doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion German & Austrian Sporting Guns @ doublegunshop.com Finally a 9.3 X 72R.

Vic,
The rifle, itself, will tell you what it wants,all you have to do is listen to it.
Mike

The rifle arrived today and after a cursory examination I cleaned the bore, which is slick and shiny, ran a slightly oily patch through and slugged it. Mike, it's dead on .3655, then on to the chamber cast. It's a 9.3 X 72R alright, the 9.3 X 72R Sauer. Definitely a bottle neck case and all the dimensions are within .002 + or - of the Sauer.....except for the head. The Sauer is supposed to be .473 and this cast is .4365 no matter how I measure it. I wonder if .03 is too much too small?

Other than that it is a petite little thing, barely over 6 lbs. even with the full octagon barrel. LOP is pretty short which makes me wonder if it was originally made for a lady or a youngster. If it were chambered to a very powerful cartridge a man would bop himself in the nose with his thumb every time....unless he hangs his thumb off the side like a Martini. Time for a brass search.......

Vic,
How about rechecking your figure for head diameter.You wrote it is .4365, did you mean .4653, or .4635".If so, 9.3x74R cases would work after trimming. If not,you are back to 9.3x72R, but it seems hard to come up with a bottlenecked case for a .366 bullet in a case with .437 head,considering case thickness,etc,and the statement that it is "obviously" bottlenecked.Your groove diameter seems made to order for my favorite H&G 512c bullet, 210gr blunt nose, .368 as cast dia.
Mike

Not being above making a mistake I checked the cast and it's .437 this morning. 9.2 X 74R? You lost me.

The bottleneck is slight but definite. Less even than the 9.3 X 75R Nimrod. I believe it's given as .050 or .060. It's too small on the cast for me to measure.

I have a few virgin 9.3 X 82R cases that I saved back from when I was working with the Nimrod and have sized one down to fit the chamber and will fireform it in a few minutes to see what happens. The case body will form fine. The head is right at .010 smaller and the rim about .025. I'm fairly confident the head will be ok. As for the rim, that shouldn't matter as the bottom almost 1/4 of the breech is extractor. After several tries you can't make the rim get under the extractor. After it's fireformed I'll double check the measurements and decide if I can use the regular 9.3 X 72R.

I thought about the H&G bullet Mike. I'm certain I still have most of the ones you sent me. If this case forming works I intend to try them.

Welp, I now have one fireformed case. The shoulder is really slight but no question it's there. I believe I need to shorten it a bit as I think I can just barely see where the case mouth might not be open all the way. It's tiny but it's there. The web appears to have grown .001-.002 and just in front of the web it grew .006-.008 depending on how accurate my distance from the web was from new, unfired case to fireformed case. As is to be expected there is a visible hump in front of the web. Waddaya think?

I used a light load of Trail Boss and the action stuck shut. It was easy to open and when I looked at the case I saw why. The primer had flowed back into the big black powder firing pin opening in the frame. I guess it's BP from now on or a lightly duplexed load.

Vic,
The reason for the mention of 9.3x74R was your statement that it is 9.3x72R S&S, and 9.3x74R is the case I use for mine.Since now it's not the Sauer, the best case is 9.3x72R.Since 9.3x82R cases are so dear, I wouldn't consider using them. If the fireforming load was on the 82mm case, that might be the reason for hard opening(the case is 10mm longer and would extend into the leade and maybe ahead of it.If the case expands noticeably uneven, you can center it in the chamber for the first firing with a narrow strip of scotch tape.If the rim was the same size as the recess, you could depend on it to center the case.If the H&G bullets you have are sized/lubed, they will be .364", and smaller than you need. Just be patient.
Mike

Ahhh, ok...what lost me was a typo in your post where you said "you're back to the 9.2....X 74R". I got my books out and couldn't find a 9.2 anything....lol! No Mike, I had trimmed the 82mm case...lol. Not that I'm above doing something like that but I didn't this time......or yet! It was obviously way too long at it's full length. It was hard opening because the primer flowed back into the firing pin hole, it was very obvious. I only had to trim off maybe another .006-.008 to get to the proper length after fireforming. I loaded up a black powder round, fired it and the primer was fine. I was surprised that flippin' case holds 73 grs. of GOEX Cartridge under the bullet!! I wonder what it will chrono with the 200 gr. bullet.

I did order 20, 9.3 X 72R Norma cases from Buffalo Arms to form for the rifle. I received an e-mail just a few minutes ago that said they were shipped so next week one day they'll arrive.

I guess I said it was the Sauer case because nothing else was as close, except for the head size. At any rate I was wrong. Once more I have no idea what the cartridge I have might have been called. I remember looking at the 9.3 X 74R and thinking, "there's my parent case" until I checked the head dimension and saw it was too big. I thought the 9.3 X 72R was going to be too small in the head but after trying the X82R it should be fine...certainly usable.

I'm just about positive the bullets you sent me are not sized and lubed. Thanks for the "tape tip"! The slight bulge is about all on one side because of the too small diameter rim so I will utilize another of your tricks! I was really pretty happy with the way it came out as I expected a much more significant bulge.

Vic, the typo was in the 9.3x72R, and I just edited it to change the confusing number.The Germans had several cartridges based on the British 360 express case(or just adopted the British cartridge- 360 2 1/4" vs 9.3x57R).The various cartridges,British,German,Austrian, and maybe others, wound up with differing head diameters.There may be various tolerance, or manufacturing reasons for this, that don't much matter now, but are still said to be based on the 360 Express case.We typically consider the headsize of 9.3x72R as being .425-.427",because of modern brass(9.3x72R norm)being made to fit most chambers.A good many German and Austrian cartridges have a larger head diameter(.433-.438")even though based on 360 case also.For most of these that are too long to use 303 Savage cases,either 9.3x72R,32-40 original length or38-55 original length cases are used;even though they may be a little smaller in diameter or a little shorter than what we are looking for.Cases around .015" smaller than the target case usually fireform satisfactorily if centered in the chamber.A little more may be acceptable, but requires more consideration.This is not my rule of thumb, I adopted it from George Nonte's book.
Mike

That's really some crummy rifle. Refinished and probably unsafe to fire. Send it to me and I'll take it off your hands.I've been looking for a wallhanger like that!

Well at least let me play with it with more than one cartridge case and if it doesn't blow up and kill me.....and I don't like it, I'll send it to you. Brass is SUPPOSED to be here tomorrow so I should know by the end of the week...that ok?

Mike, I shot the one case I made a couple more times with my bullet and head expansion, in front of the web, is .008. I was happy with that and it's well within Nonte's figure. I have one of the H&G bullets loaded in the case but I'm going to have to blow the snow off the drive first.