L-R, R-P, Win. Super Speed, 196 gr. FMJ-BT "SS", Ecuadorian Surplus.

A word about corrosive ammo. Firing corrosive ammo is not harmful to the bore in and of itself. The problem arises when due care is not taken to properly clean the gun after firing. The primers produce various salts, especially potassium chloride, a close relative of sodium chloride more commonly encountered as table salt. These salts are deposited in the bore as a product of combustion. As is typical with salts, they are extremely hygroscopic and absorb moisture and produce rust if not removed. The obvious solution is to clean the bore immediately after shooting.

The metal of the barrel, no matter how polished it appears to be has pores. The salt deposits itself into these pores and commences to absorb moisture and form rust. That old stand-by, WD-40, sprayed in the bore can delay the onset of corrosion a day or two, but the gun must be cleaned as rust can form under the oil film. The surest way to get rid of the salts is to dissolve it. Our grandfathers encountered the same problem with their blackpowder guns and came to the same conclusion.

Plain dish washing detergent and hot water works very well. I have also heard of swabbing the bore using a 50/50 ammonia water solution on a patch and then cleaning as normal. The old Military bore cleaner was designed specifically for corrosive ammo, carcinogenic, but effective. So, the fact that certain ammo is corrosive should not be a deterrent to using it.

Finally I found the time to take it out to the range. The two factors that I was primarily interested in were accuracy and point of aim. The most accurate rifle in the world is not much use if you don't know where it is hitting and I have found that many of these military weapons can present a challenge in this department.

A bullet crosses the line of site at two places after it leaves the bore, first a short distance in front of the muzzle and again at the point of aim. If sighted at 100 meters it should cross the line of sight first at approximately 15 meters. Setting the target at that range also allows one to see how far away from the point of aim the bullet is hitting without having to use an overly large target.

As the sights were graduated in meters, I started by setting an Outers sighting-in target at 15 meters . This target has a 1 inch fluorescent center spot with concentric rings at 1 inch intervals on a background of a grid with 1 inch squares. It is 14 winches wide and 18 inches high, a good size for the work that I was doing.

Setting the rifle on a sandbag rest and taking a bead on the target, the first thing that I discovered was that the sights were very difficult to see. Unlike U.S. military weapons that use a square post front sight and an aperture rear sight, the standard Mauser sight is a "V" notch rear and an inverted "V" front post, so that it appears rather like a W. They are small and difficult to pick up quickly. In my opinion, this is one of the worst sighting combinations ever put on a gun, at least for my eyes. It is hard to imagine the German soldier fighting two World Wars and not being able to see their sights. Well, they did lose both of them, after all. Using a six-o'clock hold on the center spot , I took up the slack on the two-stage trigger and fired two rounds.

Examining the target, I found that the bullets had struck about 5 inches low and an inch to the right. I set the sight at the 200 meter position and fired 1 round that struck 4 inches low. At the 300 meter position another round struck 3 inches low and at the 400 meter setting another bullet hit 2 inches low. Finally, I fired 5 rounds at the 500 meter setting and produced a 3/4 inch group an inch low and an inch to the right of the point of aim.

I next moved the target out to 100 meters and, with the sight set at the 600 meter mark, fired two rounds. The bullets struck 2 inches high and well to the right edge of the paper, not quite what I was expecting. Upon examining the rear sight I discovered that when I had set the sight at the 600 meter mark, only one side of the sight had engaged the notches in the sight base and the sight was moving. In addition, the front sight had been drifted in its base to the right as far as it could go so I was not going to be able to make any additional adjustments there. I reset the sight at the 500 meter mark and made sure that it was firmly engaged. The next two rounds struck an inch high, 4 inches to the right of the aiming point, and 2 ¼ inches apart.

The rifle has good potential. A rifle that shoots 2 ¼ inch groups is not spectacular but is still very useful and it is very good for this type of rifle. In comparison, another shooter using a Ruger Mini-30 and a scope was getting 3+ inches at the same range. The problem, then, is twofold, I want to be able to adjust the sights for various ranges as they were intended and I want to be able to actually see the sights. I am sure that I would have shot somewhat better had they not presented such difficulties.

What is disturbing is that the sights are as far off the mark as they were. I can understand the windage situation, but the elevation is even further off. As the 8mm has been loaded in a variety of bullet weights was I, perhaps, simply using the wrong cartridges? It did not seem likely that the Turks would have issued ammunition that did not hit close to point of aim. However, I had been shooting 198 grain bullets, lighter bullets should theoretically strike lower on the target due to lower dwell time in the barrel and increased velocity. I wanted to test this theory by shooting some original Turkish ammo. A few gun shows later I found a supply.

I found Turkish issue ammo, loaded on stripper clips, 70 rounds to the bandoleer for $10. They had the crescent and star emblem between a T and C (Turkish Republic). They were also marked "7.9", "FS" (probably the maker) and "1942". These cartridges, externally, seemed almost identical to the Ecuadorian ammo. Breaking down one of the rounds revealed quite a difference. These rounds had 155 grain Steel jacketed bullets of .322 diameter with a concave base. The bearing surface was quite a bit shorter than on the Ecuadorian ammo.

The cases appeared, at first glance, boxer primed. Curious, I examined the interior of the case with an otoscope, a tool that I find extremely valuable for examining cartridges. It showed that, in fact, they were Berdan primed. What had first seemed like a central flash hole was a depression caused by forming the primer anvil. The two flash holes were clearly visible under magnification.

A trip to the range with my chronograph produced some interesting results. For comparison purposes, I also fired both types of ammo in my Spanish La Coruña Mauser. It sports the standard 23.5 inch barrel and is also "stock". The chronograph generated the following data:

I learned some very interesting facts from this test. The Turkish ammo is somewhat more energetic than the Ecuadorian and produces energy that is easily in the '06 class. The average deviation is about half as much for the Turkish ammo as is the extreme spread. This tells me that, even though the Turkish ammo is 10 years older, it is more consistent from shot to shot and shoots flatter. Surprisingly, it produced nearly identical results in the shorter barreled rifle, this might be due to the .0005 inch smaller bore on the Turk.

However, and this is a big however, it shoots even lower than the Ecuadorian ammo! This is as I suspected. The first round that I fired struck a full 10 inches below the point of aim. I had to set the elevation on the sights for 1000 meters before it would hit near the center of the target. On the other hand, it was hitting within 1 inch of center in the Spanish Mauser with the sights set at 100 meters.

I have heard rumors of some of the Turkish ammo being "bad". In the 150 or so rounds that I have fired I did not have a single malfunction of any kind. And, as the chronograph shows, it is very consistent. I have seen many hand-loads with premium components that had much more extreme spread than this ammo. Curiously, I found three discarded rounds of the Turkish ammo at the range with a 1951 head-stamp that appeared to have light primer strikes. They functioned through my rifle without a hitch.

In corresponding with other Turk shooters I have heard of this happening quite regularly. Apparently, some of the bolts have cosmolene or other gunk in them softening the primer strike and/or weak firing springs. This combination has caused many of the misfires. This points out the importance of of thoroughly cleaning the weapon before shooting. It never hurts to replace the firing pin spring with a new one as they are relatively cheap.

I was able to center the point-of-impact horizontally by moving the front sight. The Mauser front sight is actually on a band that is soft soldered on a step at the muzzle. The simple expedient of heating with a propane torch and turning the sight slightly brought the horizontal POI to the center of the target and I was able to center the front sight on it's base as well. This left the vertical adjustment still to be dealt with.

I could probably develop a hand-load that would come pretty close to point of aim. Hornady makes a 220 grain spitzer that might do the trick, but each bullet costs more than a surplus loaded round thereby negating one of the chief purposes of shooting this rifle, cheap ammo. Another solution is to modify the sights. A set of more readily seen sights seems to me to be the best alternative as this would provide more "hit-ability". Of course the purists would deride that idea as altering the gun from the original. My response to that is that I would rather have a weapon that is modified and works rather than a completely original one that is barely shootable. An accurate rifle is much more interesting to me but, to each his own.

You've got to love those gun-shows! I came across a Redfield peep sight for the Mauser at a fairly reasonable price. This is a sturdy sight that is micrometer adjustable for both windage and elevation. It has big coin-slotted adjustment screws for easy adjustments and an adjustable scale on the side for setting the zero. Drilling and tapping two screws and inletting the stock were all that was required for the installation. This arrangement gives me a full 33" of sight radius compared to 25" of the original!

Now I had the useless original rear sight still sitting on the barrel.  I decided not to remove  the rear sight base completely. The sight base is soldered to the barrel and removal  involves heating the barrel with a torch to melt the solder and driving the base off the barrel with a mallet. You are then left with a large patch of soldered barrel exposed, unsightly at best. Instead I simply disassembled and removed the rear sight, ramp and spring. This left the base intact should I have a need in the future to return it to its original configuration. The base does not interfere with the sight picture at all and is fairly unobtrusive and, since the upper hand-guard is held down by a screw on the base, I can also continue to use it.

Before removing the rear sight I used it to roughly align the peep sight. Sighting down the three sights in tandem, I adjusted the peep to come into alignment with the existing sights. Back at the range I set the target out at 25 yards for the initial rough sighting in. The first shot hit low and slightly left, pretty much where it was hitting with the original sights. 

After bringing the point-of-aim to coincide with the point-of-impact  it was nice being able to actually hit where I was aiming. I sighted it in to hit about 2" high at 100 yards after studying the ballistics tables in the Sierra reloading manual for 8mm bullet. Their 150gr  bullet starting at 2900 fps with a 200 yd zero is 1.72 inches high at 100 yards and 7.71 inches low at 300 yards. I figure that I am using a much more streamlined military bullet at slightly higher velocity hence slightly flatter shooting. I should be able to hold right-on out to 300 yards or so with reasonable results. This was confirmed by my being able to quite easily hit a 5-gallon bucket at 250 yards shooting offhand. Sure, I am no Quigley but, then again, this isn't a Sharps either!

Changing the rear sight certainly made a big difference in this rifle. I can actually see the sights now and am able to hit out to fairly long range with it. When I bring the rifle up to the shoulder quickly, I am looking right through the sights. These sights have turned this 60+ year old piece into a useable rifle that is a pleasure to shoot.