7X57 long range

[JRR]

With some of the new high BC bullets out in 7mm, it seems like this very old timer cartridge developed in 1893 might still be viable. With the Hornady 162gr ELD M bullet @ 2650 fps, it would be still supersonic well past 1200 yards. Very mild recoil, low pressure and still 1145 fps at 1500 yards. This velocity is easily attained with a 28" barrel with very low pressure. Approx. 45,000 cup.

The issues I see are that it is an in between length at approx. 3.0" oal. It was obviously designed for the Mauser actions that are of intermediate length with 3.2" magazines. A long action Rem type would be necessary and if the chamber was designed well you could load out to about 3.150" for more powder room.
125 years old!
Thoughts?

 

[Ggmac]

With some of the new high BC bullets out in 7mm, it seems like this very old timer cartridge developed in 1893 might still be viable. With the Hornady 162gr ELD M bullet @ 2650 fps, it would be still supersonic well past 1200 yards. Very mild recoil, low pressure and still 1145 fps at 1500 yards. This velocity is easily attained with a 28" barrel with very low pressure. Approx. 45,000 cup.

The issues I see are that it is an in between length at approx. 3.0" oal. It was obviously designed for the Mauser actions that are of intermediate length with 3.2" magazines. A long action Rem type would be necessary and if the chamber was designed well you could load out to about 3.150" for more powder room.
125 years old!
Thoughts?

Make it a 7 mm Ackley and you'll have a great combo . The 7mm Mauser is a very good all round by itself , I was using the Ackley design trying to keep bolt thrust down ( I was young and introduced to Williamsport 1000 yds and on a tight budget ) . It worked till I could afford the 7x300 Weatherby .

 

[Toolbreaker]

@Laurie

 

[2506]

Basically the 7mm-08 replaced the performance of the 7x57 using a short action. Never really did any really long range target work with the 7x57. I have a military 95 Spanish Mauser in about 80% condition that I have shot out to 200 yards with the 162 Hornady A-Max in the ball park of 2300 fps and it shot pretty accurately compared to other open sighted military rifles I have. Another 7x57 Mauser 95 I fooled with was a friends. His father has the rifle and it had been sported out. Barrel cut to 22" bolt handle bent over military back sight removed and Williams open sights installed on the barrel and was put into a new aftermarket sporting stock. They came home one day and caught someone just as they were coming out the door of their house and he had the rifle and threw it down and ran. It landed on the sidewalk and broke the stock into at the pistol grip. The father put it in a closet and it sat there for around 10 years. The son had gotten to 18 years old by this time and he wanted to start deer hunting and father had just died and he found the barreled action in the back of his fathers closet and remembered the robbery and it's breakage. He ask me if I could get a stock and get it to working. When I took a look at the rifle expecting it to have a rusted out bore like many do from corrosive primed ammo usage I found this. It was an barreled action that have be deep hot blued and the bore looked like a new polished dime inside. I took it and cut the bent down bolt handle off and made a new handle shaped for usage with a scope and welded it on. Drilled and tapped for Leupold base, reworked the trigger like an old gunsmith taught me and made a single stage adjustable trigger out of the old military one and got it down to a crisp 3 lbs. and put a safety leaver that worked with a scope mounted on it. Put him a Bushnell scope I had laying around on and put it into a Boyd's walnut stock that I glass and finished. Did a load work up with IMR 4350 and 154 Gr Hornady Interlock soft points staying just under 45000 cup with the data and found that this rifle was a TACK DRIVER. Needless to say this young man was BLOWN AWAY when I delivered the rifle to him and told him if he would help me do a little work around my house painting and fixing up a few things he would owe me nothing. I don't know how many deer he has killed with this rifle over the past 20 or so years.

 

[Barlow]

I have used Bob Hagel's load of 52gr of 4350 and 160gr bullet to get 2803 mv out of my Ruger 77, 7x57 with 22" barrel. His data was with the same rifle but showed 2816 mv. I never had any problems and did kill a nice 6x6 bull and a smaller 6x5. Bullet was a 160 gr Hawk. An AI version in a modern action would be somewhat better, but this rifle has killed everything I ever shot with it just the way it is. Barlow

 

[Idaho-Lefty]

Have you tried to shoot the New 162 ELD's ?? They did NOT offer, consistent Group accuracy ( NOT repeatable ) for, my son's Tikka, T3X, in 7mm-08. One Day the groups were good, the next Day, poor, with some,.. "Flyers"!
He ended up, using the 150 grain ELD-X and shot, a couple of, 2 3/4- 3 inch groups at 650 yards, in his Tikka with a twist of, 1-9. "something". He tried and tried (end up shooting, most of, the Box of bullets ) wanting that, HIGH BC Bullet, to "work", but the Twist was wrong for, him !
Try some at, 4-500yds, to see IF they work, in your Barrel,.. good Luck !

 

[Laurie]

The standard the 7X57 has to be judged against in long-range competition use is the 284, and it won't provide that cartridge's performance even in AI improved form. (The real equivalents here are 7X57AI v 284 KMR IMP both with 40-degree shoulders in any event.) The old Mauser has less powder capacity and even with the best brass available (likely RWS), I doubt very much if it would take the 284's design 63,500 + pressures. The 284 has a very strong case indeed, but even so, one often hears mutters about short brass life due to expanded primer pockets if it is pushed too far.

That's not to say the 7X57 isn't a great cartridge in either 'straight' or AI form and that running it at somewhat higher pressures than CIP/SAAMI and most anemic factory loads in an appropriate action won't see it outperform the lower capacity 7mm-08. Accuracy wise? These sevens are all good or potentially very good, but I can't see the old Mauser in whatever form improve on what the various versions of the 284 regularly achieve in good platforms.

In the UK and continental Europe, 7X57 is MUCH more popular than the 7-08, no doubt largely for historic reasons. Over here you don't find the average American hunter's dislike for long(er) actions either. In fact, the 7X57 fits an intermediate length as does the 6.5X55 and 6.5X57 (necked down 7mm Mauser, long a factory number in Germany) and actions that slot between those for the 2.8-2.9" 308 type numbers and the 3.34" COAL 30-06 and 270/280 etc are to be found if not exactly super-common. I have a 7X57 BSA Hunter from the mid 1950s and when the new range of Beezers was designed from scratch post WW2, this was the middle of three action lengths. First out were the short action models in 22H and 222 Rem the latter being as long as it would handle; 1955 or thereabouts saw my type introduced and my rifle came from the first production batch which interestingly was chambered in 7X57 not 308 Win as you might expect. Finally, two or three years later came the long action models designed for the 30-06 and cartridges based on it as well as some belted magnums. (Then to save money, BSA downspecced the design step by step ending up with the single long action length, push-feed CF2 model to reduce production costs and try to compete with Remington 722s and 700s on price.)

Most British sporting users load the cartridge pretty mild, in many cases likely no hotter than the older Mauser military loadings, but with 140 or 150gn bullets. This is an ideal combination for our deer species of which the most numerous is the Roe deer which maxes out at around 70lb live weight, and most a great deal lighter than that. Barrels will last a long, long time in this sort of use.

It's also a great historic arms competition cartridge, a good 7X57 Mauser giving a good 6.5X55 equivalent a run for its money in precision and ballistics and with the bonus of having surplus models available using the Mauser '98 type action. (I have two Chilean examples - an M1895 by DWM and M1912 by Steyr. They both shoot very well, but the Steyr's '98 action is a joy to operate, a pleasure just to do so and with astonishing fit and finish in a mass produced service arm even if they did build them to different - higher - standards in those days prior to the Great War.)