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Here's an interesting thread on Huskies. One very knowledgeable guy chimed in from Sweeden.

http://www.16ga.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6901&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Raimey,

All the old German 16s are 16X67 and were made from 19teens to 1935. I always thought 67 mm chambers was simply German standard, like 65 mm was Swedish standard. Did I really miss something?

Thanks,
Niklas

Niklas:

About all I can say is that I'm researching it. Until recently I thought all German scattergun chambers to be 65mm and that there was a tolerance along the tube of 2.5mm before requiring reproof.

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

The cartridges very well may have begun as 2 5/8ths(67mm). Here is some cartridge info from a fairly new site??: http://www.shotguns.se/html/65_and_67_5mm.html

Kind Regards,

Raimey
rse

Raimey,

Thanks for link to English-language version of Tobais site. Now I gotta find Swedish version. There are some very good articles in recent years about Swedish guns by Franzen in Swedish hunting magazine "Jakt och Jägare" (Hunting and Hunter) -- never seen any English translation. Jakt och Jägare has online version.

Curious that Tobais repeats the erronious statement "2 1/2 or 65 mm", when 2 1/2 is really 63,5 mm. I also wonder how often folks have used USA chamber gauges to incorrectly measure length of European chambers, which often have smaller IDs on front end. I have some that "measure", short, even way short, with USA-made chamber gauges but are really either 65 of 67 mm chambers.

Regards,
Niklas

Well you have to choose between what the chamberlength is called - and what is actually is. That is normally two diffrent things.

The chamberlengt was more often longer than what was stated, so 2 1/2 inch or 65mm is just something you label on the chamber. Why they started to label 2 1/2 inch when they ment 2 3/5 or even longer is odd, but that is what they used. Bottom line: a 2 1/2 inch chamber is 65mm long - or longer. There is a 63mm chamber length - but I have never seen these.

The problem is when you try to use 67mm cartridges in a true 65mm chambers. HVA normally used a chamberlength if 67mm (even if they are stamped 65mm), they stepped up to 70mm in the years before the second world war. True 65mm chambers is most often found on brittish guns, not swedish or german guns.

The swedish version is available at: http://www.shotguns.se/html/65_and_67_5_mm_.html

Best regards
Tobias

JASC

Tobais,

I have several older Husqvarna hammer doubles, made before WW2, and ALL have measured 65 mm chambers, in both 12 and 16 bore. I also have several older, also pre-WW2, Germain 16s that have measured 67 mm chambers. What later Husqvarna doubles have for chamber lengths, I have no personal information about because I have never found one that handled as well as older top lever hammer doubles.

Per CIP regs, 67 mm ammo having proper service pressure for gun in question is considered totally OK for use in actual 65 mm chambers. I have done this for years with 16 bore Remington Game Loads,16 bore Fiocchi Game loads and Venuezalian Imperial 16X67 ammo, all having actual 67 mm hulls, even though Remington and Fiocchi are marked on hulls as 70 mm. Do some simple calculations of how much last 2 mm of modern, skived, plastic hulls will constrict forcing cone, even short, 10 mm cones -- think you will conclude that there really is no problem at all.

I have also Husqvarna hammer double made after books say Husqvarna went to 70 mm hulls, BUT, it also has 65 mm chambers. Maybe 70 mm story is only for internal hammer doubles??

Niklas

I have measured quite a lot of HVA and they are normally 67 to 68mm long.



The problem is quite simple: a gun stamped 65mm (or 2 1/2") normally have chambers that are 67-68mm long. But if you stumble along a gun that is from before 1900 you can suddenly find guns that is stamped 65mm which have shorter chambers - 64-65mm. I have a Churchill BLNE from the first years Churchill made guns – chamber length 64,5mm. And a John Wilkes (1893) also 64mm. Both guns stamped 2 1/2". So the use of a margin was something that each maker did after their own ideas. During 1895-1897 there was a discussion in UK if the chamber should be exactly as long as the shell or if there should be a few mm "flight". And in such guns 67,5mm shells doesn't work properly, test and they give you a nasty punch in recoil and normally they have poor quality when you look at the performance.



Nope, that is the same thing you can see on cartridge boxes from Eley: For 65mm chambers, shell length 67,5mm..... There were no "67/67,5 or 68" mm chambers stamped on guns. There were just 65/70/76 - nothing else, only indicating for what maximum length of the shell used should be. What the chamber in reality was - is something totally different.
And then you have the trick with the mouth.... When we used cartridges with overwad they had to little resistance when they were opened, so the gunmakers made the mouth of the chamber smaller than it should be - to withhold somewhat harder. Today we use cartridges with no overwad (that has a opening resistance that is twice the old overwad cartridge) in chambers that are to short in some cases together with the fact that the chambers is to narrow. Are you surprised that there sometimes are problems? Not normally, but the problems do show up form time to time.
I wrote an article in Vapentidningen (www.vapentidningen.se) about this. That's why I put a very short version of article on my site, since there were a lot of questions regarding this.

Best regards
Tobias

Tobais,

NONE of my old Swedish or German doubles have any chamber lenght stamped on them. I measure chamber lenghts with mm ruller trimmed to fit nicely into individual chambers. These measurements are correct for my individual guns, not something assumed by someone. I really don't care at all what Brits stamp on their guns or on their ammo boxes -- I only have Swedish or German hammer doubles.

Yes, I am aware that many boxes of "16X65" shotshells really contain hulls with 67mm lengths, maybe even a bit longer. I see this mostly with ammo from Britian.

Snart ska jag leta upp artikl'n i vapentidningen som du skrev om detta. Säkert ska det vara interesant att läsa den! Kanska då kommer jag att förstå bättre varför dina och mina erfarenhet skiljar sig så mycket.

Hej då,
Niklas