Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Hot handloads in an old Swedish Mauser?

I have a model 38 swede and as long as you stick to book loads you'll be fine. My gun shoots 48.5grs of Rel-19 and a 120gr Nosler Solid Base very well. I get about 2850-2900fps with it.

If you want a lighter bullet, I've had good luck with the 100gr Nosler BT over IMR4064. I think it's 44grs [Sierra manual]and I get 3100fps. It works well even on NY deer [took out the heart,lung, and opposite shoulder on 120pound doe last yr.]

And the improvements on the M98 action include two gas ports in the BOLT (not in the action), plus a wide flange on the bolt shroud that extends to the diameter of the rear bridge of the action. The shroud deflects gases and any metal from blown cases to the left/right/up, minimizing the effect on the shooter.

The gases also exit around the thumb notch of the military mausers on the left, and simply out around the bolt on the right hand side, should gases go that way.

The main strength improvement in the M98 mausers was due to the larger diameter of the front ring of the action. More meat equals greater stability, essentially.

Good action. Still not the equal in strength to the Rem 700 or the Browning BLR or Weatherby MkV, but good and safe and usable.

The limiting factor in rifles is the brass case. That is the lowest strength item, and if the brass case is supported so it cannot go somewhere it should not, you're ok.

Never been sure why idiots want to hot load the 6.5x55 when it works so very, very good at normal and safe velocity.

Use as much 22 as you like, There are better powders than the other 2
Case life is no different than any other case ...10+ loadings if you do it correct

10+ loadings are easy with my Mod.96. Of course, my loads are usually a grain or so below max.. The first several loadings are neck sized only. Then I notice the bolt closes a little harder. Then my full length die is already set to just barely bump the shoulder a hair and then go back to neck size only for the next few loadings. I never dreamed I'd get that much case life out of an old Mauser action.

Early Swedish steel was about as good as there was in the world. The ore had naturally occurring manganese in it, and the steel was almost as good as modern chrome-moly steel. So your M96 is made of tough stuff.

You will find loads developed to all kinds of different specifications, SAAMI, CIP, and some apparently independently chosen. So you have to pay attention to that. I would bet that a Swedish M96 would handle practically everything that an M98 would, but I still run my Karl Gustavs at about 54 KPSI. With a 29" barrel, it gives me 2800 FPS with a 140 grain bullet. In a modern rifle, with a 24" barrel, 3000 FPS with a 120 grain bullet requires 30-06 level pressures. Those are pretty conservative loads.

Ordinary pressure signs kick in around 70,000 PSI. Not seeing any pressure signs is emphatically NOT NOT NOT evidence that you are operating in a recommended pressure area.

Welcome to the 'Fire! This is one of the more insightful posts in recent memory. With a post count of just 9, I assume you haven't yet learned and accepted as fact some of the horse hockey that flies around here, some of which comes from below the equator. That's good! Keep posting, sir, and don't believe everything you read.

My "standard" loads in several Swedes is a 140gr Sierra, Speer, or Hornady over either 44gr of H4350 or 46gr of H4831. Both loads shoot identically in my rifles. Don't know the precise velocity, and don't care. What I do know is they neatly kill game at ranges farther than many folks I know comprehend shooting, and they are not hard on rifles or cases. My personal maximum kill range to date with the 6.5x55 is 325 yards, and at that range these loads produce the same results as at 25 yards. The Sierra bullet appears to upset a bit more than the other two, leaving a slight larger exit wound on average. All shots on game have been pass-throughs, which I prefer. IME these loads do visibly less internal damage to tissue than larger calibers, but that's like saying water is wet.

I have tried to stay out of this thread, but find I can't anymore:

1) Once again, very few people actually read the original post before responding.

The use of "hot handloads" in the header was unfortunate, because that is NOT what the poster really meant, as is plain from his first post. Instead he asked about using maximum loading manual loads, which cannot be considered "hot." Even the hottest 6.5x55 load data around is only about 55,000 PSI, which is considerably less than .30-06 level, which isn't all that warm itself. (I must also emphasize PSI is electronic pounds-per-square-inch, not CUP, copper units of pressure.)

2) The 96 Mauser action has been proven to be basically as strong as any small-ring 98 action--that is, totally adequate for any cartridge with a .30-06 sized case head. This has been proven many times when 96's have been rebarreled (often by modern manufacturers such as Kimber) to cartridges such as the .22-250 and .308, which have factory loads producing well above 60,000 PSI.

The third 98 lug at the root of the bolt and the better gas-handling of the 98 are basically irrelevant in this discussion. They're there for catastrophic case failures, common in the early days of smokeless cartridges. They're still fine features, but modern brass is good enough that many bolt actions designed after the early days didn't have nearly as many features to handle case failure.

The pre-'64 Winchester Model 70 is a prime example. It basically has zero provision for keeping gas from a blown case out of the shooter's face, but Internet discussions of the pre-'64 almost never mention this. Yet when the 96 Mauser action comes up a bunch of experts have to bring up the ways it was inferior to the 98, and imply firing one with loads producing more than 45,000 PSI is as dangerous as driving on the wrong side of a highway.

A 96 action in good condition (no deep rust pits, cracks, etc., both of which are rare) will easily handle any of the data for handloading the 6.5x55 in America, as long as the chamber throat matches the original specifications. This is both because the 96 actions are pretty darn strong, thanks to the very good steel used, and because even the "hottest" maximum loads published here aren't all that warm.