Czech 8.15 x 46R ammo

[DreyseM65]

Found these at a small antique arms show near me. Researched them and discovered they are of Czech manufacture. Hunting rounds I guess. _20160904_103455.jpg_20160904_103514.jpg_20160904_103536.jpg

[mike ford]

Willi,
I believe you are correct, they seem to be old S&B. Of course they are currently marketing ammo here( 9.3x72R, 8x57R, etc.),but I don't believe they now include 8.15x46R. This cartridge was pretty much limited to Reh(Roe) when hunting, by the German law. When I lived there, one of my German hunting friends used an 8.15x46R/16ga drilling on Reh, very effectively.
Mike

[Diz]

Dreyse,

I checked the head stamps further and found four manufacturers using the PS stamp but I believe you are correct about them being Czech. The others being Fiocchi in Italy, Pirotechnia Militar de Seville in Spain and Poongsan Metal Manufacturing in Korea. While Fiocchi is a possibility I think the caliber points more toward the Czech manufacturer, Povazske Strojarne. The star stamps may be significant but I couldn't find anything regarding them.

Mike is right, the bullets look so much like S&B or Norma in shape that I thought that's what they were at first. The two diameter shape must be much more popular than I thought. I am not a hard core cartridge collector and there may be others on the forum that can add to this.

Thanks, Diz

[Dan Patch]

These cartridges were made at Povazske Strojarne in Slovakia. This factory is the one which was identified by the German wartime code of "dou."; its prewar headstamp identifier was Z. The letters PS were used in the immediate post-1945 period. Its history and identifiers after the PS period is complex and well beyond my ability to recite without notes. Dan

[fuhrmann]

Not a hard core collector either, but I can add a bit of information:
I agree that PS stands for "Povaske Strojarne" , a company located in the town of Povaska Bystrica, used to be Czechoslavakia, now Slovakia.

Here
http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Pova%C5%BEsk%C3%A1_Bystrica
is more:
"In 1918, the town became part of the Czechoslovak republic. In 1929, an ammunition plant Roth transferred its production from Bratislava to Považská Bystrica, which significantly improved the employment situation. Starting in 1937 and continuing until 1945 rifles (vz.24 and K98k) and small arms ammunition were manufactured here. After World War II the munitions factory at Považská Bystrica continued to produce weapons and ammunition for both the military and for commercial purposes."

Roth was the old Austrian company Georg Roth.

The bullet follows the design of Teschner and Collath or TESCO: the typical "two diameter shape", a thin copper jacket and a flat nose, for use instead of lead bullets in 8,15x46R, 9,3x72R etc..
Invented somewhere around 1900, still the standard for those old cartridges .

fuhrmann

[DreyseM65]

Thanks for all the interesting information. I found a couple of photos of the box which is likely to have held these rounds. Matches the primer stamp.

Dan, thanks for identifying the manufacturer being the same as the WWII era "dou" plant. I have alot of their 9mm and 8mm (both the standard 57mm and 33mm) rounds.

Interesting that they could be post-45 manufacture and found in the US._20160905_173701.JPG_20160905_173627.JPG

[fuhrmann]

Hard to read on the small pictures, but do I see English and French?
Looks like an intent of export.
I do not remember that I ever have seen hunting ammo of this factory in Germany.

I expect ballistics will be similar to German loads, e.g. load 49R in the RWS handbook from 1940:
Bullet 9,8 g copper jacket
Powder 1,8 g R5
v0 586 m/s (barrel length 710 mm)
Pressure 1450 atm

fuhrmann

[Dan Patch]

I think nearly all this PS-headstamped sporting ammunition was made in the years up to about 1948 when the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia was completed. It was sold in the U.S. to some extent in the immediate postwar period. About twenty years ago I was given a ten-round box of 7.9 m/m loaded with .318 in. diameter softnosed bullets. The primers having failed by that time I loaded the bullets and powder charges into boxer primed cases and fired them. I think I have the box label stashed away somewhere or another. Pre-1939 Povazske Strojarne produced a full line of sporting calibers with the Z headstamp, but they are seen in the U.S. far less often than the postwar PS rounds. Dan