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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When good buddy Jim and I became interested in Mosin-Nagant rifles about 10 years ago, we bought a few boxes of PRVI-Partizan 7.62x54R ammunition mostly to get the brass so we could reload it. Boy, oh boy, that stuff was stupid hot.
A 91/30 Mosin-Nagant rifle. These are awesome firearms. They used to be plentiful and inexpensive. Now they are neither.
We could feel it in the recoil and the pressure pulse of each shot. After a few rounds we called it quits. I didn’t want to fire any more through my Mosin and neither did Jim. The primers were sharply flattened, the bolts were hard to open, and the brand-new cartridge cases were fracturing.
A fractured case mouth in a factory round that was clearly loaded way too hot.You think this might be a sign of excess pressure?
We only fired two or three rounds from each box, but that was enough. Prior to that point, Jim and I had fired only our reloads, and those were about in the middle of what the Hornady manual recommended. The PRVI-Partizan ammo was way hotter than our reloads.
When we returned home, I grabbed RCBS inertial bullet puller and pulled the bullet out of one of the cartridges.
An RCBS inertial bullet puller.You put the loaded cartridge in the end, tighten the cap, and whack the other end on a hard surface a few times. Inertia drives the bullet out.
I thought maybe the bullets were slightly oversize and that was causing an overpressure condition. But they weren’t. They miked in at 0.312 inches (right where they were supposed to be).
Bullet diameter: Check!
I dumped the powder from the cartridge case and it weighed 52.7 grains. I had no idea what the powder was, but the powders I had loaded 7.62x54R ammo with in the past (primarily IMR 4320) had always been at 43.0 to 43.7 grains. My reloads were hard-hitting and accurate, and they felt about right to me. They recoiled and had a muzzle blast roughly comparable to a .308 Winchester, which is about what the 7.62x54R Russian cartridge is ballistically equivalent to. I didn’t see any powders in my reloading manual that went north of 50.0 grains. Nope, this PRVI ammo was just way too hot. Stupid hot.
The PRVI-Partizan propellant was a stick powder, but I had no idea what it was. I just know they loaded too much of it.My RCBS powder scale. I’m old school.52.7 grains of whatever it was. And it was stupid hot!
I pulled the rest bullets with the RCBS inertial puller, dumped all the PRVI propellant (whatever it was) in my RCBS powder dispenser, and reloaded them with the original PRVI bullets, brass, and primers with a dispensed charge of 44.0 grains.
I reloaded the disassembled ammo with 44.0 grains of the mystery PRVI propellant.
I wasn’t trying to be too cute or too scientific; I just wanted something that filled the case to about the same level as my IMR 4320 load. I didn’t have more of the PRVI propellant, so I wasn’t seeking the most accurate load. Jim and I had only bought the ammo because we wanted the brass. We just wanted to shoot it up without blowing up our rifles.
My reloaded new ammo.
That revised PRVI load worked well. It fired, it expanded the brass to obturate adequately, and I now had once-fired PRVI brass in good shape. The revised PRVI load was reasonably accurate enough, too. I think somebody at the PRVI ammo factory just wasn’t paying attention.
These guys were oblivious to what was going on around them. They could have been workers at the PRVI ammo factory.
The next day when Jim and I were on the range, a funny thing happened: A small group of deer wandered out in front of us, oblivious to our presence and the fact that they made an easy target. But it wasn’t deer season, were didn’t have our licenses with us, they were the wrong sex, and bagging one could result in a $40,000 fine here in California. Jim and I sat quietly, and the deer walked to within 30 feet of us.
I used to not think too much of Mosin Nagant rifles. They looked cheap, they were crusted with cosmoline, and how good could a rifle be if it was made in Russia and sold at Big 5 for under a hundred bucks? (That under a hundred bucks thing, incidentally, is no more…prices on these rifles have climbed substantially.)
It was a grand day on the range with two old warhorses…a Mosin Nagant and a 1903 Springfield. It’s hard to say which one I like more.
Then one day after I taught an engineering creativity class at Cal Poly, one of my students approached me to ask if I was a shooter. He had noticed the 1909 Mauser on my book.
A Modelo 1909 Argentinean Mauser on the cover of Unleashing Engineering Creativity. Don’t wait for the movie. Buy the book!
I told him I was and we talked about the Mauser a bit. He told me that he and his father had recently purchased a Mosin Nagant and they were having a lot of fun with it. That got my attention for a couple of reasons. The first reason was that prior to that, I hadn’t spoken with anybody who owned a Mosin. The second reason was that I always like hearing from young folks who enjoy shooting. This was a young man who was enjoying the Mosin he and his dad owned. You don’t hear that too much these days, and I enjoyed the discussion and this young engineering student’s enthusiasm.
The next time I was in a gun store….well, you can guess where this story is going. I pulled the trigger, and 10 days later, I bought my first Mosin home.
20 rounds from my Mosin at 100 yards with my accuracy load: 43.7 grains of IMR 4320 and the Hornady 150-grain jacketed bullet. I shot this in one of our informal West Gun Club Milsurp matches two or three years ago. The shots crept up as the barrel heated. Still, that’s not a bad 100-yard group from an 80-year-old combat infantryman’s rifle.
The first time I went to the range with the Mosin, my opinion changed completely. The rifle was reliable, it was fun to shoot, and wow, it was accurate. Don’t let a Mosin’s appearance and price fool you. Trust me on this: The Russians knew what they were doing. These are fine rifles.
My Mosin was made in the Soviet Union’s Tula arsenal in 1940 and it has matching serial numbers on the receiver, the butt plate, and the bolt. The trigger guard/magazine is what we call a forced match. That means it had a different serial number, but Ivan struck through it and stamped a new serial number to match the others. That didn’t concern me at all. What I worry about are the serial numbers on the bolt and the receiver. If they match, the headspace is most likely good. If they don’t, you’ll want to make the seller show you with headspace gages that the headspace is within spec.
I’ve done a bit of work to my Mosin…glass bedding, a trigger job, and a TruOil refinish. I’ve also done a fair amount of load development (the last time my Mosin saw factory ammo it was in the hands of a Russian soldier; I’ve never shot factory ammo in my Mosin).
Note the star signifying Tula Arsenal production, and the 2339 serial number. Mosins will have another serial number on the side of the receiver stamped there by the importer, but that’s not the one you need to worry about.The bolt serial number matches the receiver serial number on my rifle, and that’s good. If the serial numbers in these two locations don’t match, you should always check that the headspace is within specification.Note that the butt plate serial number also matches. That’s cool, but it’s not necessary from a headspace or functionality perspective.A forced match. Ivan grabbed a trigger guard (the trigger guard and the magazine floorplate are a subassembly) that wasn’t on the rifle when it was originally manufactured at the Tula Arsenal in 1940. Nyet problemski thought the arsenal rebuild crew; we’ll just strike through the old serial number and add the new one.
My 7.62x54R ammo “go to” accuracy load is 43.7 grains of IMR 4320 under a Hornady 150-grain jacketed bullet. That load groups exceedingly well at 100 yards. But that’s when I can find the components I want, and that’s a tough thing to do these days. IMR 4320 is no longer made and it’s hard to find bullets, primers, and brass.
Fortunately, I have always tended to overbuy components and when I spot a good deal on something I think I can use, I scoop it up. When the pandemic and civil unrest shortages emerged a couple of years ago, I didn’t feel the impact from a components perspective. I had plenty of 7.62x54R PRVI brass, I had primers, and I had bullets. That was two years ago, though, and this is now. I shot up a lot of what I had, including my Hornady .312-inch diameter jacketed bullets. But when components were available back in those good old pre-pandemic, pre-Portland-anarchy days, I had spotted a couple of bags of PRVI Partizan 150-grain jacketed bullets. Being the curious pack rat sort of fellow I am, I bought them.
PRVI Partizan (or PPU) 150-grain jacketed softpoint bullets. If you see these, buy them. They’re good. If you see these and don’t buy them, let me know and I will.
Most recently, my components dealer had a few powders on the shelves, and I picked up some new propellants. I wanted to see if I could work up a good load with the PRVI bullets for my Mosin. One propellant was IMR 4166, which is a powder designed to prevent copper fouling. I’ve already tried it in a couple of 30 06 loads and I was happy with the results, and I wanted to see how it would do in the Mosin. Another was Ballsy 2 (that powder is designated BL(C)2, but everybody calls it Ballsy 2). IMR 4166 is a relatively new powder. Ballsy 2 has been around for decades, but I had never used it. When I saw it, I grabbed a couple of bottles. The time to buy components is when you see them, especially these days.
Ballsy 2 is a spherical powder. It meters through the powder dispenser well.IMR 4166 is an extruded rod powder that looks a lot like 4320 and 4064. It doesn’t meter as well as Ballsy 2, but it meters well enough.
I also wanted to try my previous accuracy load (43.7 grains of IMR 4320) with the PPU bullets first. It didn’t take long to load the ammo I wanted…my previous accuracy load with IMR 4320, two load levels of Ballsy 2, and two load levels of IMR 4166.
Seating the PPU bullets in my RCBS Rockchucker press.
After charging the cases and seating the PPU bullets, I then labeled the ammo and it was off to the range.
7.62x54R reloaded ammunition. It looks good. It shoots well, too.
That labeling thing is important. I always label my ammo as soon as I finish loading it. I can’t rely on my memory to know what I loaded.
Loaded and labeled. Reloading is as much fun as shooting, I think.
I shot all of my targets at 50 yards as a first look, and I had 10 rounds each. The first target I shot printed a little low, so I raised the rear sight a couple of notches and that put me in the black. The Mosin has great sights.
The rear sight on a Mosin Nagant. You slide the slider forward to raise the rear sight.The Mosin has a crisp, easy to use front sight post. I actually prefer the sights on the Mosin to most modern rifles (I’m not a brass bead fan). Simple is better, and because the Mosin’s length, it’s very easy to get a crisp front sight picture.
How did I do and what loads worked well? Here are the targets:
The bullseye on the left was shot with a 1903 Springfield (covered in another blog). The other four bullseyes were Mosin targets with IMR 4320 propellant.Mosin results with two levels of BL(C)2 propellant.Mosin groups with IMR 4166 propellant. Everything shot well in the Mosin.
The results from the targets shown here are tabulated below.
The bottom line is that my former accuracy load (with Hornady 150-grain jacketed soft point bullets) didn’t do as well with the PRVI Partizan bullets, but the PRVI bullets shot very well with BL(C)2 and IMR 4166. That’s good because even though I have a good stash of IMR 4320, it’s no longer in production and the other powders (BL(C)2 and IMR 4166) are available and they are accurate with the PPU bullets. Good times.
About now you might be wondering…how can I get a Mosin-Nagant rifle? It’s not as easy as it used to be. We’re not importing them from Russia like we used to, and you can’t pick them up for cheap at places like Big 5 any more. I felt they were exceptional bargains at those earlier price levels and I bought several (none are for sale), including a sniper Mosin I’ll write about one of these days. I checked on Gunbroker.com and you can still find Mosins, but they seem to be starting north of $300 now, and going up sharply from there. I think they’re still a bargain, even at those prices.
R. Lee Ermey was the real deal. A United States Marine and a drill instructor hired to advise the actors in Full Metal Jacket who was so impressive in showing the phonies how to be a real Marine the folks in charge hired him to play the role (or so the story goes; there are various versions floating around). We’ve all seen the movie; I watch it every time it airs.
What grabbed my attention is that the late R. Lee Ermey’s gun collection is about to go up for auction. I looked through the guns listed out of curiosity to see what Gunny Lee had, and he had good taste in firearms. Lee Ermey owned a lot of shotguns, a few handguns, and a few rifles.
Here are a few of the Gunny’s guns that got my attention.
The first is a Colt Python that is part of a three gun cased set Colt offered several years ago (the set included a Python, a Single Action Army, and a black powder revolver). What’s interesting to me is that Gunnery Sergeant Ermey used his Python (it’s got the scratches and finish wear showing that).
Another one that’s interesting is the Model 62 Winchester. I have one of those that my Dad left to me; he bought it when he was a kid. One of these days I’ll do a blog on it.
And one more of the many that are going on the block. It’s a 1932 Mosin. If you’ve spent any time on the ExNotes blog, you know I love shooting my Mosins. Gunnery Sergeant Ermey was a man who knew his guns.
You can view the complete Lee Ermey auction here. I’ll be watching the auction as it unfolds, especially on the Mosin pictured above. It’s likely it will quickly go beyond my pay grade, but you never know.
I went to the range yesterday with two rifles, a Mosin-Nagant 91/30 and an M1 Garand. The Mosin was the Soviet Infantry’s standard rifle during World War II (it’s been around in various forms since 1891), and it’s one I’ve always enjoyed shooting. The Garand is a US weapon developed in the 1930s and first used by our troops in World War II. It is a semi-automatic rifle, which gave us a tremendous advantage over the enemy forces we fought (their rifles were bolt action).
My Mosin-Nagant 91/30. I refinished the stock, glass bedded the action, and developed a load shown in the photo below. This rifle is superbly accurate.
I enjoy getting out to the range, and yesterday was a beautiful day. Sunny, cold, and not too windy. I shot on the 100-yard range, first with the Mosin and my standard load for that rifle.
There are only four holes, but the one just below the “10” is actually two shots. This rifle is so accurate it is almost boring.
After five shots, I put the Mosin away. It’s almost too easy with that rifle. I had a good target, I thought I would get a photo for the blog, and I was eager to try the Garand.
My Garand is kluge rifle assembled with parts from a series of mismatched manufacturers. The receiver is a CAI (considered to be of inferior quality to the ones made by the standard US suppliers Winchester, Harrington and Richardson, and Springfield Arsenal), the trigger group is from Beretta, and the barrel is a 1955 RSC (presumed to be Italian). I’ll state up front I don’t know a lot about Garands, and the reasons I bought this one (my first and only Garand) is I liked the finish, the price seemed right, and the money was burning a hole in my pocket that day.
My mutt Garand. I enjoy shooting this rifle. There’s a lot going on with each shot, and it’s powerful.
Shooting the Garand well has been a challenge for me. I like shooting with iron sights, but I’m a post-and-slot guy. I haven’t had a ton of experience with aperture sights, and that’s taking some getting used to. Then there’s the issue of a decent load. I’ve been playing with different loads for the Garand, and I found three loads that work well. On my last outing, I had a few shots that were low left on the target outside the bullseye, and one of our readers asked if those shots were either the first or last shots from each clip. I didn’t know at the time because I shot each en bloc clip of 8 rounds without looking at the target after each shot.
My objective yesterday was to answer the above question, and sure enough, I did. My shots grouped well except for the first shot from each clip. I shot three clips (for a total of 24 rounds), and in each clip, the first shot hit low left.
My Garand’s performance at 100 yards. There are 24 shots on this target. The rifle groups well with this load, but the first shot from each en bloc clip of 8 rounds goes low and to the left.
The challenge now is to determine the reason why that first shot from each clip is going low. I posted the target you see above in a Garand group asking for input on why the first round from each clip went low, and as you might guess, the answers were all over the map. Most responses served only to illustrate that people don’t read very well, but a few were informative. A couple said their rifles behaved the same way and it was predictable enough (as is the case with mine) to allow for simply aiming high right for the first shot from each clip to put all 8 rounds in the black. One response suggested that the bolt may not be closing fully, as the first round is chambered by manually releasing the op rod, while all subsequent rounds are chambered when the action is cycled by the gun gases. I think that guy is on to something, and that will be where my future focus is going to be. If you have any ideas, I’d sure like to hear them. Leave a comment if you have the answer, and thanks in advance for any inputs.
The Mosin-Nagant 91/30. These rifles are extremely accurate. This one is 84 years old.
I’m a Mosin-Nagant fan, as you know from reading our prior posts on these fine old Russian warhorses. I’ve got two, one I use with jacketed bullets and one I use exclusively with cast bullets. Today’s blog focuses on reloading and using cast bullets in a Mosin.
So what’s the deal on cast bullets? If you reload, you can use either factory-produced, copper-jacketed bullets, or you can use cast bullets. Cast bullets are cast of lead, lubricated with an appropriate grease, and sometimes fitted with a gas check (a small copper cap on the back of the bullet).
The cast bullets I’ve settled on as best for my Mosin. These are 200-grain, gas-checked bullets made by a local caster. The gas check is the little copper cap at the base of the bullet. It prevents the propellant gases from melting the bullet’s base and minimizes barrel leading.
Folks who shoot cast bullets either buy the bullets or they cast them themselves. I used to cast bullets 40 years ago, but I found it easier just to buy them from folks who know what they are doing and avoid the hassles of melting lead, breathing the fumes, etc.
Cast bullets are a lot easier on both the rifle and the shooter. The softer metal (lead versus a copper jacket) is easier on the rifling and the lower velocities reduce recoil. The downsides are that the trajectory is more pronounced due to the lower velocities associated with cast bullets, and generally speaking, cast bullets are not as accurate as jacketed bullets. But that last bit sure isn’t the case here. My cast loads in the Mosin are every bit as accurate as jacketed loads, and the Mosin I use for cast bullets is another one of my all-time favorite rifles. It’s the rifle you see in the first photo of this blog, and in the photos below.
My Mosin-Nagant has been worked on a bit. I stripped and refinished the stock, I glass bedded the action, and I did a trigger job to lighten the pull and eliminate trigger creep. It’s a great shooter.The desirable hex receiver Mosin. The Mosin-Nagant is an extremely accurate milsurp rifle.
My cast bullet Mosin is just flat amazing. It regularly cloverleafs at 50 yards, and when I do my part, I’ll get groups under 2 inches at 100 yards. Yeah, I know, other folks talk about sub-minute-of-angle shooting at that distance, but we’re talking about iron sights and cast bullets here, folks, and it’s all being done with a rifle manufactured in 1935. And wow, can that 84-year-old puppy shoot…
Open sights, 50 yards, shooting from a benchrest at the West End Gun Club.
This kind of accuracy doesn’t just happen and it’s usually not attainable with factory ammunition. This is what you can get when you tailor the load to a particular rifle, and you can only do that if you reload. I developed the load used to shoot the targets you see above trying different propellants and propellant charges, different cartridge cases, and different cast bullets. The secret sauce? It’s this recipe right here…
My Mosin load. SR4759 is a powder that works well for reduced velocity and cast bullet loads. It’s no longer in production, but I have a stash. When I run out of SR4759, I’ll turn to a current production powder and start the development process all over again.
Good buddy Gresh suggested I do a piece on reloading, and I actually had done that already in the form of a video some time ago. What you’ll see in the video below is the reloading process. When you reload a cartridge, you lube the brass, resize it to its original dimensions, prime it, flare the case mouth (to accept the cast bullet), add the propellant, and seat the bullet. With a little bit of music taken directly from Enemy at the Gates (a movie in which the Mosin-Nagant rifle was the real star), take a look at what’s involved in reloading 7.62x54R ammo with cast bullets…
Shooting cast bullets in a rifle is a lot of fun. A good reference if you want to try loading with cast bullets is the Lyman Cast Bullet Handbook (it’s the one I use). If you never tried reloading you might think about getting into it, and if you’re already reloading, you might think about giving cast bullets a go.
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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.
