M1904 Portuguese Mauser 6.5x58mm

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Re: M1904 Portuguese Mauser 6.5x58mm

Post by bladeracer » 17 Feb 2019, 2:46 pm

BaronBoy wrote:OK, this looks like the only thread dealing with Mannlicher Schonauer rifles that I could find so I will tack my question here hoping someone out there may know the answer.

I have just bought a 1903 6.5 x 54 action (actually one of the Italian made under contract to the Greeks version) with the intention of building a sporting rifle. I am looking to replace the trigger and wonder whether anyone has had experience of doing that and what did they find? From my preliminary investigation, the trigger bears some similarity to a Mauser but I haven't one to compare precisely. Over to you.


Is this your trigger group?
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Re: M1904 Portuguese Mauser 6.5x58mm

Post by Afmelo » 06 Mar 2021, 10:18 am

Hello
I am new in this forum. Introducing myself - Portuguese citizen living in Portugal, collector and mainly benchrest shooter and reloader.
My attention was called to this topic as I have just purchased an original Mauser Vergueiro 1904 in 6,5x58mm. This is a very difficult rifle to find in the original calibre in Europe.
As many of you may be aware of from the original 100.000 ordered by the Portuguese King Carlos I in 1904, about 20.000 have been sold to UDF (South Africa Defense Force) in 1915 and some sent to the Portuguese troops in Mozambique, then under threat of the German forces.
The rifles remaining in Portugal have all been converted to 8x57 Mauser on 1939.
So the difficulty in finding original brass is high and so is the conversion of brass to 6,5x58mm, as the dies are not commonly offered. I have ordered CH4D 6,5x58mm dies which will take about 6 months to deliver.
I have some experience of converting .303 British to 6,5x53R, to use in my Steyer 1896 carbine, a very nice and well made carabine. But no experience yet with the Vergueiro, but no experience at all with the 6,5x58 Mauser.
You mention that 6,5x50 will be able to do the necessary formatting. I have acquired in the meantime a 6,5x57 Mauser FL die and am using it with .270 Win PPU brass. Is there any experience with this die? Should I use the 6,5x50 instead?
By the way, my Vergueiro is the short and lighter version “carabina”, one of the very few ordered within the 100.000 total on 1904!
Your advice will be greatly appreciated.
All the best
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Re: M1904 Portuguese Mauser 6.5x58mm

Post by No1Mk3 » 11 Mar 2021, 2:48 am

G'day Afmelo,
Sorry, didn't see your post until today. Your 6.5x57 die would be good for converting as this was the cartridge that Jose Vergueiro based his design on, but you will still need to finish in a proper die due to the shoulder length difference of 44.5mm in the Mauser to 42.5 in the Vergueiro, the base and shoulder diameters are the same. I can see no advantage to the 6.5x50 as the diameters are smaller, it is a die that would work if you had no other and the case would fireform to your chamber. I actually use a 7x57 (parent case to the 6.5x57) to bump back the shoulder before finishing with a CH4D die. I did lose quite a few cases first time, but believe this was due to overlubrication and not annealing between steps, Cheers.
PS: How about a pic of your carbine? They are almost unknown here.
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Re: M1904 Portuguese Mauser 6.5x58mm

Post by bladeracer » 11 Mar 2021, 9:35 am

Afmelo wrote:Hello
I am new in this forum. Introducing myself - Portuguese citizen living in Portugal, collector and mainly benchrest shooter and reloader.
My attention was called to this topic as I have just purchased an original Mauser Vergueiro 1904 in 6,5x58mm. This is a very difficult rifle to find in the original calibre in Europe.
As many of you may be aware of from the original 100.000 ordered by the Portuguese King Carlos I in 1904, about 20.000 have been sold to UDF (South Africa Defense Force) in 1915 and some sent to the Portuguese troops in Mozambique, then under threat of the German forces.
The rifles remaining in Portugal have all been converted to 8x57 Mauser on 1939.
So the difficulty in finding original brass is high and so is the conversion of brass to 6,5x58mm, as the dies are not commonly offered. I have ordered CH4D 6,5x58mm dies which will take about 6 months to deliver.
I have some experience of converting .303 British to 6,5x53R, to use in my Steyer 1896 carbine, a very nice and well made carabine. But no experience yet with the Vergueiro, but no experience at all with the 6,5x58 Mauser.
You mention that 6,5x50 will be able to do the necessary formatting. I have acquired in the meantime a 6,5x57 Mauser FL die and am using it with .270 Win PPU brass. Is there any experience with this die? Should I use the 6,5x50 instead?
By the way, my Vergueiro is the short and lighter version “carabina”, one of the very few ordered within the 100.000 total on 1904!
Your advice will be greatly appreciated.
All the best


I do the same to make 6.5x53R from .303 brass.
All I want is to size the neck down to hold a 6.5mm bullet, push the shoulder back (and reduce the base if required) to allow the case to chamber. Then I load it and fire-form it to the chamber. After that I just size the neck.

I now have 7x57R so I assume I can use that die to shape the .30-06/.270 case, then just use a 6.5mm die to size the neck, but I haven't made any this way as yet.
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Re: M1904 Portuguese Mauser 6.5x58mm

Post by Afmelo » 22 Sep 2021, 9:46 pm

Sorry for the delay in replying to your posts.
In the meantime I have made some progress on the preparation of brass for my Vergueiro 1904.
It is a fact that they can be transformed from 30.06, 8mm Mauser and .270. For all these cases there is some work involved including annealing and trimming...
But to investigate further possibilities and the use of various dies, I prepared a table with the dimensions of all available brass cartridges in 6.5 mm.
And the result was that likely the best and easiest solution would be to use 6.5x57 Mauser  cartridges, fully available new in Europe from S&B and PPU.
They simply accept a shoulder bump with the 6.5x58 die - I  used the RCBS die - and chamber directly! It is however true that the 6.5x57 is one milimeter shorter than the 6.5x58 - but in fact that does not at all make any difference! And the cartridge fire forms nicely!
So this is what I am currently using!
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Re: M1904 Portuguese Mauser 6.5x58mm

Post by bladeracer » 22 Sep 2021, 11:01 pm

Afmelo wrote:Sorry for the delay in replying to your posts.
In the meantime I have made some progress on the preparation of brass for my Vergueiro 1904.
It is a fact that they can be transformed from 30.06, 8mm Mauser and .270. For all these cases there is some work involved including annealing and trimming...
But to investigate further possibilities and the use of various dies, I prepared a table with the dimensions of all available brass cartridges in 6.5 mm.
And the result was that likely the best and easiest solution would be to use 6.5x57 Mauser  cartridges, fully available new in Europe from S&B and PPU.
They simply accept a shoulder bump with the 6.5x58 die - I  used the RCBS die - and chamber directly! It is however true that the 6.5x57 is one milimeter shorter than the 6.5x58 - but in fact that does not at all make any difference! And the cartridge fire forms nicely!
So this is what I am currently using!


6.5x57mm brass is not so common down here. It's about $4 apiece, compared to .30-06 at 40-cents apiece.
I haven't tried it myself, but if you bump the shoulder of 6.5x55mm back about 50-thou that will probably run just fine. You'd have to run it into a x57mm die to swage the case head down about 10-thou.

This is a fireformed 6.5x58mm from .30-06, and a Norma factory 6.5x55mm.
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Re: M1904 Portuguese Mauser 6.5x58mm

Post by Afmelo » 23 Sep 2021, 3:13 am

I understand that you do not have the 6.5x57 brass availble at a decent price.
Here it is about 57 cents of euro for S&B.
6.5x57 transformed to 6.5x58.jpg
Photo of my brass after a simple passage of the 6.5x58 RCBS die compared to the original military cartridge attached
6.5x57 transformed to 6.5x58.jpg (719.29 KiB) Viewed 5248 times
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Re: M1904 Portuguese Mauser 6.5x58mm

Post by bladeracer » 23 Sep 2021, 8:09 am

Afmelo wrote:I understand that you do not have the 6.5x57 brass availble at a decent price.
Here it is about 57 cents of euro for S&B.
6.5x57 transformed to 6.5x58.jpg


We can generally get S&B brass here, but I've never seen 6.5x57mm. I'll chase it up though.
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Re: M1904 Portuguese Mauser 6.5x58mm

Post by bladeracer » 24 Sep 2021, 5:58 pm

bladeracer wrote:
Afmelo wrote:I understand that you do not have the 6.5x57 brass availble at a decent price.
Here it is about 57 cents of euro for S&B.
6.5x57 transformed to 6.5x58.jpg


We can generally get S&B brass here, but I've never seen 6.5x57mm. I'll chase it up though.


The importer for S&B have never imported 6.5x57mm brass to Oz, I'd be surprised if there are more than a dozen rifles here chambered for it.
They won't consider importing any unless I order 5000 pieces minimum. I have more than 5000 pieces of centrefire brass in total across all chamberings, but I don't need 5000 of these :-)

S&B in Czech have responded to my query regarding importing 500 pieces myself though, they are investigating whether they can export it to me. 500 is more than I need but I can use it to make other stuff as well. S&B generally retails here for around a dollar apiece or a little less, it's one of our cheapest options in brass. ADI, Winchester, Remington, Federal are around $1.20 to $1.80, then the other Euro brands, Norma, Lapua, Sako are $2.50 to $4.00 apiece.
I haven't been able to find any 6.5x57mm brass of any brand here, other than an old listing for PPU.
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Re: M1904 Portuguese Mauser 6.5x58mm

Post by No1Mk3 » 24 Sep 2021, 9:09 pm

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G'day bladeracer,
Neck down 7x57, it is the same case as 6.5x57. You may need to bump the shoulder back a little. I still prefer to make 58mm brass out of pure bloody-mindedness, no other reason as a 1mm shorter case really makes bugger all difference in most applications. By the way, BaronBoy's 1903 Breda doesn't use en bloc clips, the Breda rifles are exactly the same as the Greek 1903 by Mannlicher and use standard stripper clips to load a rotary magazine, this critter.
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Re: M1904 Portuguese Mauser 6.5x58mm

Post by straightshooter » 25 Sep 2021, 8:34 am

Scanning through much of this thread it seems to me that the least worst case to use for forming would be an 8x57.
By the time it gets to 6.5 it will have reduced the length mismatch as a bonus.
With good lube it might even be possible to do it in one pass otherwise 30 cal could be a useful intermediate step.
In the worst case the neck might need turning to true it.
In military rifles thicker necks than maximum spec can be an advantage.
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Re: M1904 Portuguese Mauser 6.5x58mm

Post by bladeracer » 08 Oct 2021, 3:36 pm

straightshooter wrote:Scanning through much of this thread it seems to me that the least worst case to use for forming would be an 8x57.
By the time it gets to 6.5 it will have reduced the length mismatch as a bonus.
With good lube it might even be possible to do it in one pass otherwise 30 cal could be a useful intermediate step.
In the worst case the neck might need turning to true it.
In military rifles thicker necks than maximum spec can be an advantage.


I have lots of .30-06, 8x57mm and .270 for making other brass out of, also some 7x57mm.
I do a lot of passes, just pushing the shoulder back a little at a time, and re-lubing every time with .30-06 brass.
So far it's worked very well so I haven't bothered switching to a different head stamp.

However, yesterday I finally received 100 pieces of 6.5x58mm brass from DocAV!!!!!
Formed from Bosnian Igman Konjic .30-06 fired brass, primer pockets are crimped.
It doesn't look like the necks have been turned, but I haven't had to with mine either.
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Re: M1904 Portuguese Mauser 6.5x58mm

Post by bladeracer » 14 Oct 2021, 6:47 pm

Trying to make sense of the sight settings on these things :-)
The lowest position is 200m. Which has the rear sight .054" (1.37mm) higher than the front sight.
Sight radius at the 200m position is 655mm. This gives me a base 200m "zero" being 209mm high at 100m, 7.20MoA.
Sight radius reduces to 634mm at the 2000m position, when the sight is at its full height of 2.097" (53.26mm), or 289MoA.

I don't have an original 155gn FMJ-RN bullet, but it looks very similar to the Hornady 160gn SP-RN, which has a BC of .283.
But the Hornady launched at the original 2350fps doesn't come very close to that curve at all. The Hornady drops 20.5MoA at 500m, 92.35MoA at 1000m, 213.5MoA at 1500m, and 395MoA at 2000m.

The curve calculated from the sight positions (every 100m) is 23.5MoA at 500m, 69.85MoA at 1000m, 153.85MoA at 1500m, and 289MoA at 2000m. This requires a BC of .375, not at all impossible, but very much better than the Hornady bullet.

But the discrepancy at close range is obvious, at 500m the original curve drops 3MoA more than the Hornady, while dropping 22.5MoA less at 1000m. There is a glitch in the close-range settings. I'm guessing the 200m "zero" is not a zero, but more likely a "belt-buckle hold" or something similar, does anybody know?
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Re: M1904 Portuguese Mauser 6.5x58mm

Post by bladeracer » 15 Oct 2021, 7:02 pm

Still working on this.
It appears that a 155gn bullet of .370 BC follows the sight gradient quite well from 1000m out to 2000m.
From 200m out to 500m it follows the curve okay, except it shoots 10MoA above point of aim.
So, at 200m about 600mm high, 300m about 900mm high, 400m about 1200mm high, and 500m about 1500mm high.
Does anybody know if this sounds typical of sighting convention in the early 20th century?
It seems to be a matter of "put whatever you can see of a man on top of the front sight" out to a reasonable distance at which you can make out a person in the field. Further than that is probably sighted for volley or area fire.
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Re: M1904 Portuguese Mauser 6.5x58mm

Post by Afmelo » 26 Mar 2022, 3:21 am

After a long wait finally received my new CH4D dies for the 6.5x58 Portuguese Vergueiro Mauser.
Used them to form using 6.5x57 PPU brass, after annealling and it turned perfect cartridges although evidently about 1mm shorter than the original 6.5x58mm.
Just reloaded a few cartridges to shoot tomorrow, should the weather allow.

Kindly find here some photos of my carbine and of the cartridges loaded today (the long cylindrical bullet is a 140gr Lapua Naturalis and the boat tail a 123 gr Lapua scenar).
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