Today’s story is on two old assault rifles. Not the AR15s and other Rambo stuff that’s in the news all the time, but two really old rifles, with designs reaching back more than a century. I’ve spent many enjoyable days on the range with these rifles, and they are two of my favorites.
The one on the top is a Mosin-Nagant 91/30, which is a Russian rifle originally designed in 1891 and then modified in 1930. These old Mosin Nagant rifles were Russia’s primary infantry weapon in World War II. They were plentiful for a while, and then they all but dried up and the prices have increased significantly.
Before I bought my Mosin, I marveled at all the excitement over what I thought was a junk rifle. I had to find out for myself what these were all about, so I bought one labeled as “excellent” (it was anything but). That old Russian rifle is about as crude as it gets, but boy oh boy, can it shoot! It is very accurate, as you can see in the photo below.
The other rifle in the photo above is an Argentine 1909 Mauser. Here’s another photo of it.
The Mauser uses a cartridge (7.65 x 53 Argentine Mauser) that is just about impossible to find today, so for that one I bought the tools that let me make cartridges from .30 06 brass. Doing so was fun. You run the 30 06 case into a special die that reforms it into the 7.65 Argentine cartridge, you trim the newly-formed case to the correct length, and then you reload the new case using the right dies for that cartridge. The photo below sort of shows the forming steps and the finished ammo…that’s a 30 06 round on top and two of my newly-minted 7.65 Argentine rounds on the bottom…
I was surprised at how well it all turned out, and I was really pleased with how well the old Mauser shot. It shoots 1-inch groups with iron sights, but with the rear sight at the lowest setting it shoots a foot too high. After researching this issue on the Internet, I found out that’s what those old German engineers intended. It’s zeroed for 300 yards at the lowest setting! The theory is that you aim at the center of your target for any distance up to 300 yards and you’ll hit it (as long as your target is about the size of an enemy soldier).
Looking at those two rifles, the Mauser has vastly finer machining, fit, and finish, and the Germans really got carried away serializing things. Even the cleaning rod has a serial number.
That got me to thinking about the Mosin Nagant and how rough it was compared to the Mauser. Even with its crude build quality, though, that old Russian rifle shot just as well as the Mauser.
You know, they say there’s nothing new under the sun, and to a great extent, that’s true. Paul Mauser invented the bolt action rifle, and it’s said he got the idea from a gate latch. The theme became the cover of my book on Unleashing Engineering Creativity, and it became the cover shot (featuring the very same rifle you see here). You can buy Unleashing Engineering Creativity by clicking on the title or the photo below.
The stream crossing to the West End Gun Club has been too deep to cross in my Subie Outback since early January. I tried it once back then and I wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
My January Meyer Canyon Road mishap. The Subie is not a submarine and I am not a U-boat commander, although we both came close that morning.
I’ve been going to the Magnum Range in Ontario (an indoor pistol range), watching the West End website for updates and occasionally driving out to check the stream. The Magnum Range is a good place to shoot, but I missed shooting my rifles. Then a good thing happened earlier this week: Good buddy Duane offered to pick me up and attempt a stream crossing in his Toyota 4×4. I was in.
Duane’s Toyota 4×4. It’s an impressive vehicle.
I’ve known Duane for years, going back to my work with CSC Motorcycles in their early days of the replica Mustangs and the RX3 250cc adventure bike. Duane and I both owned the CSC bikes and we traveled extensively on them.
Duane in the commander’s cupola.
The Meyer Canyon Road stream crossing was still deep and the water was moving swiftly, but Duane’s Toyota had no problem crossing it.
Entering the fray…
I knew which rifle I wanted to shoot when I received Duane’s email invitation: My Mosin-Nagant 91/30. It’s the one you see at the top of this blog. The Mosin is a favorite. It’s accurate, I reload 7.62x54R ammo, and it is fun to shoot.
My Mosin-Nagant 91/30. The Russians built 17 million of these rifles. They are becoming hard to get and prices have risen substantially. These rifles are surprisingly accurate.
I’ve owned this Mosin rifle for maybe 10 years now. It came about almost as an afterthought. To me, the Mosins appeared to be cheap pieces of junk. Then one day after a class about engineering creativity, a student asked about the cover photo on a book I wrote. He told me he and his father owned a Mosin and enjoyed shooting the rifle. I saw a Mosin on the rack at a sporting goods store a short while later for $139. It looked crude, but for $139, I thought I’d take a chance. The guy who sold it to me did not know there was a bayonet in the Mosin’s cardboard box, and when he put the rifle back in its box, the bayonet scratched the stock. Neither of us knew this until 10 days later (after California’s silly waiting period). The store offered to sell me a different Mosin, but that meant starting the 10-day waiting period all over again. I viewed the scratch as an opportunity, and indeed it was. I refinished the stock (10 coats of TruOil worked nicely). Then I glass bedded the action, reworked the trigger, polished the bolt, and worked up a load. It was fun and I learned much about the rifle. Mine has matching numbers on the receiver, the butt plate, and the bolt. I know it’s weird: I own some really nice rifles, but the Mosin is one of the ones I love the most.
Serial Number 2339, built in 1940. Production rates ramped up sharply in 1940, but this rifle was built before that occurred. Fit and finish nosedived that year; mine is one of the good ones.The Mosin’s buttplate.The serialized (and polished) bolt.
When Duane and I arrived at the range, I set up a target at 50 yards. Like always, shooting the Mosin felt good. It had been too long.
Duane is a milsurp rifle enthusiast, too. He has a beautiful 8mm Mauser K98 that his uncle took home from Germany after World War II. I keep trying to buy it from him. He keeps saying no.
A World War II K98 Mauser.Left view of the K98 Mauser.Nazi markings on the Mauser’s barrel and receiver.
Like me, Duane is a reloader. He had reloaded reduced loads for our outing. A reduced load is one loaded for lower velocity, which means the rifle has significantly less recoil. One of Duane’s loads had cast bullets. The other had jacketed 150-grain bullets. Both were loaded with Trail Boss powder, and both shot well.
8mm Mauser reloaded ammunition. The upper rounds have 150-grain jacketed soft point bullets, the lower rounds have 150-grain cast bullets.
As soon as Duane fired his first shots, I knew he had reduced-load ammo. Check it out in the video below.
Duane and I both brought handguns, and to my surprise, we both decided to bring our Smith and Wesson 9mm Shields. I’ve written about the Shield before, as well as the custom work TJ (of TJs Custom Gunworks) did on my Shield. I shot my Shield at 50 yards. Using a short-barreled 9mm concealed carry handgun at 50 yards is not a formula for accuracy, but I managed to keep all of my shots on the target. The group was large, but at least they were on the paper.
My Shield in flat dark earth. I shot my reloaded ammo with Gardner powder-coated bullets.My Sheild and Duane’s. Duane’s has a Crimson Trace laser just forward of the trigger guard. The laser is actuated by a pushbutton below the trigger.
One of the things I like about my Shield is its bright sights. Duane’s Shield has white dot sights and a green Crimson Trace laser mounted beneath the slide. The laser is a cool touch for close in work. My Shield has high visibility fiber optic sights (they catch light from the side and light up green and red dots). They’re good if there’s any light at all. If there’s no light, the sights don’t light, but if there’s no light, it’s not likely you’d be shooting.
A comparison of the sights on both Shields. My pistol’s Hi Viz sights are the best I’ve ever used on a handgun.
Before we called it a day, Duane let me try a couple of shots with his Mauser. I shot at the same 50-yard target I’d been using with my Shield and the Mosin-Nagant.
The proof is on the paper. The upper red circle surrounds the shots I fired with my Mosin-Nagant (with one exception, all are in the 10 ring…that one exception was the first shot I fired). The circle around the two shots below were mine, fired with Duane’s 8mm Mauser and his reduced-load ammo. All the other shots were with the Smith and Wesson 9mm Shield.
After the West End Gun Club visit, we stopped at our local Mexican restaurant. I had albondigas soup and a chile relleno. As always, both were outstanding.
A toasted chile relleno. It was excellent.
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A thing of great beauty…10 hand-rubbed coats of TruOil, glass bedding, a trigger job, and a consistent 10-ring shooter. My Mosin is 75 years old.
I’ve written before about the Mosin-Nagant rifle, and I thought I would return to that topic to tell you a little bit about how I got into playing with these fine old Russian infantry rifles.
I had seen Mosin-Nagants on the discount racks at what I had always considered low end gun outlets (Big 5 Sporting Goods and other general purpose stores), but I never considered purchasing one. The Mosins on the rack were filthy, caked in cosmoline with dinged-up stocks. They initially sold for $59 here in the US a few years ago, and they looked like $59 rifles to me. Cheap. Not up to my standards. I was and still am a gun snob. I thought the Mosins were too dirty to even handle, let alone purchase. Nope, not my speed, I thought. Any rifle that Big 5 was selling for $59 was not worth my time or consideration. Ah, if only I knew where prices were headed, and just how good these rifles are.
Fast forward a bit, and I was teaching a class on engineering creativity at Cal Poly Pomona. One of the techniques engineers can use to inspire their creativity is called TRIZ. It’s a technique that came to us from the old Soviet Union, and it involves looking at older designs in different product areas for ideas. A classic example is Paul Mauser’s bolt action rifle, which is said to have been based on a common gate latch (in fact, I used of photo illustrating this as the cover shot for Unleashing Engineering Creativity).
One of my young students approached me after class to tell me about the Mosin-Nagant he and his father had purchased (at Big 5) for under a hundred bucks, and how much fun they were having with it. That planted a seed, and when I stopped in for my weekly gun-gazing fix at a local gun shop later that week, I bought a Mosin they had on the rack for $129. The kid who showed it to me put it in the box when I started my 10-day waiting period (here in the Peoples Republik of Kalifornia we have a lot of goofy gun laws). What neither that young man nor I knew was that there was a bayonet in the Mosin-Nagant’s cardboard box, and when he slid the rifle into it, the bayonet scratched the hell out of the stock.
Live and learn, I guess. I wasn’t upset. In fact, I was glad. The rifle was inexpensive enough that I saw the bayonet scar as an opportunity to completely strip the rifle down, do a trigger job, glass bed the action, and refinish the stock. I did, and the rifle went from being a banged-up, gouged-up, cosmoline-encrusted derelict to…well, a thing of great beauty. I kid you not, as the saying goes. Every time I take my Mosin to the range, I get compliments. It’s the rifle you see in the photo at the top of this blog.
Russians like cosmoline, I guess. The cosmonauts apply it liberally.
But that’s not the whole story. The rest of this story is that the thing can shoot. I only shoot my own reloads, and the results are phenomenal. I have a jacketed bullet load I use and another load for cast bullets . Both are extremely accurate. My $139 Mosin is the most accurate open-sighted rifle I’ve ever shot. Who knew?
That accuracy thing is not unique to my rifle. My good buddy Paul bought a Mosin after listening to me rave about my Russky rifle (in fact, several of my friends bought their own Russian war horses after listening to me babble on and on about mine). Paul found out his rifle was a former sniper weapon, and he asked me to try it. I did. I put three of my reloads through it, and after firing the first shot, I thought I missed on the second two (the target was 50 yards downrange, and all I could see at that distance was one hole). When I looked through the spotting scope, though, it told a different story.
Paul’s sniper, after I put three rounds downrange. I offered to buy Paul’s rifle and start the 10-day People’s Republik waiting period immediately. “Nyet,” was his only reply.
The Mosin sniper rifles are amazingly accurate. When the U.S. military equips snipers, our armorers build the rifles from the ground up to assure extreme accuracy. The Russians did it differently. The Russians built approximately 17 million Mosin-Nagants from 1891 on, and they range fired every one of them. When they found a rifle that was particularly accurate, it was designated as a sniper weapon. It was one of those rifles you see in the photo above.
The price on Mosin rifles is climbing. Today they go for something north of $300. But trust me on this: They are still a bargain at that price. And wow, can they ever shoot. If you’ve ever thought about buying one, there’s no time like right now. I think prices are going to continue to climb.
We include gun stories here on the ExNotes blog because we like to shoot and we like to write about shooting. The feedback we get from you, our motorcycle blog followers, tells us you enjoy reading about gun stuff. The collection of ExNotes gun stories continues to grow, and we want to make it easy for you to find it. So, another bit of news…we’ve added a Tales of the Gun index page on the ExNotes site!
My initial exposure to the Mosin-Nagant rifle occurred when I saw the movie Enemy at the Gates a few years ago. At that time, I didn’t know anything about Mosin-Nagants other than I had seen them for sale at ridiculously low prices in Big 5 sporting goods stores. I never took Big 5 as a serious gun store (I went there when I needed jogging shoes), nor did I think of Mosins as interesting rifles. But Enemy at the Gates got my attention. It was very well done, starting with the opening scene when Vasily Zaitsev nailed a wolf with a Mosin, and progressing to the now famous “Can you shoot?” scene near the beginning of the movie.
Enemy at the Gates was set in Stalingrad. I studied that battle. Stalingrad was one of the world’s epic struggles. Hitler sent two million men into Russia; fewer than 3,000 returned to Germany. Incredible and awesome stuff, and snipers played a key role in turning the tide for the Russians.
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I didn’t run out and buy a Mosin-Nagant after watching Enemy at the Gates, but the seed had been planted. I also knew a bit about the history of modern sniping in the US military. I read a book a few years ago about Carlos Hathcock, our famous sniper of the Vietnam War (that book, incidentally, is awesome).
Available on Amazon, Marine Sniper is a great read.
So, fast forward, and my interest in rifles ultimately extended to the Mosin-Nagant. I purchased my first Mosin-Nagant (a round receiver Tula; more on that in a moment) and I was impressed with it. For $179, it was cheap fun. I started reloading 7.62x54R ammo for the Mosin after I bought a couple of boxes of factory PRVI Partizan ammo. The PRVI ammo was stupid hot, not very accurate, and I knew I could develop a better load than the factory stuff. And I did, but that’s a story for another blog.
I told my shooting and riding buddies about my Mosin and how much fun I was having with it. After listening to me babble on, my friends started buying Mosins, too. One of those guys was my good buddy Paul up in Hollister. Paul picked up a real nice hex-receivered Izzy (Ivhevsk was one of the two Russian arsenals that produced Mosin-Nagant rifles; my first Mosin was made by Tula, the Russian other arsenal). Then, like most of us, Paul convinced himself one Mosin was not enough. Paul wanted a round receiver (the other Mosin receiver configuration).
After picking up his second Mosin-Nagant, Paul shot an email to me explaining that he found a couple of holes on the left side of the receiver filled in with threaded plugs, and that the outside of the receiver over these holes had been welded and filed smooth. He had researched it and, to his great surprise, Paul learned that his Mosin had been a former sniper rifle. It seems that after World War II, the Russians refurbed these guns (including their sniper weapons), and they returned the snipers to a non-sniper configuration by welding in the receiver’s scope mounting holes.
Let me go tangential for a minute and explain how the Russians made sniper rifles during World War II. Unlike us, the Russians did not build a sniper rifle from the ground up to be super accurate. They built more than 17 million Mosins, and they test fired every one. If a particular rifle was found to exceptionally accurate during their routine post-production test firing, it was marked to be a sniper rifle. And my good buddy Paul scored one.
I thought that was beyond cool. An actual Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle. It was Enemy at the Gates come home to roost. I was happy for Paul finding such a great rifle, and I was jealous. I thought that the entire Mosin thing was great…my getting into Mosins, Paul buying two Mosins based on my enthusiasm, and then finding out that one of his was a sniper rifle.
My interest was pumped, and remembering the scenes from Enemy at the Gates, I started looking for stuff on Vasily Zaitsev. That’s when I came upon these videos…
Enemy at the Gates certainly played up the Zaitsev-Koenig sniper duel, and so did The History Channel special. To hear it straight from the man himself (Vasily Zaitsev) it was just a chance encounter. Ah,Hollywood.
All the while this was going on, my interest in Mosins continued to develop. Just like Paul was convinced he needed a round receiver Mosin, I convinced myself I needed a hex receiver. Hey, at these prices, Mosin-Nagant rifles were like potato chips. You couldn’t have just one. So I found a 1935 hex receiver Izzy at Big 5 (Ivhevsk was the other Russian arsenal that built Mosins), I pulled out my credit card, I waited my obligatory People’s Republik of Kalifornia 10 days, and it was mine. The bore on the new-to-me ’35 Izzy was about in the same condition as the 1940 rifle, which is to say it looked like it had been rode hard and put away wet. Maybe I’m being too kind. It looked like a sewer pipe.
Then, on a motorcycle ride through Big Bear, California, I stopped at their Big 5. Like most Big 5 stores, the kids that worked there didn’t know much about these rifles, and the one rifle they had on display looked pretty decrepit. I asked the same question I always did when seeing a rifle on the sales rack, and they dutifully pulled out the other Mosins they had in their safe. To make a long story short, I found another 1935 hex receiver rifle with all matching numbers and I pulled the trigger (figuratively speaking) on that one, too. Another 10 days went by and I made the trek back up to Big Bear to pick up my latest Pringle.
The next day I went to the range with all three of my Mosins – the first 1940 Tula, the second 1935 Izzy with a hex receiver, and my latest 1935 hex receiver Tula (the Big Bear rifle). Of the three, I had previously only fired the 1940 Tula.
The Big Bear Mosin, waiting to surprise me.Same rifle, different side…
I shot the first two Mosins, and they were good shooters. Then I tried the Big Bear Tula, and at first, I thought the accuracy was terrible. My first shot was on the paper at 50 yards, but my second shot had missed the paper completely (that’s how it looked through the spotting scope). I fired a third round and that one was satisfyingly only about 3/8 of an inch away from the first. I walked downrange to inspect the target, and wowee!
My first three sniper rifle shots…two went through one hole!
That second shot wasn’t off the paper…it went through the same hole as the first shot! Thinking that this was just a fluke, I fired another group of three shots, with similar results! Wowee again! With open sights, this was iron sight accuracy I just wasn’t used to. It was stellar. Bear in mind these were the first shots I had put through this rifle. I was elated.
Knowing that this Tula was a shooter, I took the rifle apart later that day to give it a good cleaning. I noticed the little nicks and dings you see when you do this sort of thing, including what looked like painted over weld spatter on the left exterior of the receiver. Even though Paul had explained the findings on his sniper rifle to me, it never occurred to me what I was working with. I didn’t think about sniper rifles; I just thought that due to this particular rifle’s condition it probably saw action in World War II and the Russian refurb arsenal did the best they could to clean it up. And I knew it was a shooter. The thing was just flat accurate. Amazingly so.
I snapped a bunch of photos when I reassembled the Tula, and here’s the money shot…
Lots of markings. The red arrows point to the sniper designation. The star means the rifle was manufactured at the Tula arsenal.
I didn’t know what all the markings on it meant; I simply liked the photo and I posted it on one of the Mosin Internet forums.
Well, the Mosin forum lit up, and the comments started pouring in. The first one was a simple one-word comment:
Sniper.
Hmmm. How do you know that, I posted, watching more comments pour in about my Mosin being a sniper.
It’s the markings that look like a C and an N, the forum dudes told me. One guy wrote “Look inside the receiver and you’ll see the two plugs on the left side…I know they’ll be there.”
Wow, before I even looked, it all came together for me. The weld spatter on the outside of the receiver. The overall condition of the rifle (rode hard, put away wet, definitely not pristine). I pulled the bolt back, looked inside, and there they were…the plugged holes where the sniper scope used to be. Awesome! I had hit the jackpot, just like Paul did!
So this whole Mosin Sniper thing really had my attention. I poked around on the Internet a bit more and these photos showed up…
Roza Shanina
That’s Roza Shanina, “the unseen terror of East Prussia,” holding a Mosin-Nagant sniper rifle. She’s credited with 59 kills during World War II. Her story is fascinating and would make for a great book. It all sounds like a hell of a story.
You’ll notice there’s a scope on Roza Shanina’s rifle, which is what the sniper rifles had. The mount for it required two threaded holes on the receiver, the two holes the Russians plugged when they refurbed the rifles. The sniper rifles also had a longer, downturned bolt handle that allowed the shooter to work the bolt with the scope mounted. All very cool stuff. The Stephen Hunter novel references to a fictionalized Shanina are oblique and like most novels, some of the technical stuff is wrong. But it’s a great read.
You can still buy Mosin-Nagant rifles, but the prices are climbing sharply and these rifles are not as readily available as they were just two or three years ago That’s probably a good thing, because my credit card can stay hidden away in my wallet. But I still like to look, and if I see a Mosin on the rack in any gun store, I’ll check the receiver for the sniper markings and the two weld plugs where the scope used to be. I haven’t seen a single one since I scored mine, and that’s a satisfying feeling.
