Problem solving oversized C96 broomhandle brass

If you are familiar with the C96 broomhandle, you may well be aware that a very high percentage of these historic guns have an unusual problem. That problem is that many well used guns will have a horribly oversized chamber – but may have an OK bore.

This comes about generally because the gun itself is pretty hard to take apart and sometime during the life of the firearm somebody decided to clean the gun, not by disassembling it – and cleaning it from the chamber – but rather they just stuck a cleaning rod or patch down the bore.  If the gun had been shooting corrosive ammo, then predictably enough, this approach means that the bore may be OK, but the chamber will be rotted all to heck.

You know you have that situation when you look at your fired cases.  They will be oversized in the body and the neck of a fire case will be at least .318 - often much more.

The good news is that I have a quantity of special brass that has a lot more thickness in the neck area than the standard brass.  This means that, if you expand your brass with a 308 expander ball – and seat a normal C96 bullet into the neck – you will end-up with brass that sits properly in your oversized chamber, and shoots many times better than if you had just used standard SAAMI spec 7.63x25 brass – or commercial steel case  surplus loaded ammo.  Generally, the difference that this makes to your accuracy is night and day.  Using this special oversized brass also can generally solve the situation, if your gun has headspacing problems.

There are also other C 96 guns that have both rotted out chambers and barrels.  If that is your situation, then the answer is to obtain the brass I'm selling here – and expand it in your sizing die using a 311 expander ball. You then seat .311 bullets – and this makes a huge difference, in relation to getting the best out of your oversized bore.

Obviously, if you're doing this type of specialized reloading you need to start well below normal loadings, but heck wouldn't you do that anyway?  This brass is thicker in both the neck and shoulder areas and so we'll have a bit less internal volume. That's why you would adjust your powder loads down by 5 to 15%.

Rounds made-up this way will not chamber any C96 that doesn't have an oversize chamber so as far as I can see there is no risk that someone will run a C96 with oversized loads of this type.  Any competent reloader will know to mark their loads anyway.

Available for $120 per 100