7mm Mauser

rodmkr

Temecula California
Have always been partial to the 7x57 Mauser.
First rifle I ever owned. It has seen 3 rebarrels and is still going strong.
Now have 3 of them.
Have hunted with them for years and they have never let me down yet.

rodmkr
 

Petrol & Powder

Well-Known Member
Sure for the individual soldier. However, as volley fire at longer ranges was another story. This practice declined with widespread use of machine guns.

Even the Brits removed the volley sights from the new rifles produced before the end of the war. Volley fire was attempted but was found to be completely ineffective and the concept abandoned.

With the adaptation of smokeless powder the theory was that battles would be fought at extreme ranges. That turned out to not be the reality.
 

Mowgli Terry

Active Member
These rifles were used for volley fire as indicated by the regular sights also. I have a P14 that retains the long range sight. As I said volley fire was made obsolete by many machine guns.
 

Bruce Drake

Active Member
Love that cartridge! I even rebarreled my M1 Garand to 7x57 several years back and load it using 7mm-08 load data and she's is a sweet shooter with minimal recoil compared to a 30-06 M1 Garand.

cast bullet reference - I won an auction on Ebay last week for a Lyman 287377, 150gr Spitzer bullet mold that I hope will be as accurate with the right load as the 7mm Louverin design 150gr bore rider design I already own and use in that Garand already. s-l1600.jpg
 
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Rushcreek

Well-Known Member
The 30-03 was a the American version of the 7x57mm cartridge; the 30-06 is the American version of the 1905 7.9 x 57mm. Yep, the '06 is a good one but it had inspiration.
 

Glaciers

Alaska Land of the Midnight Sun
Yeah but the 30-06 is ours.
I don't have any problems with adoption though. Not in the least.
 

waco

Springfield, Oregon
My uncle had a hand full of Ruger M77 tang safety rifles when he died back on 1999.
I ended up with a .22-250 and a .257 Roberts. I wish now I would have bought the 7x57 as well.
 

Petrol & Powder

Well-Known Member
Caliber wars are never productive.
As an American, I probably should hold a strong allegiance to the 30 caliber (and I do to some degree) but I've always held the 7mm projectiles in high esteem.

I don't know if Paul Mauser intentionally designed the 7mm because of its superior ballistics or if he just ended up there as a compromise and it turned out to be an excellent compromise.

I have often wonder what would have happened if the U.S. had adopted a 7mm cartridge in the interwar period. I am fully aware of why we didn't switch cartridges between the wars but that knowledge doesn't stop me from wondering what would have happened if we had taken a different path.
 

Glaciers

Alaska Land of the Midnight Sun
The only reason I've stayed away from the 7mm was because my Father was a big fan of the 7mm mag. He loved it and he could shoot it very well. So being a 30-06 guy (only because I was gifted a 1917 Enfield when I was 10) I could not lower myself to admit good things about anything less the 30 caliber. The same thing applies to the 270 as my brother was a 270 shooter. This started quite young and just stuck as I was kinda prideful.
Truth be told both my Father and brother could shoot rings around me. The only time I became interested in the 7x57 was when they became more readily available. Ruger, Winchester Featherweight and so on. But by that time I was in Alaska and was a big bore, magnum nut. I've since come to my senses and reduced the magnums to 338 mag's and a 458x2 is as big as it gets anymore.
I do like the heavies in the 06 though. 180 - 190 are the light ones for me. So there's a nitch I need to fill and the 7x57 would fit right in between the 06 and the 260.
 

Ole_270

Well-Known Member
I loaded a few 7x57 for my Father in Law just after the wife and I were married. He'd traded into a roughly sporterized 95 Mauser. He didn't hang onto it very long so the dies went down the road, wish I had kept them. I traded into my JC Higgins 51-L 308 with the idea of building a light 7x57 and my Son recently picked up a used 30-06 Kimber Classic Select with great wood for the same conversion. I have a M70 Classic Fwt, an early South Carolina build in 7-08, but would really rather have the classic 7x57 throated for spitzer 140s-150s.