Wondering Why Mauser Was So Energetic Creating Different Cartridge Calibers ?

[PaulN]

This is a 'philosophical type' question ......

Was it that their (potential) customers required it or what was the reason that the Mauser Company was so prolific in creating new cartridge calibers in the late 1800s ? (With the ones I'm familiar with you can put a bunch on a table and they look pretty much alike.)

If I remember rightly the Russians have, when designing new cartridges, been good about sizing them so that a potential enemy wouldn't be able to capture Russian ammo and use it against them (and conversly the Russians might be able to get their enemy's ammo successfully chambered and use it).

Could that have been why some of the Mauser Company's customers got differing ammunition ?

Also .... does anybody know why 6.5mm Swedish ammo has an ever-so-slightly larger head on the brass cartridge case ? (Wasn't .473 inch good enough for them ?)

I'm 'fuzzy' on this but from what I can tell the 6.5mm Swedish cartridge isn't, properly speaking, a Mauser design although it seems to be routinely lumped in with the 7mm, 7.65mm and 8mm Mauser cartridges.

(Hint - the stainless steel Swedish stripper clips from Samco work just dandy with .30-06 for 1903 Springfields.)

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[muffett.2008]

To ensure an order, the Mauser Bros. were willing to make whatever was required.

[arado]

The Mauser brothers created the finest cartridge in firearm history. The .30 Mauser, AKA 7.62x25 Tokarev. . So good it is still in front line service. Pistol and sub machine gun.

[Patrick Chadwick]

Was it that their (potential) customers required it or what was the reason that the Mauser Company was so prolific in creating new cartridge calibers in the late 1800s ? (With the ones I'm familiar with you can put a bunch on a table and they look pretty much alike.)

The driving force was undoubtedly the customers. One the one hand, the whole of the American continent south of the Rio Grande was happy with 7x57 or, for those who wanted a bit more "Umppfh", the 7.65x53 Belgian a.k.a. Argentine Mauser. On the other hand, why didn't the Belgians use the 8x57 cartridge to start off with.

Well, that may have been a combination of the "let's have something that the potential enemy can't use" and the "not invented here" syndrome. Whereby I suspect that the NIH effect has always been subconsciously important, if never admitted. No procuring officer could make their name and justify the further employment of their subordinate staff (and thus their rank) by adopting somebody else's caliber. So each will have argued with the more-or-less imagined "special requirements" of their armies. And interchangeability - with presumed allies or anybody else - was apparently not even thought about.

As has been demonstrated often enough by the results of shooters of old service rifles in competition, and a few seriously extensive tests, the whole spectrum of chamberings reveals a large number of cartridges that basically do the same job, any variations in performance being attributable to features such as multiple locking lugs and aperture sights rather than the fantasy of "intrinsically accurate" cartridges. The whole world could have gone from percussion rifles to an 11mm blackpowder cartridge such as the Mauser 1871 and later to a small-caliber smokeless cartridge such as the 7x57, end of story.

But why criticize military procurement? The whole forest of wildcat cartridges demonstrates that there is no end of civilian users convinced that another hundredth on the base size or a couple of degrees difference in the shoulder angle is going to be the magic solution to their shooting needs. Cynics could say that it's an alternative to actually learning to shoot better. But it provides lots of business for Lee, RCBS etc, and it also provide hours of entertainment in the workshop for people like myself, concocting oddities like 9.5x47R cartridges from 45-70 cases!

(Which is a doddle, after you've practised reforming 24 gauge shotgun cases into 577-450 Martini-Henry cases)

If I remember rightly the Russians have, when designing new cartridges, been good about sizing them so that a potential enemy wouldn't be able to capture Russian ammo and use it against them (and conversly the Russians might be able to get their enemy's ammo successfully chambered and use it).

I can't follow that argument. Have you any supporting evidence? Which "enemy" cartridge could the Russians have used in a Mosin-Nagant chamber?

[jmoore]

Which "enemy" cartridge could the Russians have used in a Mosin-Nagant chamber?

Ummm, 7,5mm Swiss?

[Patrick Chadwick]

An intriguing suggestion. I just tried it. A GP11 round is actually held by the extractor and the cartridge goes in far enough that the bolt reaches the turn-down/camming region. Then it jams hard, as is to be expected - the base diameter is a touch larger than the 7.72x54R. But only 0.004". And even if you had a very loose Mosin chamber or used a "small-base" die on the Swiss, the case is still 0.09" longer. Still, if you were a very desperate reloader...?

[jmoore]

Could have been those time machine using Czarists back in the 1890s. They wanted their Communist "buddies" in the future to be able to chamber 7,62x51 NATO. Because they knew how well their Imperialist families would be treated by their overthowers and wanted to make nice...

Oddly, the military caliber unrest probably was more or less done by 1906 or so with the exception of the "compact" line that still rumbles under the surface today. The Lee rifle was 6mm, along with some Mondragon small bores. The new fangled 6,8mm SPC is really nothing more than a refined 6,5 Carcano. The only thing learned (it seems) is that not everybody needs to reach out 1000 yards.

[Patrick Chadwick]

Oddly, the military caliber unrest probably was more or less done by 1906 or so with the exception of the "compact" line that still rumbles under the surface today.

After the serious trial by fire of the US against the Spanish, and the British experience versus the Boers, where in both cases the rifles of the assumed dominant power were outperformed by those pesky colonials with their 7mm Mausers, the obvious solution would have been for the US and the British to stop fiddling about, suppress the NIH reaction, and adopt the 7x57 Mauser cartridge, preferably with the action as well. But NIH won. The US developed the Springfield '03 with a Mauser action, pretended it wasn't, and ended up paying royalties to Mauser.

But they at least made sure that they didn't use a tried and tested cartridge! Even if they spent millions on developing the 30-03 and then altering it into the 30-06. What are taxpayers for, after all, if not to fund the eternal reinvention of the wheel?

Likewise the British, firmly of the conviction that anything other than the Lee-Enfield action was a waste of time, reluctantly played around with a 7mm cartridge, but called it .276, to avoid that nasty non-imperial metric stuff, y'know, and developed it in such a dilatory manner that it never came to anything.

[Stomper]

The 6.5x55mm cartridge wasn't developed by Mauser, but by a joint commission of Norwegian/Swedish officials.

[Calif-Steve]

The story goes that Argentina wanted 7mm Mausers. But the Germans were heavily involved in the Turkish contract and could not deliver enough 7mm barrels. But, they had excess 7.65mm Turk barrels on hand and talked the Argentines into accepting the 7.65mm cartridge. But the arsenal was not available so the commerical factory built the Argentine Mauser. Which also explains the commerical trigger guard on the Argentine M98.