Poll - M98 rebarrel - 7x57 Mauser or 7x64 Brenneke?

[dgfavor]

If bullet makers made bullets that really made me happy in .257, a 257 Roberts would 100% be in my future, LOL. Even 6.5 - which does have a fairly nice selection of bulelts, to be fair, but 7mm just has the better and broader selection of bullets that @NorthIdahoDude would be happy take hunting.

I shot the 133gr .257 Bergers in my Mauser 98 25-06 build (1:8 twist PacNor barrel) - killed paper and made noise on steel really well. Currently lobbing .257 Hammer HHTs 120gr - also killing paper and ringing steel well.
Fun gun and was a fun build.

 

[left hunter]

7x57 gets my vote but have it stamped .275 on the barrel and turn your nose up at your fellow hunters when they look confused as to what you are carrying

 

[NorthIdahoDude]

7x57 gets my vote but have it stamped .275 on the barrel and turn your nose up at your fellow hunters when they look confused as to what you are carrying

I'm pretty sure everyone has ever hunted with me is confused about me for more things than just what I'm carrying, hahahaha.

 

[NorthIdahoDude]

But yeah, of all the things I've actually tried, the 7x57 feeds like it was made for the gun, everything else feeds like it works good enough for govt work.

Now that I think about it, the case dimensions are close enough, I bet if I took some 06 brass, mashed it through the 7x57 die till it just touched the shoulder, and then seated some dummy bullets, I could get so close an approximation of 7x64 as to be able to test it 'for sure for sure'...

Well, that worked. Fed some 270 brass through the 7x57 die, just far enough to touch the shoulder. As far as I can tell with calipers, I am within .002 of the body diameter dimensions of a 7x64, just borderline oversize on the case head area. With 270 brass, the shoulder is obviously slightly farther back than a real x64, so I sacrificed one of my few pieces of 280 brass to do the same trick, and rotated that through each position in the magazine just to see.

Five of them fit comfortably in the magazine, and I would say they feed 100% as good, possibly better than the 7x57 does...

Damn... Part of me was hoping they wouldn't feed as great as 7x57, and that would help make a decision...

 

[Chris in TN]

If I didn't hunt elk and maybe someday another moose, I'd be 257 Roberts and never look back.

To be fair, the logical part of my brain says "dude, if a 140 7mm will cut through an elk like a hot knife through butter, and you know for a fact it will, then you know a 120 or so grain .257 is such a small step down as to not matter, right?" But then, the irrational side of my brain (which seems to be where all the gun-nuttery lives) keeps saying "dude, you want at least 140 or more grains of AccuBond or 160 or more grains of ELD-X/M if you gonna go hunt elk and maybe someday another moose".

Just remember you're on the forum where people shoot moose with .22cm.

About the only thing stopping me from a 7x57 AI is the fact I can fit 5 x 7x57 in the mag, but only 4 x the AI version. Otherwise, that'd put me at around 65.5 grains of H20 capacity (I get 61 in plain jane PPU and Norma 7x57 brass), and that would do everything a 284 Win would do, and be so close to a 280 or 7x64, I'd not care in the slighest about the difference.

So.....just for whatever it's worth.....in 35 years of big game hunting I have fired 4 shots maybe 3 times. Only one of those was at a single deer, the rest was at 2-3 different animals. I don't even check magazine capacity when looking at new rifles anymore. If it holds 2 or more, that's fine. I put buttstock shellholders on literally everything anyway. Pretty often I'll go hunting here at home with one round, maybe two, in the rifle, and the usual 3-4 in the butt holder.

I guess my point is, I'd go AI. And I wouldn't do it for the extra case capacity - I'd honestly rather have maybe 7-08 sized case myself - I just like how the AI cases don't stretch much.

 

[NorthIdahoDude]

Just remember you're on the forum where people shoot moose with .22cm.

And bow's and arrows to boot (which I do/have done myself). To be fair, I am 100% on board with the reality that killing an animal is caused by wounding the animal, not by ft-lbs or FPS, etc.

But personally, I want my bullet to go through several feet of critter like a hot knife through butter, destroying whatever organs it comes in contact with along the way, and exit to leave a blood trail a blind man could follow, and have enough penetration that I don't have to think much/at all about what angle I'm sending the bullet into yee olde critter from. My confidence that a 77 TMK out of a 22CM is gonna do that is pretty low, if I'm being honest, LOL, so I hunt with what makes me confident.

So.....just for whatever it's worth.....in 35 years of big game hunting I have fired 4 shots maybe 3 times. Only one of those was at a single deer, the rest was at 2-3 different animals. I don't even check magazine capacity when looking at new rifles anymore. If it holds 2 or more, that's fine. I put buttstock shellholders on literally everything anyway. Pretty often I'll go hunting here at home with one round, maybe two, in the rifle, and the usual 3-4 in the butt holder.

I guess my point is, I'd go AI. And I wouldn't do it for the extra case capacity - I'd honestly rather have maybe 7-08 sized case myself - I just like how the AI cases don't stretch much.

Fair points. That said though, I am still feeling the plain old 7x57 would be preferable from my view. Besides the extra rounds in the mag, the non-AI feeds much better, doesn't cost me $100+ for a FL die (if I can even find one), can trade brass with my 7x57 Tikka, etc.

And I don't disagree with you on round count - I've never had any normal hunting situation where I sent more than 2, and most of my hunting since I gave my up my old 303 British (10 rounds in the mag, LOL), has been with a Tikka with a 3x mag and I've never been hampered by it.

But... since I could have 5 in the mag with this gun, I therefore want 5 in the mag with this gun, LOL. (see my earlier comments about how my gun-nuttery doesn't come from the rational side of my brain).

ETA: Oh, and per your comment on the 7mm-08 - if that fed nicer in the long action, I'd strongly consider it. I had a 7mm-08 Tikka for a while, 1000% loved the cartridge (that just wasn't the most accurate rifle Tikka ever made, so down the road it went). I have an Aero/Stag arms bolt action that takes Savage barrels that's going to get a 7mm-08 barrel in the not too distant future.

 

[NorthIdahoDude]

So as I wake up this AM, I think I am back to leaning towards the 7x57.

Messing with QuickLoad, the 3.39 ish max OAL for mag length, impacts the usable case capacity of the 7x64 a lot more than I had imagined it would (especially with the long/heavy/high BC bullets). To the point that with the powders I have on hand, I'm really only likely to get 50-60 FPS more out of the 7x64 over the 7x57, and I'm going to burn a fair bit more powder/make more recoil to do it.

Still ruminating/likely to change my mind a few times before it's over, but that's my current mood.

 

[JDeanP]

Obviously, pictures of the rifles in it’s current state will only help us cast our votes…who doesn’t love more Mauser pictures?

 

[NorthIdahoDude]

Obviously, pictures of the rifles in it’s current state will only help us cast our votes…who doesn’t love more Mauser pictures?

She's in pieces already currently, but here's an older pic of it. It was/is a 338-06 (rebored by Jes about 10 years ago) when this pic was taken 4 or 5 years ago.

Backstory:

The gun started life as a 30-06, belonged to a friend of mine's dad, who bought it brand new and shot it, a lot, and hunted a little. Later, it belonged to the friend of mine, who had it cut down to 20 inches and carried it for many years as his bear defense gun in the Canadian wilderness (he did a lot of timber cruising and that sort of thing in northern BC when he was younger). He carried it open sights/no scope, with 220 Hornady RN's in it. He had a habit of carrying it un-slung, with his right hand wrapped around the action, so much so that the finish on the floor plate and the action is worn off where his hand gripped it.

After he got out of that line of work, he picked up a Rem 700 that was more accurate/he liked better, so this was his "bang off 500 or so rounds a year at the range at the steel for fun" gun. At some point, he had all his rifles converted to 3 position safeties after his Rem 700 went bang with the safety on while he was hiking. I was never clear why he thought his Mauser needed 'fixing' in the same way the 700 did, but while he was at it, he figured this one could use a 3 position too, so it got one (not sure make/model, it's basically a Winchester safety).

About 15 or so years ago, he got a wild hair, and was thinking about selling it. I told him if he was gonna sell it, he should only sell it to a friend (me), LOL, so he did. It was about a 2.5 MOA gun (throat was WAAAAAY worn - loose estimates between him and his dad are that it had about 8,000 to 10,000 rounds through it at this point, maybe more). So I sent it off to Jes to get re bored and cut-rifled as a 338-06.

And somehow it didn't shoot much/any better as a 338-06, which puzzled me. One day, while looking at the brass close while loading, I noticed the neck to body wasn't square... TF? About that same time, I got a runnout gauge, and then I figured out why the accuracy was likely always "meh" - the original chamber was cut around .006 or so off-center and slightly not in-line with the bore. I went back and found some old 30-06 brass that was fired in it to check that, and it was off too, by the same amount - so that wasn't anything Jes did, that was native to the gun.

Anyway, 2.5 MOA is not bad for a thick woods gun, and it hucks 180 grain AccuBonds near 2900 FPS, so I set it up kind of like a DGR, and held on to it for sentimental value, shooting maybe 10 rounds a year in it, and telling myself I'd take it hunting in the thick stuff sometimes (which I never did).

In the run up to and during Covid, my friend I got it from got divorced, his Dad, the original owner, died from the Covid vax, and various other "going through some s**t" stuff. He got a little 'shack whacky' as they call it in backwoods BC, and decided he was done with civilization. About a year and a half ago, after much talking about it for a year or two, he burned his cell phone, gave away all his stuff, and headed up into the mountains to go live like Grizzy Adams for the rest of his days. I tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn't hear it, and .... I haven't heard from him since.

I don't know for sure what happened to him, but if he really did what he was planning to do (and he's he is the kind that would), then I doubt he survived the winter. And if he did survive the winter and came back to civilization, and didn't call me, I'ma punch him if I ever see him again, LOL. But there's usually 6 to 8 weeks a year where he's at with temps below 0 F (sometimes WAY below - I've seen it hit -46 F (and C, LOL) when I was living up there). So without some sembalance of a cabin and a wood stove (he had a wall tent and one of those wall-tent stoves was all), I have no clue how he could have made it; it would damn sure kill me, anyway.

Anyway... Sooo... that's the history, and with him being (I presume) dead and gone, and I've always loved the gun, here I am getting it rebuilt/rebarreled so I can put it back into real rotation instead of just leaving it as a safe-queen.