We picked up a Swedish Mauser for my son about a month back. It's a beautiful rifle in a very cool cartridge (6.5 Swede), impeccable build quality, a very smooth action, and it's pretty impressive in the accuracy department.

Feeding it has been interesting, as we haven't been able to find ammo locally, but I did manage to find some brass online, and 6.5 bullets are thankfully pretty popular. I'm still trying to work up an optimized load for it, but am getting pretty close. We found a pound of 4831 locally, and it seems to do pretty well with that and 140gr bullets up near the top of the data range...no pressure signs, and I've been able to get groups right around 1" with it at 100 yards. Haven't had a chance to chronograph it yet because every time I go it rains, but based on the book I should be right around 2600FPS.

My son was in Florida earlier this month and found some 140gr S&B Swede ammo, so he got my wife to buy a couple of boxes for him. We took it out yesterday and shot a bag of reloads, then decided to try the factory stuff. It seemed to be shooting ok, and I didn't really pay any attention to the brass as we were about 50 rounds into the range session at that point with no problems...and hey, this is factory ammo, so what could go wrong, right?

After the 6th round of S&B, the gun failed to cock properly. We pulled the bolt and attempted to disassemble it for inspection, but the cocking piece wouldn't retract far enough to clear the channel in the bolt body, so we packed that one up and it was done for the day.

At home I got the bolt apart and determined that there were some burrs on the firing pin body just forward of the flats that were binding up the spring. I did some research, and found some forum references to this being caused by back pressure from pierced primers. Supposedly this can be caused by a weak spring, but I tested the cocking pressure on our gun, and it's between 7 and 8Kg, which is in spec per the information that I have (plus I haven't have any issues with any of the other loads that I've tried).

I inspected all the brass, and sure enough, the 6 S&B rounds all showed pressure signs...flattened primers, one was protruding from the primer pocket a bit, and finally one of them was pierced clean through. My reloads all look fine.


(PPU cases above are my reloads, the S&B at the bottom is the factory stuff.)

Thankfully, there was no irreparable damage to the gun, or us. I was able to stone the burrs off of the firing pin body to eliminate any spring binding. I inspected the tip under a magnifying glass and don't see any evidence of cratering, so we got lucky there.

I guess I'll be pulling the bullets from the remaining 34 rounds of this crap that we have, and re-charging the cases. I'm a little pissed about spending money on ammo that tried to blow us up, but I guess that's just life, and all in all it's a pretty cheap lesson to pay close attention to your brass, even with factory loads. But as a PSA, if you have a Swedish Mauser, be careful shooting S&B ammo through it!

Phone call or email to S&B?

Time for a recall on some ammo...

^^ Wouldn't be the first time. Their entire supply of 6.5 Grendel got pulled a couple of years ago and hasn't reappeared since.

quote:

Originally posted by Excam_Man:
Phone call or email to S&B?

Time for a recall on some ammo...

I've considered it...probably ought to, but I can imagine how that would go. It's a 120 year-old rifle, and I haven't checked the headspace since I don't have gauges. I'm personally confident it's ok because I'm not seeing any issues with any of the other loads I've put through it, but I doubt S&B would take my word for it. For all I know this stuff might be ok in another gun...I don't have another to try it in. But I know this one definitely hates it.