Thread: Keyholing and stiff bolt lift

You are shooting a 7x57 converted in the 1950s.

An early 50's convert will more likely be to 7.62×51mm CETME

Note the CETME, not NATO. CETME is less powerful. The original projectiles were plastic cored thin jacketed lead rounds (crazy having plastic core!)

Spain didn't use 7.62x51 Spanish-NATO until later and then only 7.62x51 NATO from 1988.
This forced Spain to internally rework their firearms to accept the more powerful round.

Do as 243wssm mentions, load up some reduced power 2206h load with lighter 130gn projectiles and see how it goes.