Was the suspect ammo home brewed? If so, was the sizing die set down to touch the shell holder following die makers instructions? This could be another cause of excess headspace with a minimum die & a maximum chamber. Where & how are the cases bulged? Did they stick in the chamber? How hard did the bolt open? Punctured primer sounds like a misshapen firing pin or possibly headspace again. They will flatten & there will be leakage around the circumference of the primer, or if the case expands too much the primer will just fall out on ejection.
Primers wont back out if the case is locked up snugly to & fro. The mismatched bolt tells me the "pressure" problems may be more like headspace problems. The only thing that gets stronger with age is cheese. The 95 is basically a 93 which is why 7x57 was (& still may be) factory loaded to such anemic velocities due to maintaining safe (lower) pressure. Not sure the piece is worth fooling with. He would prefer to make a scout rifle of it, with a small scope mounted forward of the receiver so that it does not interfere with loading by stripper clip.Ī 1000 thought running thru my brain on this one. He also wishes to maintain the caliber, since he has existing stocks of ammunition and reloading supplies. While he only paid a hundred bucks for it, he would like to save it by rebarreling. The rifle also now has a broken firing pin. Still, the young man was fortunate not to have the rifle experience a catastrophic failure. So, it needs a new barrel on that small ring receiver. Indeed, a careful examination by a gunsmith subsequently revealed that the chamber was dangerously eroded. Worse, when I first saw it during a recent visit to their home, I noticed that the fired brass (US commercial of recent production) exhibited signs of excessive pressure - primers backing out, punctures in the primers, swollen cases. There is, in short, absolutely NO military collector value to the weapon. The barrel and receiver match, but not the magazine floorplate or the bolt. The military buttplate was replaced by a civilian rubberized butt pad (circa 1960s, I'd guess). It is now missing the upper handguard and the stock has been shortened just back of the now-missing barrel band but is very nicely rounded.