Firearms

The data files from my Labradar for various ammunition.

Over the past couple of years there has been a surge of interest in .22 Rimfire in Canada (at least from my perspective). Arguably, it could be traced to the start of Project Mapleseed back in 2017, which then spawned the Canadian Rimfire Precision Series in 2018, and now this year the Outlaw Rimfire Precision Series. My friends south of the border have Project Appleseed and the National Rimfire League. As you can see, plenty of opportunity to participate/compete with the humble .

The 8mm Mauser (7.92x57mm) round, in it’s current incarnation, has been around since 1903. It is a improvement of the original 7.92x57mm cartridge that was developed in 1888 by Peter Paul Mauser. Arguably, 8mm Mauser has been one of the world’s most popular cartridges, having seen significant military and civilian use over the past 100+ year. It also influenced the design of many of today’s cartridges, such as .30-06. Finding good 8mm Mauser ammunition (in Canada at least) is becoming harder.

After an amateur attempt at trying to calculate the BC of the Norinco 7.62x39mm ammunition, I thought I would do the same thing with Norinco’s 7.62x51mm ammo. As one would expect, this stuff is fairly inexpensive as well, running aroun $0.50/round. I don’t think this is “precision ammo”, but it works well enough in my rifle. First off, I pulled one bullet apart, and weight it. The projecticle itself weight 146.

On of the great things about 7.62x39mm rifles (like the SKS) is that (for the time being) ammo is fairly inexpensive. A fellow who keeps his eye open for a deal can find 7.62x39mm in the range of $0.16CAD (for corrosive) to $0.30CAD (for non-corrosive) ammo. Of course being surplus ammo, finding ballistics data on this ammunition can be a bit of a trick. Granted, the 7.62x39 cartridge isn’t exactly a “precision” round, but intellectual curiousity had me wondering what the ballistic coefficient (BC) of this Norinco ammo was.

8mm Mauser is a great round, problem is that in North America it’s not always easy to find good 8x57mm ammunition. When you do manage to find it, it tends to bit a bit expensive, > $1.00/round. Here is where hand loading pays itself off. I used to handload my own 8x57mm, however I stopped for a few years and now I can’t seem to find my old load data. This isn’t a horrible thing as it means I get to go to the range to test out new recipes.