Bought a 1903 Turkish Mauser

[Aragorn243]

Older 8mm rifles have a smaller bore than later ones. Some Turk rifles were upgraded, some were not. Depends when yours was "made" or rearsenalled. I believe most Turk rifles were upgraded and it's the 88 commission rifles that are at greater risk of being the older caliber.

[browningautorifle]

88 commission rifles that are at greater risk of being the older caliber

Which is the old round nose bullet, yes?

[Eaglelord17]

All M98 Mauser actions should be fine to shoot the modern .323 dia bullets, even those few which were made in the original Patrone 88 (by 1905 the Patrone 'S' was adopted and all previous M98 rifles should have all been converted to the .323 bore, those few which possible escaped are likely in museums or exceeding rare. Even without the modified bore a early M98 rifle should be fine, it is a M98 and if the Commission 88 could somewhat do it with the smaller bore a M98 would have no issues).

Commission 88s are a whole other story. Basically the action wasn't very strong to begin with (and not having proper proofing and such really didn't help matters), and when updated to the later Patrone 'S' round, all they did was modify the chamber, nothing to do with the bore diameter. These did blow up in Turkish Service as well as German Service, definitely do a ton of research if anyone intends to shoot one.

[browningautorifle]

Time to slug the bore then?

[mmppres]

All ways slug bore no matter which or what kind of firearm you plan to shoot. especially if reloading

[Eaglelord17]

I wouldn't say there is a real need to slug the bore with a Turkish Mauser. All the 8mm Mauser Turkish M98 rifles are .323 bores or larger. The only other bore size you will encounter with a Turkish M98 Mauser is a .311 dia which was for the 7.65x53 round. It is pretty obvious if it is the earlier round as well since the rifles were configured differently and 8mm Mauser cannot chamber on one of those rifles.