[JOHN B MCGUIRE]

If you have any of the yugo ammo with the 1950's head stamp I highly recommend to not use it in a 1919.

I put five rds in a belt after headspacing the gun and the second shot exploded making the topcover look like a rainbow.

If you have one of my barrels don't call me if you have trouble with this ammo.

My barrels are chambered for standard 8mm.

It seems the the bullet ogive is too long on this ammo.

I really don't know the total problem and am not going to waste my time trying to find out.

I do have 6000 rds of the crap from century and would like to sell it to someone.


I have not had any problem with the Romanian steel case.

John McGuire

 

[striker754]

who all has had luck with the 50's yugo ammo? I just got 2400 rounds of it.

 

[striker754]

did some measuring, the bullet length from the case to the end of the bullet tip is the same. the yugo cases are approximately .03-.04 inches longer than the romy cases.

This help solve the problem? any fix?

 

[DOUBLE8]

Message sent John, im interested in it.

 

[RICKI]

FREEBORE...Your throating reamer is too short..The ogive is hitting the lands causing high initial chamber pressure..I would like to see all 8mm. barrels freebored 1/2 to 1 inch for safety reasons..Please consider freeboring..Thankyou..

 

[SlugCatcher]

This stuffs garbage even in my K98................

 

[acmech]

Someone here has posted shooting 12k rnds or so of it with no problems didn't they? I wonder what other variables there might be. I just got a ammunition store barrel this week and I will try it Monday, I will post the results as soon as I can. Due to time constraints I only plan to shoot 220 rnds of yugo and 50 romanian. My last trip to the range with my other 8mm barrel has steel romanian cases splitting (vertical below the shoulder) as well as the yugo.

 

[striker754]

ricki, what is freeboring and how can you tell if you need it?

 

[Dave B - Great Lakes Arms]

John, This is VERY troubling to me. So you are saying I now have two of your $225 barrels that I cannot use with my 40,000 rounds of Yugo I have sitting here? You never mentioned this when you sold the barrels. A person who used to post by the name of SImon on this board had the very same problem. Said he chamberd his chrome lined barrels for Turkish and to not use the Yugo or the Romanian.
This has me very concerned.
Apparently this is the same problem that every person that tries to make a new barrel encounters, you would think we could learn from some mistakes.

I have shot well over 40,000 rounds of the so called "Yugo crap" so far, much of it out of the MG34 barrels you converted for me and Mark Genovese, one of the authors from Small Arms Review, has something like well over 100,000 of the Yugo fired in his Colt 1928 water cooled so I am inclined to think that the problem is with the barrel not the ammo.

If you are serious about this it means I have almost $500 in barrels I cannot use?
Unacceptable.

Guess I'll have to send the barrrels back for a refund because I do not intend to not use this pile of ammo that has been working just fine so far. You are manufacturing a barrel for a militay type gun, you should have done the necessary research to ensure your barrels were safe with all ammunition available in that caliber. You know people will be using surplus and the two largest supplies available right now are Yugo and Romanian. At the very least you should have tested with those two types.

What a lame cop out.
I for one am very disappointed in this post, I have always thought highly of you and this is just sad.
Your absolute declaration of "Too bad" is just utterly disturbing.

 

[Dave B - Great Lakes Arms]

ricki, what is freeboring and how can you tell if you need it?

Freebore is the area immediatly in front of the chamber where the rifling is releived or cut away. This is also called the throat. It gives the bullet room to exit the case mouth and kind of get up to speed a bit before it gets squeezed by the rifling. If you chamber a barrel with the rifling trouching the bullet when the cartridge is loaded you will have EXCESSIVE chamber pressure. One of the very basic principles of barrel manufacture and ammunition loading.

Match grade barrels like a short or shallow throat. Military barrels should have a deep or large throat....especially machine gun barrels.

Absoultely with out a doubt.....The bullet should NOT touch the rifling upon chambering.

The problem we have with these chrome lined barrels is you cannot just free bore the chamber now.

#1 The chrome in the throat area will probably wreck the reamer.

#2 If you can get the throat to cut you now have no chrome in the throat which is where you need it most.

I suspect this is why John wants to wash his hands of this.....he would have to have the chrome removed and then cut the throat and then rechrome them. Could also have a special carbide reamer made to cut the chamer as is....bu-ku bucks.....Bye-Bye any money he hoped to make.

 

[kaotic01]

I would have to agree with Dave B that the Yugo stuff is dirty but I have shot a ton of it now and love the cheap price. I have a ER Shaw barrel and it runs the stuff great. I dont have a 8mm chrome lined barrel from John but I would suspect that this could become a problem for alot of people. I think that first off if you want a barrel that will shoot a variety of ammo brands you need to test the barrel with all of them first before you start a large production line of a specific barrel. Just my 2 cents worth.

 

[acmech]

From what I remember from my reloading days, if you what to see if your barrel will have a problem with the ammo, take a couple of rnds and feed them through with the headspace set to where you want it. Let the bolt slam them home, and then inspect the fat portion of the bullets for rifling marks (where they may just be touching the rifling). If you have none, you will probably be fine, (you might even want to color the bullet black with a sharpie to make the marks easier to see) if there are marks, you have a barrel you can't use with your ammo.

 

[ohioblacksheep]

Hmmm,
Boy this is intresting. This one type of ammo seems to have been a problem in no matters whos barrels its used in. To me it seems like the guys selling the ammo should be warning the guys buying it that its unsafe and may blow up your gun. How come your not chewing them out. Why do you figure a guy who makes a few barrels should do all the R&D on someone else's stuff.

From the sounds of a lot of posts for a while, a lot of guys say the ammo is fine and a lot say its no good. So whos right? and whos wrong? You figure that a barrel builder should be the one to figure it out.!!!! To me it sounds like the ammo should be sold " FOR COMPONENTS ONLY" That way if you use it you'll know there is a risk involved, but they don't want to loose money either. Pretty soon they won't want to try selling any more of this and then there will be other types they won't want to touch.

Guys, were sort of in a crap shoot here. We're trying to shoot cheaply, the dealers are trying to sell it to us cheap and with all of that we need to under stand that we have to take precautions or only buy the good stuff $$$$

Please don't just pick out ONE GUY and throw all the blame on him....Lou

 

[gearlogo]

I'm with Lou, We have both seen this ammo blow up guns. My gun ate turk like crazy. The yugu stuff worked like crap. All the prespec 8mm has it's problems. I'll still shoot it but not in the quality guns. Only in the bar ***** tapco sideplated dirty whore 1919 I brought to bulletfest last year. She's loose enough to take it all.

Romanian ammo is spot on and not that much more expensive. I'd go with the romanian is your risk adverse. If you like to gamble just bring a spare top cover and a BFH.

 

[DOUBLE8]

I shoot every brand 8mm out there, turk, yugo, rommy so on. Some will run untill you hit a different LOT # then its the ammo thats out of spec. If John tried a different Lot of ammo of yugo he might just find that it does run fine as long as the ammo is in spec. I have had this problem with all the different brands 8mm except rommy and thats only cause i dont shoot much of it. I use Johns barrels and use yugo, have not had a problem as of yet. I would bet on the fact its the LOT # john was shooting, not the barrel, it could be the barrel but like i said i have had different Lot # run completely different then the next Lot #.

 

[striker754]

Couple questions:

Is the bullet test listed above a proper way of testing?

What are the proper specs for an 8mm round? Tolerances?

How much $$ to freebore?

 

[acmech]

Couple questions:

Is the bullet test listed above a proper way of testing?

What are the proper specs for an 8mm round? Tolerances?

How much $$ to freebore?

According to what I've read reguarding reloading your own rounds, you want a bullet that nearly touches the rifling and doesn't jump due to a lot of freebore or throat erosion. That will give you an accurate rifle/round combo. If the bullet touches the rifling you/ve seated the round out too far, and will give dangerous pressures. This is what I read years ago on the subject, any time the reloader uses a different bullet, this must be done to account for a different ogive.

These aren't benchrest rifles though.

 

[acmech]

As far as it being bad ammo, I just don't know. The SAME ammo I had problems with were fired in a German g43 the same day with NO problems, except for light primer hits. The cases were splitting regularly for me just below the shoulder. My steel romanian cases were also splitting, and at one click out from lockup using method 2, using method 2 and zero clicks out, the romanian didn't split. Having the headspace set that tight might not be good either.
Here, check out this thread from the archives by my guess about 100k rnds were fired from different barrels with only 3 or so problems not counting light firing pin strikes. http://1919a4.com/NonCGI/Forum1/HTML/007523.html That works out to a .00003 failure rate with "bad" ammo with varying dates of manufacture, but all in the 50's, way less than 1 percent.

Johns barrels are perfect, but this is not a perfect world, and these aren't benchrest rifles which would benefit better from his tight tolerances. This should not be a bash John thread, if you are firing Romanian ammo you won't find a better barrel, but if you intend to shoot yugo, well, you need to speak with him about what you can work out. After sending him pics of the cases, my replacement was supposed to be sent out the day after Memorial day. Well since then, I ordered and received a ammunition store barrel and don't have a replacement yet. Thats fine I get busy to, but I was expecting it a little sooner, and now I don't want a barrel I can't shoot yugo in. Other than what may have been caused from an oversize chamber I did not have one problem with the ammo. About 400 rnds were fired with no major problems, just the cases splitting on both romy and yugo.

 

[jarhead]

According to what I've read reguarding reloading your own rounds, you want a bullet that nearly touches the rifling and doesn't jump due to a lot of freebore or throat erosion. That will give you an accurate rifle/round combo. If the bullet touches the rifling you/ve seated the round out too far, and will give dangerous pressures. This is what I read years ago on the subject, any time the reloader uses a different bullet, this must be done to account for a different ogive.

These aren't benchrest rifles though.

the headspace is the distance between sholder of the cartrige (the angled part of the case just below the bullet) and the sholder of the chamber if this space is too wide the blow of the fireing pin drives the cartage farther in the chamber and away from the bolt face,when the powder ignights the thinner front of the case expands and grips the inside of the chamber as the preshure builds (this hapens supper fast,before the bullit starts to move)the unsuported rear portion of the case is pushed to the rear till it contacts the bolt face streching the case .

If this streching of the case is too much the case will rupture or seperate.

hope this helps

 

[acmech]

the headspace is the distance between sholder of the cartrige (the angled part of the case just below the bullet) and the sholder of the chamber if this space is too wide the blow of the fireing pin drives the cartage farther in the chamber and away from the bolt face,when the powder ignights the thinner front of the case expands and grips the inside of the chamber as the preshure builds (this hapens supper fast,before the bullit starts to move)the unsuported rear portion of the case is pushed to the rear till it contacts the bolt face streching the case .

If this streching of the case is too much the case will rupture or seperate.

hope this helps

This was not a answer to a headspace question, its assuming the headspace is correct, its to account for the distance from the bullet to the start of the rifling. I know a guy who had a russian rifle with bad throat erosion. He got terrible accuracy with surplus ammo, but when he reloaded and seated the bullets out a lot farther (about .150 from what I remember) so they nearly touched the rifling and the bullet had less distance to "jump" the gun was good enough for him to use in whatever competition he shot in.