Like Joe says, you need to get the rifle in your hands, before you can do anything.

The bore is usually marked under the forearm (usually 7.7 or .303) but, the groove has to be measured, it can run anywhere from about .314 to .321. 

The chamber necks and throats are very long and tapered so, you need to know what you have to make your cartridges.

Please come back to us when you know more about it. A chamber cast helps but, it can be done w/o one.

Frank

I certainly wouldn't order anything until I slugged the bore. The barrel is marked 7.6 mm which was supposed to be the bore diameter before rifling.
My question was; it is reasonable to load fixed ammo in one of these w/o using SR bullets, but of course using correctly sized conventional slugs?
Thanks for your input,
Mike.


Quote:

I think that a chamber cast is also quite important. especially if it showed the cares mouth and the beginning of the rifling.
   While the stop-ring certainly keeps and uncrimped bullet from dropping into the case at all I am convinced it also performs another function.

German SR bullets were usually ordered from large bullet swaging firms who provided them in dead soft pure lead.  The old vintage german bullet catalogues list hundreds of various configurations in all the different bore sizes.  One of the things I have noted is that the length of the "stop-ring" band will vary even in bullets that other wise are identical.   

My guess is that the distance from the case mouth of a standard trimmed length case to (or into) the tapering leade into the actual rifling was filled with that band so the bullet was introduced into the rifling without getting canted. It's almost like the beginning of "breech-seating" a bullet, as our American Schuetzen artists perfected if.  I have had moulds made  for a couple my Euro-schuetzens that allow the action of my rifle to force the front edge of the SR into the rifling and the diameter of the SR to fill the grooves. While I have not been able to really shoot them enough in the past few years (for medical reasons) to really test it out.   

ASSRA off-hand shooters of SR bullets out of their GI souvenirs did not have great success with the one or two bullet molds commonly available so they mostly just breech seated their standard bullets in the appropriated bore diameter.  with more folk producing custom made molds for specific rifles more common now.   

These rifles were designed for offhand matches and at a wider (often shorter) range of distances than our standard 200 yards as Joe pointed out.  So shooting them in our bench-rest matches can present problems due to stock design.  and the ubiquitous martini-type actions can be difficult to breech seat bullets in with standard American techniques.

Quote:
One day at a local 300yd match, I was knocking the center out of the target until cloud cover came in I foolishly changed my settings.  Bullet being used for fixed cartridge in the Aydt was the Hudson 375292 375272 tapered (.372 and .382)

Joe - typo, my  error.  The Ideal 375272.  I was seating them to the 2nd 0.372 band and crimping them on that band. This was before I got my stop ring mold and thought they would work in the Aydt, which they did

I’ve got a sweet little JP Sauer in 8.15 and use a stop ring mould from Buffalo Arms. Pan lubed it shoots just fine. Easy to load.  Just finger press the bullet down in the case.

the aydt action is the easiest to use our "conventional breech seating" with carefully fitted non-SR bullets since it a real simple to use a push seater---its just straight in.   
It's the various martini-type actions that are difficult to make a workable breech seating tool for---that is where a properly fitted and designed SR bullet can really work.

But always these are rifles designed for offhand shooting,  they can be used off the bench but because of the stock design it takes some creative adaptations of bench equipment.