doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion German & Austrian Sporting Guns @ doublegunshop.com Odd Drilling Rifling?

I have a no name Drilling circa 1925 with a 9.3x72R rifle barrel.

The lands are only .047 wide and the grooves are .147, six lands and grooves. The lands are very tall at nearly .010. The diameter between the grooves is .364 and the diameter between the lands is .3445

Can anyone give me some info on this barrel, type of bullet etc? Are these tall narrow lands common? How would you load for it?

The rifling you describe is typical for 9.3x72R barrels and others designed originally for black powder, lead bullet cartridges. In Germany it is usually called "Expressz�ge" = express rifling. It is the German version of the British "Henry rifling". Land diameters of 8.8 or even 8.7 mm are common. As the German proofhouses usually stamped the land diameter besides the proofmarks, we aare often asked "What's a 8.8x72 cartridge?" The smokeless 9.3x72R loads are essentially "nitro for black" loads. For these cartridges and lead bullet rifling the gunmaker Collath in Frankfurt on Oder river in 1905 designed copper jacket bullets with a short bearing surface. These Collath designed bullets are still loaded in current RWS and Sellier & Bellot 9.3x72R loads. A common substitute here is using soft, conventional .358" 200gr .35 Remington bullets, no Noslers, but Sierra, Hornady or Speer. Though undersized they will shoot quite ok, as the metal displaced by the lands will often fill out the grooves to a degree. A better bet is, of course, to find the correct RWS or S&B bullets or to use gas checked lead bullets.

Your description sounds like Henry rifling, common in British rifles during the late 19th century. Developed for paper patch bullets and usually very accurate when they are used. My Reilley has Henry rifling and the Hawk .025 jacketed bullets give excellent results. A hard cast lead bullet of 20-22 BHN has also given good results.

Of course soft lead paper patch bullets will almost always give excellent results.

This bullet is available from Buffalo arms would it be correct.

http://www.buffaloarms.com/366_Jacketed_Bullets_it-158343.aspx?TERM=9.3x72

IMHO Yes, it is very close to the original Collath design.

Note the canalure on this bullet, I believe it is the 200gr 35 cal bullet kuduae recommended, that has been "bumped up" and reswaged by Buffalo Arms. They make a real effort to help us shoot our old "treasures".
Mike

Some old designs of copper jacketed "nitro for black" bullets:



l. to r.: three Collath/Tesco designs of 1905. RWS made 8mm 150 gr. RWS 9.3mm 193 gr. S&B 9.3mm 193 gr. Two forgotten, slightly later competitors: Nimrod 9.3mm 179gr, Chr.Funk 9.3mm 226gr

Axel, your box of "treasures" amazes me.
Mike

Yes, and he's a bad influence. Recently, I have all too often bought some little firearms/reloading/bullet casting relic because of what I've seen Axel put up a picture of....and Mr. Ford is no better!

When paper patching a bullet for this, would you use a bullet of .344 diameter and patch it up to .365(a lot of paper) or start with a .358 diameter bullet(two wraps of .002 paper)and patch it up to .365?