Connecticut Preparedness

[GreggAndrews]

Ya maybe I will just have to bring it somewere to have headspace checked just pains me to most likely pay as much as the rifle worth to have it checked

Or you can sell it to Mr. Mechanically Inclined over here...

[newguy]

The rifle is my fathers not.mine.lol I just do all the.cleanup and.maintenance on his stuff.he.said.he.did.enough cleaning in.army

[MadSmith]

It's always fun to get a cheap retired old warhorse and make it perform beyond expectations. A note of caution though: bragging about it could also get you in trouble. About 4 or 5 years ago, got my hands on a very nice shooting 1943 matching numbers 91/30 and imprudently blurted without thinking that it shot as well as a modern bolt gun. This within the earshot of a buddy who had just recently put down big money on one such beast, and felt compelled to call BS. Logically, I agreed of course. There's no way that an old Russian military bolt gun firing milsurp could take on a modern .308 firing commercial ammo. But honor was at stake! As is the wager of a large meatlovers pizza. So we settled on both of us shooting milsurp just to help level the playing field.

The following weekend, the Mosin had a scope and rail, a u-shaped piece of wood with some carpeting for a front support, and zip-tied chunk of insulation foam for a cheek rest. It definitely looked like a redneck hobo gun compared to his expensive brand spanking new rifle that cost almost 10x as much. And it beat his gun. It wasn't even close. Now, he's an excellent shooter, and his gun is a fine well made piece of equipment. In this particular case though, it wasn't the guns or the shooters. It was the ammo.

Instead of spending mucho dinero and a lot of time rebarreling the Mosin, bedding the stock, polishing the trigger group, and so on, I just pulled the heads off of three hundred rounds of Czech milsurp ammo. Dumped out the powder, which had significant charge variation, then reloaded them with the same powder but now measured and consistent. Then weighed and measured the bullets, and sorted them out into piles. Collected the largest batch with the best weight consistency, and reloaded those. It's all still the original milsurp components. But that one simple trick of keeping the components consistent across rounds shrank the groups by half. He on the other hand, used crappy Pakistani machinegun .308 milsurp. I swear I had nothing to do with it.

Lessons learned:
Sorted and reloaded milsurp, with a little effort, shoots surprisingly well.
Considering that I spent 3 hours of work to win an $18 pizza, of which I only got to eat half, it's incontrovertible proof that I'm a brain-dead idiot.

[Harry]

It's always fun to get a cheap retired old warhorse and make it perform beyond expectations. A note of caution though: bragging about it could also get you in trouble. About 4 or 5 years ago, got my hands on a very nice shooting 1943 matching numbers 91/30 and imprudently blurted without thinking that it shot as well as a modern bolt gun. This within the earshot of a buddy who had just recently put down big money on one such beast, and felt compelled to call BS. Logically, I agreed of course. There's no way that an old Russian military bolt gun firing milsurp could take on a modern .308 firing commercial ammo. But honor was at stake! As is the wager of a large meatlovers pizza. So we settled on both of us shooting milsurp just to help level the playing field.

The following weekend, the Mosin had a scope and rail, a u-shaped piece of wood with some carpeting for a front support, and zip-tied chunk of insulation foam for a cheek rest. It definitely looked like a redneck hobo gun compared to his expensive brand spanking new rifle that cost almost 10x as much. And it beat his gun. It wasn't even close. Now, he's an excellent shooter, and his gun is a fine well made piece of equipment. In this particular case though, it wasn't the guns or the shooters. It was the ammo.

Instead of spending mucho dinero and a lot of time rebarreling the Mosin, bedding the stock, polishing the trigger group, and so on, I just pulled the heads off of three hundred rounds of Czech milsurp ammo. Dumped out the powder, which had significant charge variation, then reloaded them with the same powder but now measured and consistent. Then weighed and measured the bullets, and sorted them out into piles. Collected the largest batch with the best weight consistency, and reloaded those. It's all still the original milsurp components. But that one simple trick of keeping the components consistent across rounds shrank the groups by half. He on the other hand, used crappy Pakistani machinegun .308 milsurp. I swear I had nothing to do with it.

Lessons learned:
Sorted and reloaded milsurp, with a little effort, shoots surprisingly well.
Considering that I spent 3 hours of work to win an $18 pizza, of which I only got to eat half, it's incontrovertible proof that I'm a brain-dead idiot.

Thanks. It was very informative.
Do Finnish Mosins live up to their standards ?
Are they suppose to be better than Russian ones?
My M39, consistently shoots in tighter groups than 91/30, so I was wondering do they change anything to make it work better?

[MadSmith]

Thanks. It was very informative.
Do Finnish Mosins live up to their standards ?
Are they suppose to be better than Russian ones?
My M39, consistently shoots in tighter groups than 91/30, so I was wondering do they change anything to make it work better?

I'm no Mosin expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I expect there's guys here who are. So if/when I get information wrong, please correct.

Finnish Mosins have a reputation for being much better shooters than their Russian counterparts. For the most part, this reputation is well deserved. This is primarily due to better care in remanufacturing as well as rebarreling, though the other things like better sights and specially the tighter tolerance machining also contribute. I also suspect that the Finns generally took better care of their weapons than the average Soviet peasant conscript. The Finns also kept, used, reworked and maintained their Mosins well past WWII, so one could get an arsenal refinished gun kept in stockpile instead of the typical Russian gun that was banged out in a hurry during wartime and was a veteran of the Siege of Stalingrad. Not that one can't find a Ruski that will out-shoot a Finn, as I am certain such examples exist. But in general, yes, Finn Mosins are better guns. Which is surprising when you consider that they didn't build their own receivers, and in the majority of cases, used bits and pieces from captured and purchased military stocks. The gun could have been assembled from parts out of a dozen donor rifles. Finn Mosins are, to annoy collectors, well-put-together parts guns.

A common statement is that the Finn Mosins have tighter bores. This is only half true. Some of them do have tighter bores, but as a class, they actually have a wider bore diameter variation than most other makes. They do tend to have more careful crowning of the muzzle, and are seldom counterbored.

The M39s were mostly made from recut 91s. A shorter barrel does not mean less accuracy. All other factors being equal, a longer barrel gives you a longer distance between the front and rear sight, which enhances alignment with the target. A longer barrel also contributes to higher projectile velocity. However, a long thin barrel is also less rigid, more prone to whipping, thermal effects, and harmonics changes from differing points of contact with the handguard between shots. It is actually a fairly common practice to take a poorly shooting 91/30 with a counterbored muzzle and cut it down to a carbine, then recrown it to yield a better shooter. The last bit of the barrel that the bullet is in contact with is critical to its accuracy.

[MessEleven]

I bought a 1934 Tula hex 91/30 a couple of weeks ago and can't wait to shoot it! Took a couple of enjoyable hours getting the cosmo off, cleaning & oiling it. It amazes me how well these old guns hold up after 70 or 80 years, particularly when you think what they must have gone through during WWII.

Prices are definitely rising on these, though. While you can still find them in the $90-100 range, it seems most of the hand-select guns are now $130 and up.

[newguy]

Ya seems like price of ammo for these is heading higher too but i guess that what is happening with all ammo these days thank god i started reloading

[CTSixshot]

Almost every reloading manual says to slug your barrel to find the actual bore diameter. This will allow you to match your bullets to that rifles bore more precisely..
If you don't reload, I guess this is of little use, since the factory ammo is what it is, ie. for the 7.62x54R, it should be a .311" bullet as a rule. (I've noticed some 7.62x54R is topped with .308" bullets.
For most range shooting, I suppose no one will notice.

[newguy]

Powder Valley was selling the pulled .310 bullets for the 7.62x54r pretty reasonably priced

[CTSixshot]

Also, it's rare to get the bullet manufacturers to have it correct to the thousandth of an inch. I have some Speer .311" bullets that are .310". Maybe I have too low a standard, but I'll still use them.

[MessEleven]

Shot mine for the first time yesterday, and what a great gun! Kicks like a mule, but actually not as bad as I've heard. Slipped a Shooterspad gel-filled recoil pad on it and it's super comfortable to shoot. No problem with the bolt action after about 50 rounds, but that barrel sure does get warm!

Love that big bang!

[CTSixshot]

For you Mosin Nagant fans that want to shoot indoors at BSR, I have the .310" Sinterfire frangibles for the 54R; they won't be as cheap as surplus ammo, of course.