8mm Mauser Lead Load

After getting a 500 count box of 170 grain flat nose 8mm .324 bullets from Midway, I was quite excited to build a very cheap rifle load for my Mausers. Using Winchester large rifle primer and 28 grains of Reloader 7, which was the minimum load for 165 grain round nose in my Lyman manual, I had the worst results of any load I've ever made. I test fired at few at my 100 yard 12 inch dinger, and had trouble even seeing where the bullets were puffing up snow when they missed. Switching to paper target at 30 yards, the only hit I made with my M24/47 was blowing a leg off the wooden stand, while with my 29 inch barrel G98, I was able put two rounds on paper, with the iron sight set to 9, and the bullets striking 5 inches low and 5 inches right. Another bullet out of the Gewehr managed to again blow a leg off the bottom of the wooden stand.

Some primers were pushing out, all of them seemed a little pushed. Case mouths were filthy. Cases extracted with absolute ease, and there was enough white smoke after every round to make you think you were shooting blackpowder.

The Lyman load is listed at 16,000 CUP, so I'm going to venture (and hope) that the primers are a result of too little pressure, not too much. The dirty cases and mouths are positive indicators that it might not be enough pressure to cause the bottleneck to obturate. Primer indents seem normal, and most primers still look round. But with rifles and lots of case space pressure spikes, I would much rather have every opinion I can muster before I blow something up.

The extreme bullet drop would probably also indicate low pressure. Cranking up the iron sights to 9 just to have it spot on paper 5 inches low at 30 yards seems almost unbelievable, and I really wish I had a chrony. The other odd thing is the 5 inches right, and the 100 yard steel shot attempts tended to show puffs of snow a foot or more away from the target, and I called my shots well enough to know it wasn't me.

Right now I'm at a standstill on this project, as it is basically worthless right now, and I don't want to up powder charges till I get a better idea of what I'm doing. Hoping to make this work and cast .324 bullets so I can shoot rifle on the cheap, and this is a big kick in the nuts start.

I concur with you observation that the powder charge is on the weak side. My thought would be more powder or change to a different powder.

Fast-burning propellants are usually best for reduced lead-bullet rifle loads. Try using about 13 grains of Bullseye, Red Dot, AA#2 etc. to start with and you will probably see some improvement. Those will give essentially black powder ballistics, and will normally group pretty good. You do not need any filler above the powder. Experiment.

"Plinkers" or starting loads need to expand the case to seal the chamber for best results.
Just because a load is the lowest listed does not mean it is the best. Very seldom have minimum
loads worked in all my rifles from .22 up to .308 dia.

SR 4759 is the only powder for slow loads that has worked in most of my cases. There has been Unique and other fast powders but they are usually above 1,500 fps and with slower powders can reach 2,200 fps with the 30 cal. 165gr bullets.

It is just a learning process with gun vs bullet until you start to see results. Very seldom do you find a good load right from the start.

Good loading.

Thank you all for the response. Now confident pressures are too low, I'll make a few batches tomorrow and up the dose, try some IMR 4198, and the available pistol powders you suggested that I have. In a way, I was hoping the low pressure loads would work as to preserve brass as long as possible, but you have to use what works. Lesson learned at least.

Come back with your results. I have fired thousands of .30-'06 plinking loads using 180 grain lead bullets with 13 grains of Red Dot with excellent results. It even shoots reasonably well with jacketed bullets. Try whatever in the fast shotgun/handgun propellant line you have available. If you must use an IMR, I'd think 4227 might be a better choice than 4198.

See: The Load

I have fired many gas checked, home cast bullets in 8 x 57mm with Unique powder. Ammo was reliable and accurate. The pressure was low.

I'm not surprised that you got the results you did with that load. Probably very uneven (and even incomplete) ignition, as well as very low pressure, leading to sooty case necks and poor accuracy. 28 grains in a big 8mm Mauser case, even of a fairly fast rifle powder like RL-7, is very borderline anyway. The potential for S.E.E. exists with most rifle powders, if loaded too light. Not saying that 28 grains is actually dangerous, but it is too light a load to be of much value.


Probably not directly useful to you, but I have shot boat loads of 170 grain lead from my Yugo M48 sporter, using paper-patched 170 grain flat-nose cast bullets over 32.5 grains of Hodgdon Benchmark or IMR-3031, with dacron filler added to keep the powder in place. Through my 17" barreled M48 sporter (carbine), this load will group 1.5" at 100 yards....and about 3.5" at 200 yards. Muzzle velocity is just under 2100 fps through my barrel.

I have gotten away from the paper-patched bullets of late (because paper patching is a tedious process), but I get the same results from 33.0 grains of the two powders I mentioned, under a 170 grain Hornady RN jacketed bullet. This is my current load for the M48.

Your "naked" cast bullets, if without gas checks, probably couldn't stand up to that load. However, RL-7 is close to the powders I mentioned in burn speed. So, if you did not get any leading in your barrel, which would indicate that the load is too "hot" for those bullets.....you might well see an improvement by simply adding dacron filler to your existing load.

Dacron is very easy to use and nearly foolproof, as long as you follow three simple rules. 1) Use enough to fill the air space in the case completely. 2) don't pack it into the case - simply push a large enough tuft to fill the air space, loosely into the case and seat your bullet on top of it. You can "eyeball" the amount to use, no need to weigh it. 3) Never use ANY filler on top of pistol powders in rifle cases, such as Bullseye, Unique, 2400, etc. It isn't needed with those powders and can be a danger.

Used this way, dacron increases chamber pressures roughly 4000 psi and promotes much more even ignition than similar charge weights without dacron. Used correctly, it also has a very beneficial effect on accuracy.

I shoot anywhere from 11gr to 13gr of Red Dot under cast or jacketed bullet in 30-06, 30-40Krag, 8mm Mauser, ect. Very accurate.
I even use 13gr in 9.3x74R in a double rifle using 9mm Makarov bullets.
They are the needed .366 dia and actually print in the black at 50m.
Saves my shoulder!

Don't go any lower that 11gr with the jacketed bullet or you may get them stuck in the bbl depending on the gun and bullet. I've had pulled GI M2 30cal bullets stick in my '03 sporter using 11gr Bullseye. Might be the combination of the heavy jacket and lighter charge. Cast bullets with 11gr Bullseye are very accurate at 100m.

In 8mm Mauser and 8x56 Mannlicher Schoenauer I also use 8mm Nambu pistol bullet (cast lead,usually 105gr) when I can find them on line.
5 gr of Bullseye does the launching and they are remarkably accurate out at 50m. Little noise and no recoil. The feed in the Mauser fine, a little balky in the rotary M/S that's designed for the longer bullets.

I've worked up some lead bullet loads for 30-06 (180 gr) and here's my experience so far.
Attempts at adapting most published reduced loads were a disaster. Keyholes, scrubbing strips of lead from the barrel, etc. Dacron tufts caused case failure at the shoulder. Yikes.

What works, fast pistol powders at very reduced loads - at 1000-1100 fps the accuracy is good enough to make for interesting plinking loads, I haven't pushed much beyond that so far but the one useful article I found on the matter indicates 12-1300 fps is about the useful speed limit for cast. Go faster and I think the bullets have to be gas checked.

The powders I had success with are Accurate 2 and W231. Even 6 gr of AA2 will burn consistently in a '06 sized case.

I haven't worked on the project yet because I'm waiting for "reinforcements" to improve with, namely the rifle crimp dies and a universal belling die I've just put in an order on, and a ProChrono, as well as new literature with established reloading loads using more pistol powders, considering I can get Green Dot, but about nothing else.

Then, tonight, I was packing up my rubber mulch box, and looking for lead now that the snow is melting with a very hot spring. Low and behold, I found five of the Mauser lead bullets on the path down to the steel target, at various stages. One had managed to hit the ground, presumably, hard enough to mushroom. All five were very strange indeed, they were smooshed on one side, and almost untouched on the other. They all weighed in at around 150 grains, instead of 170. Strangest of all, at their thickest they ranged from .290 to .310. Indeed, when I placed them in the muzzle of each rifle, they would have dropped down each barrel completely. Interesting indeed. None of the bullets had any remaining lubrication.

How they got so small is something I don't get. I checked my PPU 8mm brass, and resized from my RCBS die, the mouth .318, and they accepted .323 Speer 170 grain jacketed bullets very well earlier. I surmised that part of my problem was probably my belling and crimping practices, thus new equipment, but even with the small mouth without any belling, it doesn't explain the much smaller resultant bullets. The fact they fit down the bore so easily, and measured in so small, doesn't seem to make much sense at all.

I'm going to prepare some loads and shoot them when my chronograph arrives, and report back then. But, with such strange findings, does anybody have a a clue?

Sounds like your bullets might have been tumbling and hit the steel
targets and bounced back or just hit the ground and skidded on their
way to the target. I want to try some cast bullets in my 30-30s but
haven't gotten around to it yet. Just from what I've read about cast
bullets in center fire rifles I'm going to buy some plain base bullets
and use light loads of the fast burning powders and keep velocities
down to 1200 fps or less.

Found time tonight to make two very small batches for testing, one with a higher pressure load of Green Dot and another of a slightly hotter Reloader 7. Spotter saw them missing the steel 100 yard gong by two feet left and low. Shot paper at 10 paces, and one even keyholed, with the rest showing inconsistent placement, all of this with the same commercial cast 170 grain bullets, out of both my M24/47 and my G98. Too dark to use my brand new chronograph, and almost scared if a flyer hits it with the kind of awful results I'm getting.

On a positive note, I sat back down and made a small batch of .375 H&H loads, this time with my own cast 250 grain Lee .379 sized down to .376 in my Lube-a-matic, this time using 11.5 grains Green Dot (minimum load listed) and 31 grains Reloader 7 to try both. Seeing enough light to still shoot, I gave it an attempt, and what a turn of fortune!

I expected more failure, but my shots on the steel target were rewarded with large dings. Using the last of my small batch, I shot my pistol bullet recovery barrel at 10 yards offhand, they were 3/4 inch low compared to where the Weaver is sighted in for 100 yards using 300 grain soft point PPU. I held high on the steel 100 yard target, and on further inspection, found that the lead splatters were far closer to where I was aiming than what I anticipated. Close enough, in fact, I could hunt deer at 100 yards with the more powerful reloader load without adjusting my scope.

In any case, its been a bit puzzling. I expected the commercial caster bullets to perform better than my amateur casted bullets, but perhaps that is the issue. I feel that I've developed a good bell and crimp for my lead rifle loads now, and I've tried a few different powders and pressures for the 8mm with dismal results, yet without difficulty produced extremely solid results with another cartridge. I don't even know what exact hardness my lead is, mixing various sources, and judging correct hardness by fingernail scratch. Hardness doesnt' seem to be an issue with the commercial bullets, but they just don't seem to work.

I'm going to cast some .324 Lee bullets when the weather gets better and see if I can't work magic with it. My only other question to everyone still reading this long post is, there was more hesitation of the bullet in seating in the PPU 8mm cases than my 375 H&H, even with proper mouth flaring, is there something I'm doing wrong with my bullet seat or is the case perhaps a poor choice for the bullet?

Suggest that the OP slug his barrel first and get the bore diameter (bottom of the grooves) and get cast bullets .002 over that. Once you have that information look up C.E Harris "THE LOAD" and follow his suggestions regarding the bullets that can be used with the load of 16 grains of 2400. I use IMR 4759 for my cast bullet shooting. If you decide on that get all you can afford as it has been discontinued(again) and no more to be made. Frank

In looking back over the posts on this thread I see that one thing is
never mentioned, the condition of the bore of your Yugo 24/47 Mauser.
The 24/47 is a rework of an older rifle and they do vary in condition. I
have owned a few of them and still have one. So what is the condition
of your rifle, specifically the condition of the bore? Bore condition is
probably a lot more important with regard to cast bullet accuracy than
jacketed bullet accuracy. Many milsurps sold in recent years have
barrels that have been counterbored as an attempt to fix bore wear at
the muzzle caused by steel cleaning rods. Has your 24/47 Mauser been
counterbored?