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Been tinkering with my M53. Gun runs great with certain belts, but with others its not stripping the shell from the belt. Looked through my WLA owners manual, but find no reference to how to size a the belts, just that it needs to be done. Search on this site turned up a few hits, but referred owners of the Century products to their owners manual.

So, how do you correctly size an 8 mm belt?

Thanks in advance

Dover,

Modern belts are sized for .308 and older for 8mm. Although there is not a great difference in size the 8mm case is less angled. Are you trying to stretch or shrink? Mine have always "stretched" out if I load 8mm in modern belts and leave it for a while. Same holds true for my original 8mm belts - I load with .308 but push the round past the distancing tab all the way into the holding pocket.

Hope this helps.

Probably trying to stretch them out. I have several belts of a 'black' color, no visible markings on them I can see. These seemingly work the best. I can easily push the rounds out of the belt with a little pressure from my fingers. The other belts are of a grey color, and take tremendous force to get the shells out of the belts. To unload a few last night I even had to resort to tapping some of the shells with a rubber mallet to get them to dislodge enough to remove them. Prior to loading my belts, I used a little gun oil to lighly oil them to help with the extraction. Shells have been in the belts for several months now, and have been stored in ammo cans. Shells still have light oil on them, so I know they didn't dry and seize up. With belts relatively cheap, I wonder if it is not in my best interest to try and pick up some new ones? I'd imagine most of the surplus belts available out there (sarco, etc) are sized for .308?

Thanks in advance

Dover,

Yes, modern belts (DM6 designations?). These are modern German and in standard NATO 7.62 or .308. I have also resorted to pulling on them to stretch them out.