Hi guys, thanks for tuning in to another video on ForgottenWeapons.com
I'm Ian McCollum, and today we are going to do some evaluation on some Ethiopian 8 millimeter Mauser ammunition
This ammunition was originally imported by Century
however, at the time of this video's publication
I am NOT able to actually find it available for sale online
So whether they have already sold out of it, or if they pulled it, or if they just didn't have very much of it in
The first place- I don't know. But we're gonna take a look at it regardless because I find it interesting to look at
what- I think this can teach us some things about what to expect from surplus ammunition and give us some insight into what may have
Been manufactured in different countries at different times. So this is 8 millimeter Mauser ammunition
This was manufactured in 1955 according to the head stamps on the cartridges but according to- in
1947, according to the packaging material from the small boxes to the
cartons to the actual crate
Ethiopia used a number of different 8 millimeter Mauser firearms
They were actually one of the few countries to purchase ZH 29 rifles, which is kind of pretty cool. They also had FN made BAR
Automatic rifles in 8-millimeter mauser they also had ZB26 light machine guns
And so they had a fair amount of need for 8 millimeter Mauser hence their production of it
The ammunition factory in question here is outside of Addis Ababa, and it's called the Emperor Haile Selassie
Haile Selassie, something like that. I apologize. I don't speak
Ethiopian or Amharic
Anyway, the the Emperor Haile Selassie I Ammunition Factory- and is in fact his initials that will find on the head stamps
But we'll get to that in just a minute
this is
Packaged 15 rounds per little cardboard box and then you have 20 of these boxes per 300 round
crate or carton here
And then you have five of these cartons in the 1500 round crate and it's kind of ammunition crates are always kind of cool. So
We are in fact
Why don't we just go ahead and take this out to the range and put some rounds through a rifle and see what happens
Alrighty- testing the Ethiopian 8-millimeter Mauser ammo. We're gonna go ahead and do this in- this is actually a German
K98k that was then captured or purchased or otherwise acquired by
Yugoslavia and re-marked up at- by them as an M 48. So go ahead and do 10 rounds
2465
2475
2440
2464
2468. Let me go ahead and load another five
A little bit of a hang fire there. That was 2433
2460
2484
Ooh, that was a substantial hang fire- 2424
Also a hang fire- 2437
You know what just for kicks, let's do five more and finish out the box of ammo
Bit of a hang fire- 2429
2474
No fire. We'll give this a few seconds
Go ahead and re-cock the striker, try it again
There we go, alright- 2472
2465. Last round-
Another doesn't want to fire, and a little bit of a flinch on my part
Give this a few seconds, again, just to make sure it's not a substantial hang fire
Go ahead and re-cock the striker and try it a second time
Little bit of a hang fire that time- 2505
Alright, there we go
here are a handful of
characteristic cartridges. It was interesting to me that I found, randomly mixed in the packaging,
both silver colored or nickel- nickel alloy washed and also copper
Wash jacketed cartridges. They don't appear to be different in any way. The bullet designs are exactly the same
In fact, I have some of those
Here are the bullets this is a pointed- a Spitzer boat tail hollow base style of projectile
Here some of the others. See, all basically the same
When we went ahead and weighed these out we got an average weight of 197.4 grains, this is presumably
supposed to be 198 grain- that was kind of the standard for 8 millimeter Mauser, or one of the standards. The spread was
1.6 from high to low and the standard deviation in my weight sample- this was by the way a sample of 10 that we weighed-
standard deviation was 0.47. That is really pretty darn good
These are well made high quality projectiles. The cartridges are of course brass cased
You can see nice clear annealing marks at the neck. That's a good thing. I didn't see any corrosion
Beyond just, you know, some really little stuff like that from contact with paper boxes
No serious corrosion on any of them that I saw
This is almost certainly corrosive primed. Although I didn't actually test for that but
1955 headstamp 8 Mauser- I'm sure this is corrosively primed. It is Berdan primed as well
so this is not easily reloadable ammunition.
As for velocities,
we had an average velocity of 2460 feet per second with an extreme spread of 81 feet per second and
again with a sample of 15 rounds fired for velocity
we got a standard deviation of 22.69 feet per second and that is
Well, I don't want to be too editorial about this but that is below what one would expect from high quality factory ammunition
Although it is substantially better than what we saw with for example, the Ethiopian 7.62 NATO ammunition
Taking a look at the packaging
We have a plain cardboard box with one big ink stamp on the front and that is written in Amharic
Which is, in Ethiopian a written language, that translates to
Emperor Haile Selassie I ammunition factory or the abbreviation for that down here
We have 15 rifle cartridges right here. We have caliber
7.92
This is without chargers because these are loose and not on stripper clips
manufactured 1947
which is curious because the head stamps are all '55. And then this is a serial number or a lot number
20
Go ahead and open this up, got a nice little string pull tab there, and your 15 rounds
loaded inside
These look like they're all
Yeah, this box is all copper-jacketed
Can see a couple headstamps there, the characters at the top here
Amharic characters each letter actually stands for both a consonant and a vowel
And so I'm not even going to try and recreate what those letters are, but they are the initials for emperor Haile Selassie
And then we have a 1955 date on all of the cartridges that I found
Those boxes are packaged in these cardboard cartons or sleeves
With basically the exact same information stamped on them
All the same stuff on there except this says 300 cartridges
Instead of 15, so you've got 20 boxes of 15 in each one of these
and if we open this up
You can see that
And then we've got the actual crate that all of this was packaged in which has again pretty much the exact same information on the front
The abbreviation for Emperor Haile Selassie I Ammunition Factory up here
rifle cartridges caliber 7.92
Manufactured 1947
lot or batch number 20
And then this is box or crate number 6404. The lid of this thing is held on by
like 12 different screws
So I have- I have already opened this up in order to get everything else out of it
so you don't actually get a true unboxing video here, but if we
Just loosen this up
Inside the crate, we have a nice heavy-duty metal liner. I have pulled- again
I've pulled this off because these things are nothing if not fantastic for slicing your hands open
You have to be extremely careful about this
However, what this does tell us is that this ammunition was nicely sealed
So there's a little wire pull tab that opened this up
It's nice to have ammunition that is well sealed when you get it. That's always a sign of better than average storage
And then inside this you had five of these ammunition cartons
they sat in there like so and
conveniently the middle one actually has this cotton strap on it so that you can easily pull it out of
the crate
One other cool bit here- we have a few more markings on
the outside of the ca- crate. This of course was the lot number- neat that we just got the
imprint of the bullet- 7.92 and the the quantity of
1500
So just to wrap up we have a 197.4
Grain bullet on average, traveling at 2460 feet per second on average
That's out of a 23.6 inch mir- barrel, a Mauser Kar98k
Standard deviation for the velocity is 22.69 feet per second
We did have two rounds in the sample of fifteen that required a second strike to detonate
And this is a rifle that has no particular problem with light primer strikes in general
And we did have a substantial number although less than 50% of
Hangfires, although very brief, hangfires. Nothing that was ever
Nothing, I ever had to pull the rifle off my shoulder and wait for
But just slightly perceptible delays between the primer striking and the round firing
So there is your overview of at least this particular lot or batch of Ethiopian 8 millimeter Mauser ammunition
Hopefully you guys enjoyed the video. I am enjoying doing these evaluations
I'm actually anticipating doing a whole bunch of them, which I think will give us a really interesting
Pattern by which we can evaluate different surplus that's coming out and, you know, quality level, shootability level
what ammunition is good for what. So,
Stay tuned. We'll have another one of these next week and I think they'll become a somewhat occasional, regular-
Regular appearance on the channel. Thanks for watching