Source for 7mm Solids

Just pull bullets from spanish or south american surplus military ammunition.

HWL

chuck degone said:

The bullet material that is prohibited from being used in handguns is brass, all copper bullets are quite legal. If you have questions I'd suggest calling Lehigh Defense, they produce bullets and loaded ammo with all copper bullets in many popular handgun rounds. They also produce all brass bullets for long guns.

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Where you get 7x57mm(.275 Rigby) Handguns? Please let us know soonest.....

IvW said:

Where you get 7x57mm(.275 Rigby) Handguns? Please let us know soonest.....

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Technically SSK will make you a 500 Nitro (possibly larger?) handgun if you so choose or are a masochist...

http://sskindustries.com/encore/

7x57mm(.275 Rigby) not listed....

I ques I better crawl back into my cage....

MGM has it listed!

https://matchgrademachine.com/chambers-list/

I am sure the OP is looking for rifle bullets...of which the legality is not in question

IvW said:

I am sure the OP is looking for rifle bullets...of which the legality is not in question

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I made my "6,5x54 Mannlicher-Schoenauer W.D.M. Bell 160 gr FMJ Elephant cartridges" by pulling 160 gr FMJ from surplus 6,5x52 Carcano rounds....

Works fine.....on paper!



HWL

HWL said:

Just pull bullets from spanish or south american surplus military ammunition.

HWL

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Yes, pulling down older ammo will probably be the best option. Even old DWM ammo could be a source. However, you'll probably have to "shake the bushes" a bit and visit some gun shows to find it. Finding a modern, new production FMJ RN type solid is not likely.

I think the 173 gr. solid RN, as loaded around the turn of the century and used by the likes of WDM Bell, would be the type. I just found a few rounds of the old stuff and pulled one down to get a bullet for testing. I could have just shot it in my M95 but really don't trust ammo that old plus it probably has corrosive primers. I think the original 173 gr 7mm ammo yielded a muzzle vel of about 2300. The round I pulled down had a charge of 40 grains of unknown? It was extruded and looked like some of the mil surp powders I've seen.

Here's a couple pics of a 7mm DWM cartridge with the 173 gr FMJ RN.

Bell wrote about the reliability of the DWM 7mm Mauser FMJ RN ammo and how he much preferred it to other less reliable types available to him at the time. He really loved the 318 but lamented the poor quality of the ammo available for it- stating it had a failure-to-fire rate of 3 out of 10. Shooting to get rid of that bad 318 ammo led to the famous story about his shooting passing cormorants on the wing as witnessed by two strangers who thought he was using a shotgun.

My intentions for testing one of these bullets is out of curiosity about Bell's elephant hunting history. I think with the correct original 173 grain bullet at 2200-2300 fps into a known media, I can get an idea about his experiences using it for so many of those elephants. Now I just have to gather up enough phone books and wait for the weather to warm a little.

Pretty good data/info about the 7mm Mauser- 7x57 here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7×57mm_Mauser

IvW said:

Where you get 7x57mm(.275 Rigby) Handguns? Please let us know soonest.....

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I have a TC Encore in 7x57 from the custom shop. Plus factory barrels are available in 7-08. Plus the XP100 style guns can be had in a also sorts of chamberings.

Midway used to carry the Woodleigh Hydro in 7 mm, they are not cheap.

Peregrine was mentioned. Here is their .284 solids, either brass or copper. It appears they may no longer sell in the US.
https://besthuntingbullets.com/831-7mm-284

....continuation of this thread that segued into discussion of Bell's 7x57 "elephant" bullets.

I was finally able to scrounge up enough phone books to do the test today. I pulled one 173 gr nickeled FMJ roundnose bullet from an old military FMJ cartridge. Re- loaded with modern brass, powder and primer to about 2300 fps muzzle vel to simulate a close range (elephant) impact velocity. I used an M1895 Mauser 7x57 for the test. DWM 173 gr 7mm bullet/ammo at this velocity is what Bell used and wrote about.

I used the same 100% water saturated bundled phone books in a trough as the primary test media as I always do for consistency and comparison of results. Behind the 1st 4" bundle, I placed a 1 3/4" wood board to simulate bone. At the end of the trough I place a dry sand "stopper"... just in case. Total length of media for this test was 42" I learned the hard way that certain bullets may not stop in that length no matter how tough this media is. Normal maximum penetration of most all expanding bullets like TSXs and A Frames at normal impact velocities and of common weights from the 270 cals through 458 caliber is about 20". I learned that a 458 cal monolithic flat point of good design, like a GS Custom
Flat Point Solid, at about 2200 fps will not stop in over 45" of this test media.

I lined up the bore so the bullet travel axis would be in low center alignment with the media axis. The bullet penetrated in a perfectly straight line up until about the 25" mark. At that point it began turning sideways and traveled sideways (not tumbling) until it came to rest about 3" into the dry sand "stopper" at the end of the trough. The distance of the turn to sideways was approx. 5" of travel. The probable cause of the instability and yaw sideways was loss of rotational/gyroscopic stability due to friction. From the 5" zone of its directional veer off axis, it continued in more or less a straight line and ended up sideways in the sand. Similar tests of modern spire point FMJs in this same media show a slightly different reaction. Their track after instability begins is noticeably curved and tends to have a much greater dispersal from the flight line axis- often times exiting the trough box or media all together.

The bullet shows some scuffing/abrasion of the nickel plating from it's travel through the bore, the media and shows sand blast pitting on one side from contact with the dry sand. That indicates the bullet was not spinning when it contacted the sand. The bullet's track print through the layers of paper show it did not tumbler once it went unstable and veered off course. It simply yawed sideways and stayed that way for the rest of its penetration and was laying sideways in the sand about 2-3" off axis from it's original path of travel. The bullet was slightly bent at about its midpoint. I would guess that occurred immediately after going unstable at the 25" mark as that would have been the zone of maximum dynamic stress on the bullet. Total penetration of this bullet approx. 40".

Some pics of subject cartridge and bullet, test media trough, recovered bullet and hand sketched diagram of results.