentionally by the Russians, Brits and others in WWII. The original groove diameter is .321". From 1889 to mid 1890 they had a .314" bore with .3215" grooves, from mid 1890 to mid 1896 .311" bore with .3215" grooves, and from mid 1896 to the end of production .311" bore with .323"+ grooves. The Mauser 98s started with the .311/.323" rifling. .318" barrels were used in German civilian rifle manufacture, never in their military rifles. The Czechs made G88 replacement barrels reportedly as tight as .316" grooves. There are extensive discussions of this on http://forums.gunboards.com/ and on http://milsurpshooter.net/ .

Here's one such thread:
http://forums.gunboards.com/showthread.php?t=26061

[KCSO]

You never know till you shoot it! I had a Kar 88 that had what I thought was a terrible bore, the rifling was rounded off the bore had pits it was dark. I cleaned it up as best I could and shot iit with cast and with a 324 bullet it shot into 2" ay 1000 yards all the way up to 1800 fps. You need to clean it up and try it.

[Ricochet]

2" at 1000 yards is good shooting! :D

[felix]

Yep, considering that is BR accuracy and approaches the record, if not already the best group in existence at that range. I think I would tell the BR clubs you can do that, and they might contribute a plane ticket to a registered range for a registered match. Well done, sir!!!! ... felix

[1Shirt]

KCSO, Where is the 1000 yd range located near Bloomfield? Just kidding! :coffeecom Know you meant to say 100 and hit an additional 0. Sure do wish there was a 1000yd range that was accessable in eastern Ne.
1Shirt!

[felix]

Don't worry, KCSO can take a joke! It's uncanny how many structures fell because of a decimal point. The "engineering" teams don't talk about that, and try and shift the blame on the technicians when court cases come up. In fact the inspector in KCMO who approved the "new year's bridge" failure at Crown Center was my roomate for two years. ... felix

[Bret4207]

I had one really ratty barrel that I wanted to try lead in. I had cleaned and cleaned and cleaned it and it still looked like 112 acres of elm stumps. The rifling was fairly sharp, but it was gouged and pitted along the length. I was an 8x57 Mauser of forgotten lineage. Anyway, I wanted to try cast but figured the poor bore would rip the boolit to pieces. Mule Snot (Lee LA) had just hit the market so I swabbed the barrel with it and let it dry some. Then I ran a very loose patch through the bore to get the excess out. It seemed to fill the pits and it shot okay for what it was.

Just a thought.

[arclight]

I've had good luck with "Outers Bore Foam" when it comes to cleaning up these trashed Mauser bores. Follow up by shooting paper-patched lead bullets, and the bore will actually get polished up as you shoot it.

Arclight