New, Gew 88/05, had some questions

Greetings,

I was at the large gun show in Tulsa and picked up this Gew 88/05. A few details caught my attention that I thought to share:

1. It has no import marks.
2. It all matches except the bolt assembly, and the sling attachment at the base. The bolt is all matching except the bolt head.
3. The only parts with crescents is the bolt, the receiver inst stamped.
4. The gun was still full of cosmoline.

With this in mind I had some questions:

1. I've been reading up on ammo and not to use some surplus, but what about turk 8mm (its the exact ammo it probably would have used)?
2. Based on my pictures, is there anything I should know (marks, issues, etc.)?
3. I paid 300, how did I do?

Any comments or replies are appreciated.

Bernard

To the best of my knowledge, Turk surplus is about the hottest surplus ammo you can get ahold of these days and should be avoided in the GEW 88. Commercial ammo or handloads is recommended because the first is not as hot as surplus and the second can be controlled. One thing to be concerned with is some of these have a smaller diameter bore and modern loads can be problematic with them so you should check into that before firing. $300 is about what they seem to be going for today so you did OK.

I think the Turks used issue ammo for 50 years. The 8mm bullet is quite short and is almost a "wasp" waist in shape. The rifle looks nice and the price is right. Nice find.

Your rifle has had the barrel replaced at least once by the German military . No 88/05 rifles ever had a "small" CZ barrel . Your bore will be at least .311 - .321 . Slug it to know for sure . That barrel was never made to shoot the heavy bullet Ss ammo , just old P-88 or 154 S ammo [ same as Turk ] . The rifle is very old now so you may want to be easy on it . The Romanian surplus is ok , also any US loaded ammo .

Turkish surplus ammo is the 1905 loading of the round. It is a 150grn .323 boat tail projectile going at 2950 ft/sec. Even though that was shot through Gewehr 88s and 88/05s I wouldn't recommend it, as after reading the book on the rifles, they didn't even proof them (all sorts of issues, which if you want a good story I highly recommend looking into. It has racism, barrels bursting, incompetence, lack of understanding of metallurgy and smokeless powder, overall a great tale).

I highly recommend if you want to shoot this rifle, to reload as it is the only way you will know it is safe for your rifle. These rifles were a stop gap for a reason, and didn't feature proper gas venting either (which is why the cocking piece has that little bit that sticks out on it, to try and divert the gasses before it hits your eye!). Very nice rifle, I hope you enjoy it.

The German S round was a .321 main body dia 154 grain Flat base bullet that had nothing to do with 1905 . The Turk ammo was made on the German pre 1916 machinery and loaded to German specs . The S ammo was designed to be fired in the Gew-88 rifle . All Gew-88 rifles were proofed , the proofs are stamped right in the steel . The Romanian surplus is a .321 dia 154 grain bullet with a lighter load than the S ammo . It is fine in any .321 + groove Gew-88 rifle .

Just looked in my book and it was 1903 it was adopted (1905 was the date I had in my head for whatever reason), but it used a .323 (not a .321 projectile all the sources I have found say .323) 154grn projectile at 2936 ft/sec. You are right about the bullet being a flat base not a boat tail. Again not something I would use in a Commission 88 rifle, even though it was for a time period.

The reason I said what I did about the Turk ammo it because there are numerous warnings out there about taking care using it in Hakim's. Not that it can't be used but that you need to dial in the gas tube for it. If not set correctly, you can damage the rifle.

All of my actual German bullets measure .321 main body , I would go by that , not what some book said . I have a large collection of German ammo , with many S rounds with pre 1903 headstamp dates on them . I have copies of original German S ammo testing reports with dates of pre 1903 . So again I would rather go with real items over what a book said .

Personally, I'll go with what EVERY source states, including NORMA which makes it their business to know what the correct diameter bullets go with what particular loadings. The 8x57 JS Mauser as produced by Germany uses a .323 diameter bullet.

Not a Czech barrel, but looks to be real German Gew88 barrel. Not too sure, but is that a crack just over the chamber? Really can't be sure. I would be careful with that rifle.

I looked with super magnification and the one "crack" looks to be nothing but a scratch. The second one, in the last photo showing the barrel, I would examine very closely in person. Hopefully it is just a scratch also but it does not look straight or have smooth transitions.

I thought I'd catch up with this post. First, I noticed the marks on the barrel on the chamber after I took the pics too. I disassembled it and used my trusty magnifier/lighted headgear and am 99.9% certain that there scratches and not cracks. One is just deeper than the other, and the one I found looping the barrel is actually part of the threads of the barrel. As for ammo, I tried slugging the barrel and being the first time I've done this, results weren't good. Checking around the muzzle with calipers yields at most .318 (need to clean for lead) and least .308-.311. If it comes to it, I'll take it to the smith and have it checked.

If you wipe the area down with mineral spirits, if it is a crack, it will remain wet. Otherwise it should dry almost immediately.

Thanks to Aragorn, I can say for certain that there scratches, not cracks. I also checked the chamber and there are no scratches or cracks in it (chamber condition is 99-100%). The reason that it looked so mean in the one picture was because it had grease/cosmo in it. I am glad that the barrel was replaced at least once in German service (and I've seen barrels floating around if it needs to be changed again). Now I can get back to finding out the bore dimensions.

Bernard