RELOAD: 8x56 R / 8x60 R Kropatschek
Reply With QuoteJohn Wallace
Posted - 02/01/2004 : 06:58:21 AM
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If it is a Portuguese Kropatschek, the cartridge should be virtually identical to the 8x60R Guedes, which I´ve used a good deal. A minor snag (though you should slug the bore to check this) is that it probably needs a .330in. diameter bullet. NEI (neihandtools.com) make a good one. It would be a good idea to check the chamber with a cast, as the Kropatschek is sometimes described as 8x56, and I think this represented a change in the course of production. I certainly have some blank rounds of the late 1890s which, apart from a single undated example, are about 56mm. long. This is quite handy if you are making your cases from .348 Winchester, which is better, cheaper and easier than the .450 nitro Express sometimes recommended.
Ch4D (www.ch4d.com) do dies in both 8x56R and 8x60R for $69, and I´ve been very impressed with their quality and service. Note that there is another 8x60R which you need to avoid. Another good source for a mould is http://users.bigpond.com/ammodump/ in Australia, who are good value due to their dollar being low. www.mountainmolds could make you one by CNC machining to your own design, and do very good work at a surprisingly moderate price. For this specific application, however, they have the disadvantage that they can only do flat noses, of a minimum of about .2in. in diameter.
lionart99
Posted - 02/02/2004 : 12:06:20 AM
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Don it does not have an upper hand guard. Can smokeless powder be used instead of black powder if i do get to a point for loading ammo? I'm a rookie at this that's why I need expert help and really appreciate the help so far.
John Wallace
Posted - 02/02/2004 : 03:19:24 AM
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The absence of a handguard slightly increases the likelihood of its being Portuguese, since they received at least the earlier rifles without handguards, though they added some in Portugal. What Don says does suggest that rifles for home service were left without. In my picture it looks like a fairly amateurish addition, since a new and larger band would have been a better way of securing it.
The monogram might well be LR or LIR (the middle I being a number, and the R Rex or Rey), since Carlos only came to the throne in 1889. His predecessor had the name variously rendered as Ludovicus, Louis, Luis or Luigi, or in Portugal probably something slightly different. The monogram on my Guedes is large and ornate, but nothing of the kind if visible in the above picture, perhaps because the curved surfaces lend themselves less well to it.
The first ammunition certainly did use black powder, 71gr. with a 247gr. bullet, and the coarsest you can get would be best. You will get less into a thicker modern case. You could also, in complete safety, will the case with all the pyrodex it will hold, and that might be easier to get. But I think smokeless powder was used pretty early on. Although this is an extremely good and usable rifle, its small bore and fast twist mean that it is crying out for smokeless, as the bore would foul very quickly. It is a well-made and strong action, and you could probably, in stages, step up the loads considerably beyond what I did with my Guedes. The limiting factor with the Guedes, which won´t exist in the Kropatschek, was that the hammer-action probably has some tendency to rebound, and the hammer-nose leaves a bit of a gap in its hole in the block. So I got a ruptured primer which merely left my wrist tingling, but cracked the complex mainspring, which I had to replace with one carved from a piece of van spring. According to the 1904 War Office Textbook of Small Arms, chamber pressure of the black powder Kropatschek load, at 15.75 long tons per square inch, was identical to the early cordite Lee-Enfields, although it probably fell off more rapidly after an early peak.
I began with 24gr. of Reloder 7, giving about 1525 ft./sec. with the NEI bullet, at which it will penetrate two feet of end-grain larch timber. Approximately factory ballistics (about 1700 ft./sec.)are obtained with 30gr. of Reloder 7, producing very reassuring pressure indications, but I would not go over 28gr. with Speer .338 275gr. semi-spitzers, which I sized down to .331 in a simple ring die. These give greater though not alarming primer deformation, probably due to friction and dimensions rather than weight. It is a good idea to use some kind of inert filler to hold the charge at the primer end of the case. I used the fluffy vegetable fibre from cigarette filter tips, which is probably kapok. 4198 powder should be pretty well interchangeable with Reloder 7 for this application. If you try reduced loads, you can only reduce them so far with the heavy bullet, as you will probably find they tumble at around 1300 or 1400 ft./sec.
The Kropatschek should be all right with more and slower powder than the Guedes. It is a bad idea, though, to use a case containing only a little very slow powder, as this is thought to produce the famous detonation effect, which is very difficult to reproduce in a laboratory, but once in a while wrecks rifles in a fairly spectacular way. It is now thought to be because slow powders don´t ignite well in these circumstances, and so a lot of the grains get broken into small pieces, minus the retardant coating on the surface of the grains.
Don Blosser
Posted - 02/02/2004 : 10:11:07 PM
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Sorry, I was working from memory rather than going to look. My M1886 is marked L.I. on the left side (actually there is a little degree mark by the I). I was crossing up with the Mauser Verguero. The hand guard on the 'colonial' rifles is certainly an afterthought. If the guard is removed the only indication that it should have been there is the notches for the retaining clips in the stock. It is odd the way it fastens over the lower band. I've been told that the guard was added to control heat wave distortion of the sight picture in the colonies though you would think that if it distorted in one climate it would distort in all of them!
I have been shooting mid 1920s surplus ammunition in mine which is smokeless with a round nose full metal jacket bullet.
John Wallace
Posted - 02/04/2004 : 02:36:19 AM
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The headstamp below is from a round picked up by a friend in old Boer War entrenchments. It would almost certainly have been fired from a Guedes. The bullet is jacketed, presumably in thinly plated steel, as it is too rusted for a useful diameter measurement, without pulling it. What is interesting here is that although I believe this is a Portuguese arsenal headstamp (of 1895, when nobody knew they might have to produce a special order for the Boers), the case is a full 60mm. in length. This does support my belief that the earliest rounds for the Kropatschek were, too.
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D in the drawing below is the Guedes/Kropatschek round, and it needs to be clicked on, to show up in a useful size. It shows what might be a useful dodge if you choose not to use a gas-check bullet. A short plug of wax or hard bullet lube was sandwiched between two thin card wads. My guess is that this wouldn`t work very well if the bullet was oversized, or soft enough to expand in the throat, because then you would get little fins at the rear of the lands. But if the bullet were of the right diameter and very hard (which it ought to be for this round), I think it would work well.
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Marzon
Posted - 02/05/2004 : 1:09:42 PM
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The 1920's headstamped ammo is available on GunsAmerica (search for 8x60) for $100.00 for 100 rounds. I bought some and it is very clean and shootable looking, though I haven't tried any yet. The seller also threw is a few extra rounds to make up for possible duds.
John Wallace
Posted - 02/05/2004 : 1:33:10 PM
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There are also a lot of earlier wooden-bulleted blanks around. You shouldn´t try to load these with bullets. I had some which had quite bad season cracking, although no bullet had been forced into the neck, and it is quite common practice to make blanks with rejected cases. That could include some with dangerous softening of the head area.
Of all the things I ever lost, I miss my mind the most.
