8mm-06 handloads

kjohn:

Keep a close watch on your 44 I and a number of other folks here in MB had theirs go bad.

Regards,

Jim

JH: Will do. I have been warned about that before. It appears that this batch was kept in the same room temperature since sometime around/after 1974.
 
It was my son and lucky it was an FN 98 mauser action.I know a guy that fired a 25-06AI in a Rem 700 7mm Rem mag that destroyed the rifle and made both eyes bloodshot for a couple weeks.
 
You can use very common 30-06 Load Data, with 30-06 Max Loads being more than "Min" and less than "Max" for the 8mm-06.
 
I inherited some old reloading gear a while back. Included was a 1962 Speer Reloading manual. It has loads listed for the 8mm-06.
It must have been quite a common conversion for Speer to publish load data back in the day.

It was actually quite a common wildcat chambering after WWII and into the mid seventies. Lots of servicemen brought home K98s chambered in 8x57 and thousands of them were on the surplus market dirt cheap.

What was missing was commercial hunting ammunition and BOXER primed brass. There was lots of surplus ammo around and some folks used to pull the FMJ bullets and insert soft point bullets. That being said, all of the surplus ammo was corrosive primed and it soon became apparent that most shooters of the day didn't know how and weren't equipped to clean properly.

So, Sherwood, Numrich, International Firearms offered up kits with extended magazines to accept 30-06 cartridges. This lead to other mods of course, such as reprofiling the feed ramp and grinding or machining a clearance cut on the top of the receiver. It was cheap and it not only made it easier for people to be able to shoot their rifles at a relatively low cost but it was also a fix do it yourself types could take on and do well, if they were handy and careful.

The 8mm-06 is a very good cartridge, when it's loaded to its full potential with capabilities close to or equal to the 338-06
 
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