Necked down 9mm rifle cartridge

[johnwilliamson062]

Was running through some ideas today and thought of something odd. I was wondering if there are any rifle cartridges based on pistol cases, specifically the 9mm. Any other would be interesting. Maybe just rifle cases that would fit in a 9mm or 45 ACP magazine well and use the same bolt face.

[Rob62]

Well this kinda falls in line with your question.

What about the .357 SIG ? Its a necked down .40 S&W case TO 9mm (.355)

I guess someone could neck down a 9mm Para case to....well I don't know what....9mm is pretty small already. (Maybe .25 ?!)

Regards,

Rob

[taylorce1]

You could do it but what would you gain? Both cases are pretty short already, it would be tough to get enough neck to hold a bullet if you necked them down a lot. Then the limiting factr is going to be the magazine, you couldn't use long spitzer bullets.

The .45 ACP is just a shortened and necked up .30-06 anyway.

[tahunua001]

22TCM. it is made by necking down 223 brass but it uses everything the 9mm uses. I don't know if anyone's making a 22tcm upper yet but armscor(rock river arms/citadel) is currently making 22TCM 1911s(dual caliber 22tcm/9mm) and a little bolt action carbine.

[kozak6]

Sure, .22 BOZ.

Something similar is the .22 Reed Express. It's based on the 7.62 Tok case instead. Not far off from the 5.7x28.

A sabot load for the 9mm might prove similarly entertaining, .223 Timbs style.

[Jimro]

Not a lot of "rifle" rounds built off of pistol cases, although you can convert a Mauser to shoot rounds based on the 45 ACP very easily. The strong lockup (even with a small ring Mauser) will handle pressures up to 460 Rowland levels easily. If you want a bottlenecked round you could go with the 400 Corbon, nothing more than 45 ACP necked down to 40 cal. Duplicates the ballistics of the 10mm Auto nicely.

The original 9x19 was created by necking UP and shortening the 7.65x21 cartridge because when the US military tested the original C96 Broomhandle Mauser the most common complaint was "caliber too small."

Generally rifles operate at higher pressures than pistols, so you run into brass strength issues quickly.

Jimro

[44 AMP]

I guess someone could neck down a 9mm Para case to....well I don't know what....9mm is pretty small already. (Maybe .25 ?!)

How about .30?

The 7.65mm Luger (.30 Luger) was introduced in 1900. According to some of my old books, the German Army balked at adopting the Luger pistol in this small caliber. They wanted something bigger. The .30m Luger was opened up to .35 cal (9mm), which satisfied the German Army, and the rest, is history.

According to an old Cartridges of the World, there is .001" difference in the case length between the .30 and 9mm Luger.

[Jim Watson]

The Army tested the 1900 Luger in 7.65x21. The C96 Broomhandle is 7.63x25. I am sure the Army looked at it but they did not buy a thousand for field trials.

The 7.65 Luger may only be .001" longer OAL than 9mm P (.006" by SAAMI), but the case length is 2mm longer (.096" in American money.)

The first customer for 9mm was the German Navy in 1904. It took the German Army until 1908 to catch on. Not unusual. In the 19th and early 20th century the navies of the world were the leaders in military technology. If you can afford warships, the latest in small arms is not a big step.

The US Army shot some 9mms in 1903 for comparison with the 7.65.
But they really had their mind made up to go back to .45 and the next year Thompson and LaGarde did the tests that the brass could interpret to show they needed a bigbore.

[Scorch]

I have seen 3 wildcat cartridges based on the 9X19 case, .17, .20, and .22. They were all pretty unimpressive, you don't have a lot of powder propelling the bullets. But if you wanted a super-short CF case, it would work.

[Claude Clay]

cz 52 is a 9mm necked down to a 30. in its sub-gun loading it pushes a 85gr bullet at ~1500 fps.
i'm working on a 357 necked to a 30 on a Blackhawk frame. accuracy right now is not great; 4" at 25 yards going 1280 fps. my projection is 110gr at 1450 fps.

[James K]

It seems silly to say it in light of history, but Georg goofed. When the German military told him that 7.65mm was too small, they mentioned 9mm. But at that point, he knew only of cartridges that were supported on the rim or on the shoulder, so he first tried necking up the 7.65mm cartridge but leaving a shoulder for case support. That didn't work as there was simply not enough shoulder. Then he hit on the idea of supporting the case on the case mouth, one of the great ideas in handgun design.

But instead of going to a bigger caliber and using a straight case, Luger decided to keep 9mm*, which meant that the case had to be tapered, and that was a mistake. The Luger pistol worked OK with the tapered case, but other guns, especially SMGs with long magazines, have had problems ever since.

After John Browning, who had had to go to a semi-rimmed case for support while getting the rounds to feed through a magazine, saw or heard of Luger's idea of support on the case mouth, he went to that system (in the .380 and .45 ACP) and never looked back. But he was smart enough to make those rounds straight case, reducing feed problems.

*Probably because that was what the military mentioned, and in the Germany of Georg Luger's day, what the military wanted, the military got. Plus of course, the normal desire to satisfy a customer in position to award a huge contract.

Jim

[Jim Watson]

Scorch, I remember the .22 Goldstein Luger of the 1960s or 70s.

Gee, Claude, the last CZ 52 I saw was in 7.62x25 same as Russian only supposedly hotter, which is the same as Mauser only hotter still. No 9mm involved.

Ackley showed two or three versions of .30x.357. Good luck.
And read about the .30 Streaker. I think that is what they called the .30 Herrett shortened enough to fit a Blackhawk cylinder.

Interesting thought, Jim. Do you think a straight walled 9.3x19 would have been a better round in the long run?

[Jimro]

Well, the 9x18 Mak uses a .365 caliber bullet, so it really is a 9.3x18. It kills people dead, but doesn't have a stellar reputation for doing so.

Jimro

[Jim Watson]

But something like a 130 grain (8.5 gram) 9.3mm bullet at 1040 fps from a locked breech would be an entirely different proposition from a blowback Makarov.

But I've been a fan of the 9.8mm Colt ever since I first read about it.

[603Country]

Seems like I just read an article about the 22 Jet and its minor resurgence. They showed how to neck down a 357 Mag case for the 22 Jet. Looks like a pretty decent tiny little varmint cartridge, with a 40 gr bullet at 3000 fps.

[Gunplummer]

7.62x25 is standard. The submachinegun ammo is not hotter. The 7.63 Mauser is a different round, both in power and dimensions. I have used 7.63 ammo in Russian pistols and the recoil spring is usually strong enough to reform the case when loading. The problem is the recoil spring is usually too strong in Russian pistols to allow the low pressure mauser round to extract properly. The two rounds look really close, but I would not advise shooting 7.62x25 ammo in a Broomhandle Mauser. There is more to that .30 Luger story. Something about the Treaty at the end of WWI and Germany chambering 9mm guns.

[44 AMP]

There is more to that .30 Luger story. Something about the Treaty at the end of WWI and Germany chambering 9mm guns.

Not sure if it was the Versailles treaty or some other restriction put in place afterward (or at the same time) but after WW I, Germany was not allowed to sell 9mm guns to anyone else (German police/military only) and the 9mm guns were only allowed to have 4" (I think 100mm was the number chosen) barrels.

The "no sale of 9mm" was another of the measures intended to punish Germany for starting (and losing) WWI. The French were pretty upset with Germany (and not without reason). Being the dominant member writing the treaty, they put in a lot of things to ensure Germany would not be a threat to them again. Huge war reparations, confiscation of Germany gold reserve, physical occupation of industrial plants (for many years after the war), no offensive weapons (tanks, bombers, submarines, etc), and other things.
Like a lot of other French ideas in the 20th century, things didn't turn out the way the French planned....

Not allowing 9mms to be sold to others meant that Germany's economy could not benefit from any of the 9mm production capability. This is why American Eagle Lugers (sold in the 1920s) are all 7.65mm, unless they have been rebarreled since.

[Jim Watson]

Like a lot of other French ideas in the 20th century, things didn't turn out the way the French planned....

If the Allies had cut the Germans as much slack in 1918 as they did in 1945, there might not have been a WWII. Ol Schicklgruber would not have had the traction of the punitive Versailles Treaty.

[johnwilliamson062]

30 might not be a bad choice. Looking for something to be used out of a carbine. Maybe just a bad idea to begin with. Putting it way back on the back burner.

[Gunplummer]

There already is a .30 carbine, and in my opinion it was a bad choice.

[Jimro]

But something like a 130 grain (8.5 gram) 9.3mm bullet at 1040 fps from a locked breech would be an entirely different proposition from a blowback Makarov.

But I've been a fan of the 9.8mm Colt ever since I first read about it.

And it would require a firearm capable of handling the pressures levels associated with 40 S&W or 10mm Auto. So you would get a marginal terminal performance upgrade from 9x19, and marginally less performance than 40 S&W.

So I think it that is a non-starter considering that a 125gr pill in 9x19 can make it to the 1040fps level, and 165gr 40 S&W loads reach 1040 fps. Too much overlap to justify a 9.3mm bullet that does the same thing, at least that would be my excuse if I were trying to bring a new cartridge to bear on the market.

Jimro

[Jim Watson]

You miss the chronological point.

If DWM had made the case perfectly straight instead of tapered in 1902, it would have come out about 9.3mm. There never would have been a 9x19.

I was guessing on ballistics, but since the original ribbon spring Luger could handle a 9mm 124 at 1090, I thought it reasonable to run a 9.3mm 130 at the low end of 9mm velocity.

[Boomer58cal]

.357 Maximum neck down to .30? Might be pretty hot out of a rifle barrel.

Boomer