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| | From:  Gunrockets (Original Message) | Sent: 30/04/2005 15:18 |
The French have always marched to a different drum beat and their refusal to acknowledge that there was someone (Mauser) that knew more about guns then their homegrown inventers has left them with an unusual potporri of rifles and cartridges. The names they give to their cartridges are equally confusing. Such as the cartridge of the week. 7.5??? what size is that. Well if you have one of these French rifles do not go about looking for a 7.5 dia bullet. They take the standard .308 bullet. And with that info, if you look at the designation, you wonder why they thought they could reinvent the .308 Win.(7.62x51 NATO). Actually their round came first. In 1924 the Army adopted the 7.5x58 round for their rifles. In 1929 the case was shortened 4mm to become the 7.5x54 MLE 1929C It was the first new cartridge that France developed since the 8mm Lebel adopted in 1886. At that time France was on the cutting edge of the gun and cartridge inventions of the World. Somehow they lost momentum and fell by the side. The cartridge itself is not very powerful, being loaded to approx. 40,000 breech pressure. Or about what the Germans used in their 7x57 Mdl 93 rifles. But the Germans and the Americans were wise enough to up the pressure and performance of their weapons to 60,000 PSI and thereby gained velocity, and range on the older rounds. The round itself is about equal to our 30-40 Krag and only it's modern look makes it fool everyone into believing it is a powerful round. Reloading with a 150 gr bullet you can expect about 2800 fps with a charge of IMR 4895. Which closely matches the .308 Win. and beats the military round all to heck. The rifle itself is built strong enough to hold the pressure but this cartridge is not to be hot rodded. Stay in that area and you will have a fine deer cartridge even thou your hunting buddies will look at you strangly when you show up with the odd two piece stock French rifle. It used to be that ammo was hard to get and that held the price of surplus French rifles down to parts price. If you were smart enough to get in on the ground floor on these less than $100 rifles in new still wrapped in factory cheese cloth condition, then your bet has paid off. Now factory boxer primed ammo and cases is available and lots of berdan surplus shooting ammo is coming in. The only other country that used this designation was the Swiss (another renegade country) Their 7.5x55 Schmidt-Rubin was as strange as the French rifle but at least it was accurate and well made.
Sarge
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| Joe, I can remember a few years ago, Rose's Department Store was selling French MAS 49/56 for 149.99 (simi-auto) and had a hard time selling them. I liked the rifle, but at that time they had only a very limited supply of ammo. a few years latter some one in Shot Gun New was adv to convert to 308 NATO. I wish I had gotten one. |
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I'm sorry but you have to understand the French. They never really knew much about gun making because the only use they had for guns was to either hold them over their heads, or drop them an put their hands up. |
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