Patrick Sweeney said:
OK, you're forced me to actually dig out data, instead of simply give an opinion. (Make me work, why don't you?) :lol:
COL of the .38 Super: 1.280" COL of the 7.62X25; 1.381" No, there isn't .100" extra space in the Super magazine. Were there, the conversions would have been done a long time ago, and barrels would be common.
As for pressure, I doubt there really were sub-gun loads deliberately pumped up by "50-75%" for the simple reason they were being fed into open-bolt guns. A bit hotter, perhaps. Variances in wartime production tolerances, certainly.
Even if 7.62X25 is hotter in some loads, if there is a pistol that could take it, it is the 1911. After all, a 9mm Major or Super at Major is close up to a proof load for the factory loadings of those cartridges, and IPSC shooters aren't breaking slides right and left. Burning out bores, yes, but not busting slides.
Mr. Sweeney:
I agree with the Overall Length on the Super but I thought I remembered the 7.62x.25 as being shorter than quoted here. In any case, the example given here is worse than mine in regard to the 7.62x25 being too big to easily convert .38 Super mags (and possibly the gun frames/mag wells) to accept it.
As to pressures, I am sure that even with all the finger-pointing, internet rumors and errors, people badmouthing Tokarevs and supporting CZ-52's, people badmouthing CZ-52's and supporting Tokarevs (not here but elsewhere for the last 10 years), there still
could be some truth to the pressure figures I have seen in past that easily (and routinely) fall in a 50% higher range. I have also seen more than one reference to some in a 75% higher range and while those could be due to "wartime production tolerances" (or just a bad time at the factory any day) I wouldn't want to fire such rounds. Ever.
As to the idea that the likelihood of firing such ammo (in general) in open bolt guns would keep manufacturers (especially WWII, Post WWII and Cold War Eastern-European manufacturers) from making overly high-pressured rounds, I don't want to sound harsh but I don't know if some of the countries involved had the manufacturing capabilities (or the mindset) to always make cartridges they didn't have to worry about. They were saddled with the (then commonplace) open bolt gun designs (some neat guns actually) and they were stuck (in some but not all cases) with (inherently) limited manufacturing ammo-making facilities.
There is also the possibility that they didn't care. I am no historian but looking at the mass charges that were made by seas of people armed with these guns (in the armies of both the Eastern European and, later, the Asiatic users of these weapons), it could be that while overpressure issues (perhaps more linked to damage and wear & tear rather than catastrophic or even explosive failure) were not a major consideration when wave upon wave of the people carrying such long guns were routinely sacrificed in an effort to overwhelm their enemies.
But to give them some credit,
as misguided as it might sound, there is also the possibility that knowing the long guns were rough and inconsistent - with sometimes almost "sloppy" tolerances included to "enhance" reliability in the harsh European/Eastern European territories they found themselves fighting in, loading the ammo to the high side (knowing that it too might help them overcome such impediments by driving the guns thru them), it could be that the manufacturers planned things this way. I doubt it (I think that they were merely limited as to what they could make) but who knows what they were thinking!
What I do know is that in the past, enthusiasts
not shooting the handguns we are discussing here, talked openly about long gun problems they faced where (granted not measuring pressures) they saw huge (and I don't use that term lightly) differences in bullet velocities, cyclical rates, bolt velocities and accelerated wear and tear (if not outright damage) to their guns.
Reading between those lines in the past, I think that such issues were not always just the fault of the certain countries, certain lots and certain years (which themselves often revolve around more than just typical charging issues but also involve differences in bullet diameters, seating depths and crimps) as cited in both credible and dubious sources regarding the ammo but also in the chamber dimensions and bore dimensions, of the guns themselves. And that leads me back to my earlier remarks about
both the various gun and ammo manufacturers
maybe wanting to build things the "right way" but not having the means to do so.
And while I'm not saying that a hobbyist/caliber-converting gunsmith out there will be "breaking slides" here if he or she builds and shoots such a thing
correctly, I do think that one could still be pushing their luck with some of this stuff; especially with the almost cavalierly-made assumption (here and in some of the related threads) that merely pushing in the bullets (of already-loaded
and sometimes perhaps unknown quality ammunition?) might solve the problem of overall length. Talk about the potential for pressure issues!
That said, I still think that if a 7.62x25 1911 of some sort was properly engineered, it could be a fascinating project because I still think it is a fascinating cartridge. But that perhaps relates more to that other thread I mentioned in my earlier posting.
