Mule Deer,
Fwiw, after reading your original post, I called C.E. Harris (who has forgotten more about firearms & loading than most of us here will ever know) & asked him about 2 3/4" shells in 65mm chambers.
His comment was, "Well, he may get away with that & he may well lose some fingers, too. Bad plan, in my opinion, as most of those old Euro barrels are thin & many of them are unsafe with any modern shells."
Reference: the fellow who lost his left hand to an exploding shotgun barrel, I'm going by what the ER doc said that caused the injury.
As for me, I'll be cautious & have all antique firearms CAREFULLY inspected by a competent smith before firing them.
(Fyi, I started collecting hammer combination guns of various sorts in 1969.)
Note: I have a "reissued for WWI" 1888 Commission Rifle that has the "S-marked chamber". Nonetheless, it was NOT re-bored to the standard 7.9x57mm (.323 bore) size. = It shoots .320 PBCB using 10 grains of Red Dot @ 1400FPS beautifully.
just my OPINION, tex
tex,
Have you ever slugged the bore of that '88? I had an unaltered one that had a "generous" diameter bore and throat that slugged to .320. I loaded for it with 32 Special .321 170gr bullets and a light H380 and light 4320 load, giving about 2,350-2,400 fps. A lot of these older guns had widely varying bores from gun to gun. Most of my "J" bore guns had .320 and .321 bores, and back when .318 bullets were unknown on this side of the pond I loaded the .321 32 Spl bullets in the generous bores. I never saw any pressure problems, never blew anything up, bulged a barrel, or had extraction problems. As a matter of fact, I got far better accuracy with the .321 bullets than I could achieve, once we could get and shoot the .318s, than I got with the smaller pills.
Of course the regulation was a bit skewed with the use of the lighter bullets, but they got me shooting when ammo and bullets were made from unobtainium. Stoeger could supply "proper" ammo, but I couldn't afford DWM or RWS ammo from them back then. Money for gas to get me and my buddies 200-300 miles out hunting in Nevada's vastness was the top priority. Next in priority was gas back home.
