I recently happened into an 8-pound container of Red Dot propellant, something I had never used before. Powders had been hard to find for the last few years, so I jumped when I saw the Red Dot (not knowing what I would use it for). I knew that Red Dot is a good shotgun powder (Dad was a world class trapshooter and he used it), and I also knew it could be used for pistol cartridges. That was the extent of my knowledge, so I started researching this old school propellant.
Red Dot propellant. My cell phone camera and fluorescent lighting would have you thinking this powder should be named “Purple Dot,” but trust me, the flakes that appear to be purple in the above photo are really bright red.
What I learned about Red Dot was interesting. The Hercules powder company first released Red Dot in 1932, and it was primarily intended to be a shotshell powder for trap and skeet shooters. It’s a flake powder and it’s distinguishable by the red-dyed flakes mixed in with the black ones. It’s been updated at least a couple of times (one of the updates was to make it burn cleaner), but its kept its place as a relatively fast powder with a burn rate just slightly slower than Bullseye. For that reason, it also makes a great pistol powder, and most load manuals include recipes for practically everything from .25 ACP up to .45 Colt. I’m going to try it in .38 Special and .45 ACP, and maybe .44 Special. I think I can use it my old Star reloader, which is set up to throw 2.7 grains of Bullseye. I’ll check that out at some point in the future.
It turns out that among rifle cast bullet shooters (a space I inhabit), Red Dot is a preferred powder, so much so that 13.0 grains of it is informally (and apparently widely) known simply as “The Load.” The conventional wisdom is that 13.0 grains of Red Dot behind any cast bullet in any .30 caliber rifle (.308, .30 06, 7.62×54 Russian, 7.65 Belgian, .303 British, and more), the .375 H&H, and the .45 70 is a reliable and accurate load. With my 8-pound bottle of Red Dot and “The Load” (i..e, 13.0 grains of Red Dot), I should be good for something north of 4,307 rounds. That should keep me busy for a while. I’ll be playing with cast loads using “The Load” in a Mosin-Nagant, a Springfield 1903, a Modelo 1909 Argentinean Mauser, and probably the .45 70. When I do, I’ll share the results here.
The surplus Mosin-Nagant rifles that were everywhere (until Obama was in office) were the best gun deals ever; now, you hardly see them anywhere, and when you do, they go for big bucks. You used to be able to buy a Mosin for $79 at Big 5. I started playing around with them about 15 years ago. Today, when you see one, it’s not unusual for the store to have them marked at $500 (or more).
One of mine is a laminated stock Mosin 91/30, which is not seen too often. I bought it about 10 years ago from Gunrunner’s in Duarte for $239 and stuck it in the safe. Until today, I had not fired it. It’s a Tula (there were two makers; Tula was one) with a round receiver. It was made originally in 1939. After the war, the Soviets refurbed most of them and a very few were fitted with laminated stocks. I’ve never seen another one on the range. It’s a pretty rifle, and I like the look of it. Laminated wood stocks are usually much more stable than a standard stock, so I think that’s helping this rifle’s accuracy.
My laminated Mosin has the usual nicks and dings. The serial numbers all match (stock, magazine, bolt, receiver, and bayonet). The trigger is heavy, gritty, and just God-awful. For the groups you see here, I used my new favorite Mosin load (42.0 grains of IMR 3031 and the PRVI PPU 150-grain jacketed softpoint boattail bullet).
The rifle, I think, shoots well (even with its terrible trigger, and it was pretty windy out there the day I shot the groups you see above). Because I am a cheap SOB, I reused a target from a previous range session with my .375 H&H, so you can ignore the group to low right of the bullseye. With my laminated-stock Mosin, I first shot 6 rounds at 50 yards to see where the rifle was printing (my aim point was at 6:00 on the bullseye). Then I moved the target out to 100 yards and fired another 10 rounds using the same aimpoint. The 50-yard group measures 1 1/8 inch; the 100-yard group measures 2 13/16 inch. That’s not too bad for the first time out, and not too bad for an old guy using iron sights.
My rear sight is already all the way down. I am going to look for a front sight with a taller post (if you know who might offer these, please let me know). The rifle probably has a 500-meter battlesight zero (or whatever the Russians used), and it was probably set up with the bayonet installed (which makes the rifle shoot to the right without the bayonet). I can adjust the windage by drifting the front sight; I can’t lower the elevation without getting a taller front post.
You might be wondering what the bore looks like on this rifle. I can show you:
There are some takeaways from the above photos:
The bore is better in some spots than in others.
When these rifles saw action in World War II (as this one probably did), the ammo used had corrosive primers. The effects of that are visible.
Even Mosin-Nagant rifles with funky bores can shoot well.
The bore cleaning copper fouling solvent I use, Patch-Out, does a good job. It works a lot better than Hoppes No. 9. You don’t see any copper in the photos above.
Incidentally, if you’ve never seen the movie Enemy at the Gates, it’s one of the best movies ever (in my opinion). The Mosin-Nagant rifle plays a starring role. The opening scenes are really well done. Take a look:
I’ve written a lot about the Mosin-Nagant 91/30 rifle. I love these old rifles. Here are my earlier posts:
I recently bought an 8-lb container of IMR 3031 on the theory that the time to buy something is when you see it, and I’ve been researching loads for various cartridges using that powder.
IMR 3031, and lots of it.
IMR 3031 doesn’t appear too often in modern reloading manuals, which struck me as odd because when I first started playing with things that go bang it seemed like 3031 was an almost universal propellant, good for whatever ails you. So I dug out some reloading manuals from the 1970s, and as I expected, 3031 showed up for a bunch of different cartridges. One of them is 7.62x54R, and I wanted to see if I could develop a decent load for my Mosin-Nagant. I should point out at this point that there’s nothing special about my 1940 Tula Mosin (other than the fact that it’s one of my favorite rifles). In fact, the barrel looks more like a sewer pipe than a precision shooting instrument.
My Mosin-Nagant’s bore. It ain’t pretty.
I loaded the ammo for this test series with the PPU Partizan 150-grain, 0.311-inch diameter, jacketed softpoint boattail bullet. These are relatively inexpensive bullets (they go for around $.30 each from Graf’s, which I guess is cheap by today’s standards). These bullets pop up for sale occasionally, and a while back I bought 500 of them.
PPU bullets. They are relatively inexpensive. Sometimes they go on sale.Three different 7.62x54R reloads. From left to right, it’s the Hornady V-Max bullet, the PPU jacketed softpoint bullet, and a cast lead bullet. I shot only the PPU bullets for this blog.
My testing consisted of five different IMR 3031 loads to see how they performed at 100 yards. The drill was to fire 10 rounds each at charges of 39.0, 40.0, 41.0, 42.0, and 43.0 grains. I used PRVI Partizan brass and Winchester primers, and I seated the bullets for an overall cartridge length of 2.790 inches with no crimp. Here’s what I found:
The chrono and accuracry results. 42.0 grains of IMR 3031 seems to be the sweet spot.A 100-yard target group with the 42.0 grain IMR 3031 load.
The sweet spot appears to be right about 41.0 to 42.0 grains of IMR 3031 (the target above is with 42.0 grains). The standard deviation is smaller for the 42.0-grain load with the same group size, so that’s what I’m going with. Recoil was moderate with all loads; none of the loads showed any pressure signs. None of the above were compressed charges. The 43.0-grain load had a smaller standard deviation, but the group opened up and shifted to the left, so I’m going to call the 42.0-grain load good. It’s as good as the groups I was getting with IMR 4320, which had previously been my Mosin accuracy load.
Before any of you out there in the blogosphere get your shorts in a knot about using older reloading manuals, I realize the manual companies (and others who parrot them) advise against doing so. The theory is that the propellant formulations have changed and what the old manuals show as a safe load may not necessarily be so today. I get it. That’s why I start testing at the bottom of the range and work up, looking for pressure signs along the way. The current and the 2007 Hornady manuals do not list IMR 3031 for the 7.62x54R. The 1973 Hornady manual (the first one I ever bought when I was just getting started in this game) shows a max of 44.4 grains with a 150-grain bullet, which is why I stopped my initial testing at 43.0 grains. None of the loads I tested showed any pressure signs and recoil was moderate with all loads. I think the new manuals feature new powders because the powder companies pay for the manuals to include their newest stuff. I don’t think they do it because the powders are necessarily better. Maybe I’m wrong. I’m a cynical old fart.
I should point out that my findings are not rigorous for two reasons:
I’m not that good a shot, and
My eyes are not what they used to be. It’s getting increasingly more difficult to get the front sight in sharp focus (ah, to be 72 again…). I do the best I can.
But I’m still out there having fun, and that’s what important.
I’ve written a lot about the Mosin-Nagant 91/30 rifle. Here are my earlier posts:
One of the problems with getting old is that you lose friends along the way. I’m not as good as I should be staying in touch with people, and I recently learned that Rick Courtright, one of the guys I’d sent a few emails to without receiving responses passed away a couple of years ago. I was sad when I learned of Rick’s passing.
I first met Rick through the Internet on the Ruger forum. I had posted something (I can’t remember what), Rick responded, and we started sending messages back and forth. I learned that Rick lived only a few towns over, and I invited him to our monthly military surplus rifle matches. We became friends.
Rick impressed me with his complete lack of pretentiousness and his willingness to share whatever he knew about shooting and reloading. I enjoyed his friendship and I can still hear his voice. A rabbi once told me that folks we’ve lost live on in our minds, and I guess that’s true.
I found a few photos of Rick at our informal West End Gun Club milsurp matches, and I thought I’d share them here. Those were fun matches and fun days. The matches were always followed up by lunch at a favorite local Mexican restaurant. Good times, those were. Rest in peace, Rick. You are missed.
In an earlier blog on my 458 Win Mag No. 1, I mentioned that I used a friend’s Garmin chronograph and decided I needed one. I pulled the trigger and I’ve been using my Garmin constantly since I bought it. I’ve shot rifle with jacketed and cast bullets and I’ve shot several handguns to see how it performed. The bottom line? Garmin hit a home run with their new chrono. Is it perfect? No. But it’s so good I can live with the few minor things I think could be improved.
The Garmin has a bunch of features (and I’ll get into them in a minute), but let my start by saying the most important feature is ease of use. Basically, you turn the thing on, make a few screen inputs, set it on the shooting bench, and you’re good to go. There’s no screwing around with setting up screens in front of the bench, running wires, or any of other stuff you need to do with earlier chronographs. It’s plug and play, but you don’t even have to plug it in.
Operation
Operating the Garmin is straightforward, but it’s not entirely intuitive. The On-Off button is one of four buttons on top of the device. Garmin labels it “Power.” Touch it once and the device is on; hold it down for two seconds and it turns off.
The buttons up top. They are a little confusing at first.
Getting to what you want to shoot involves scrolling through a series of screens and menu options via two of the buttons on top of the Garmin. One points up; the other points down, and that’s how you move from one choice to another on each data screen. Basically, the choices are rifle or handgun (there’s also choices for archery, but I’m not Robin Hood), and their selection is governed by projectile velocity. After navigating up or down on that screen, pressing the OK button gets the next screen up. That asks if you the Garmin to calculate power level (bullet energy). I always tell it no, but getting through that requires pressuring the down button and then the okay button again. Then another screen pops up, advising chronograph placement with regard to gun location. Then it’s necessary to press the OK button once more. That gun placement screen is unnecessary, and it just necessitates pressing more buttons and scrolling through more screens. Finally, the device is ready to use. It’s a lot of button pushing and scrolling. Granted, it is way, way easier than screwing around placing chronograph screens downrange, aligning them with your bullets’ flight path, and making electrical connections, and it’s easier than placing what used to be the most modern chrono (before the Garmin came along) out in front of the firing line. The Garmin is a major step forward in the chrono game.
Once the string has been fired (as many as the shooter wants to include in the string), the scrolling and selecting game starts anew (along with pushing the back, up and down, and OK buttons). I thought it would become intuitive for me, but I’m not the brightest bulb in the box and it seems I have to relearn it every time I go to the range (and I’m on the range at least a couple of times each week).
Charging and Battery Life
Charging is done via a laptop. The chronograph comes with a cord that connects the chrono to your laptop, and that’s how it charges. One charge is good for a couple of range sessions (or more, depending on how much you shoot). Although I didn’t time it, I’m guessing it took maybe an hour to fully recharge.
Downloading Data
I thought the cord connecting the computer to the Garmin would allow me to download the data from each range “session” (a session is a string of shots for which you wish to record data), but if there’s a way to do that, I couldn’t find it. I could the files for each range session, but they were in a format I couldn’t read. What I can do, though, is Bluetooth connect the Garmin to my cellphone. Then, once the data is in my cellphone, I can send the data (in an Excel spreadsheet) to my laptop via email. That’s more bother than I wanted to mess around with, though. I just look at the results on the Garmin screen.
Packaging and the Optional Case
The Garmin chrono doesn’t come with a carrying case. It should. I had to spring for an optional $15, cheaply constructed carrying case that probably cost about 25 cents to make in China. But I’m glad it did. It does a decent job protecting the Garmin and storing the charging cable.
The extra cost case. It ought to be included with the chronograph.
A Few Pistol Examples
I shot three handguns to assess how the Garmin would perform. I thought I could do this at my indoor pistol range (I belong to a couple of gun ranges). The indoor range is usually crowded, and that highlighted one of the Garmin’s weak spots. Even though there are barriers between shooting positions, the Garmin was consistently capturing data from the guy shooting on either side of me. As I had no interest in what they were doing, I picked up my marbles and to the West End Gun Club, an outdoor range.
1911s in .45 ACP, 9mm, and .22. The 1911 is one of the best pistol designs in the world. It’s been around for more than a century.
On the outdoor range there was more room between shooting positions, and the Garmin picking up another shooter’s bullets was not an issue. I shot and captured data for three different handguns. All were 1911s. I’ve written about them before (a .45 ACP Springfield, a 9mm Springfield, and a .22 GSG), but now I can bring you chrono data. My plan was to shoot 50 rounds from each pistol and record the data, shooting at the same silhouette target at 25 yards.
1911 .22 Long Rifle GSG
The GSG .22 Long Rifle 1911. There’s a lot of plastic in this gun, but wowee, does it ever shoot!
The first pistol up was the .22 GSG with Federal Champion ammo. It’s cheap ammo and it’s advertised as having a muzzle velocity of 1260 feet per second, but that’s probably from a much longer rifle barrel. I expected it to be slower from the 1911 and it was.
Federal .22 Long Rifle High Velocity Ammo. The GSG needs the high velocity ammo to function reliably.I ordered a bunch of ammo when a court found California’s mail order ban unconstitutional. It’s since been overturned, but I brought in a couple thousand rounds when justice prevailed.The Federal ammo is advertised at 1260 feet per second, but that’s out of a rifle. The chronograph doesn’t lie.
Here’s what the Garmin revealed for the 50 .22 Long Rifle shots fired from the 1911.
1020 versus 1260 feet per second. My lower velocities were due to shooting this ammo in a handgun rather than a rifle.
The velocity was lower than advertised, but as mentioned above, I fired from a 5-inch-barreled handgun and not a rifle.
1911 9mm Springfield
I then turned to my Springfield 9mm 1911, which is one of my all time favorite pistols.
My 9mm Springfield Armory 1911. This is a great handgun.
I fired another 50 rounds through it with my handloaded ammo (the load I used is the 124-grain roundnose plated Xtreme bullet and 5.5 grains of Accurate No. 5 powder. That ammo had about the same average velocity as the .22, but the extreme spread and the standard deviation were lower (a good thing). Accuracy at 25 yards was about the same as the .22 1911.
1035 feet per second ain’t too shabby. I could go higher by running a hotter load, but this one is hot enough and it’s accurate.
You may have noticed that the Garmin only picked up 49 of the 50 shots I fired. I don’t know why it did that.
1911 .45 ACP Springfield
For my final quick look handgun trials I used another Springfield 1911, this time chambered in .45 ACP.
One of the great ones: A .45 ACP 1911. This is also a Springfield Armory handgun.
The load was 4.6 grains of Bullseye under Gardner 185-grain cast semi-wadcutter bullets. This has always been a great target load in any of my 1911s, and it proved that to be the case again. I was not shooting for accuracy; I was simply showing 50 rounds through each of the three 1911s to wring out the Garmin. On the target, the GSG .22 and the Springfield 9mm were grouping at about 10 inches (again, I wasn’t try to put them through the same hole during this test). But that .45? Wow. It put 50 rounds through one ragged hold about 4 inches in diameter. If I had put any effort into it, that hole would have been smaller.
A .45-caliber bullet at 850 feet per second will settle most arguments. It’s accurate, too.
You can see the inherent accuracy in the .45 load I used in this portion of the test. Check out the very small standard deviation and extreme spread. Both are much smaller than the corresponding values for the 9mm and .22 handguns.
Mosin-Nagant Cast Bullets
I next wanted to try cast bullets in the Mosin-Nagant 91/30 rifle. I knew the load I was using (a 173-grain cast bullet and SR 4759 powder) to be an accurate load from previous forays.
I love the Mosin-Nagant. There are certainly more elegant milsurp rifles out there. I haven’t found any that shoot better than a Mosin-Nagant.Cast bullets loaded in 7.62x54R cases. This is a fun load.Fast enough, and no leading. This is a great load.
As I said above, I knew this to be an accurate load, and the Garmin showed why: It had a l0w standard deviation.
Mini 14 Jacketed Bullets
Finally, I wanted to see how the Garmin would do with a small bullet moving at higher speeds, so I ran a few shots through my faithful Mini 14.
You don’t see many Mini 14 rifles with wood like this one. It’s stunning, and it can be surprisingly accurate with the right load.
My accuracy loads for the Mini 14 have been a Hornady 55-grain full metal jacket boattail bullet and a max load of either IMR 4320 or ARComp. The results you see below are for the IMR load. You might be wondering why the velocity is a bit less than the expected 3000 feet per second speeds attained with a .223 cartridge. My Mini 14 has a 16-inch barrel.
The Garmin had no difficulty picking up those little 55-grain bullets flying away at 2800+ feet per second.
The results looked good to me. Those five shots went into less than 2 inches at 100 yards. Four of the five went into less than an inch.
A Mini 14? Are you kidding me? I never joke about my work, folks.
The Bottom Line
There’s the good, the bad, and the ugly. The good is the Garmin chronograph has upped the ante by bringing an easily-used chronograph to the masses. There’s no screwing around wires or screens, and you don’t have to get in front of the firing line to set it up. This is a major breakthrough, and it’s what prompted me to finally pull the trigger on a chrono (well, that and my good buddy Walt telling me that any serious shooter and reloader needed a chrono).
The bad? There’s not much. I mentioned the tendency to pick up rounds fired from an adjacent lane on an indoor handgun range. I think the screen scrolling drill could be simplified a bit. The chrono occasionally failed to pick up a round (but that could be me not positioning it correctly). I think the chrono should allow downloading data sessions directly to a computer (without having to Bluetooth the thing to a cell phone and then email it to myself). These nits wouldn’t stop me from buying one, and they shouldn’t stop you, either. I love my Garmin chronograph. The Garmin engineers did a good job.
What surprised me (but maybe didn’t surprise me too much) was that the lowest standard deviation did not necessarily result in the tightest group. Barrel harmonics, bullet issues, and the guy behind the trigger also have a huge influence. I suspect the so-called accuracy loads in the Lyman reloading manual are based mostly (perhaps exclusively) on standard deviation. There are a lot of things that go into rifle and handgun accuracy. With a Garmin chronograph, you can get a better understand them.
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.
I’ve joked around a bit about my 1940 Tula Mosin-Nagant’s bore by writing that it looks like a sewer pipe. It turns out my description was closer than I realized. I recently purchased a Teslong borescope (watch for an upcoming review here on ExNotes), and I took a look at what things looked like inside the Mosin. Wow, was I ever shocked. That photo above is my Mosin, from the inside.
My Tula Mosin and a 100-yard target shot with my reloaded ammo. The first five shots are at the bottom of the orange bullseye. As the barrel heated, the subsequent shots hit higher.
I shoot only jacketed bullets in the Mosin described above, and even with that funky bore it shoots them well. This rifle is surprisingly accurate. That’s amazing, particularly in light of the fact that the bore (while clean) is extremely pitted, and in some places, I couldn’t even see the rifling. Still, it cuts a relatively tight group at 100 yards, especially considering that I shoot it only with its native iron sights. On a good day, it will put five shots into a little over an inch before the barrel heats up, and then when it does heat up, it walks them up a line no wider than an inch due to the stock deflecting the barrel upwards.
The Izzy Mosin at the West End Gun Club. I shoot cast bullets in this rifle.A 7.62x54R cartridge loaded with a cast bullet.The above Mosin’s bore, as seen through the Teslong borescope. It is in much better shape than the rifle I use for shooting jacketed bullets.
I have another Mosin (a hex receiver 1935 Izhevsk) I use for cast bullets, and I thought it had a pristine barrel. I was wrong about that, too. The Teslong reveals all. It’s way better than the Tula’s bore, but it also bears more than a passing resemblance to a lunar landscape. But it, too, can cut a decent group at 100 yards. What makes that amazing (at least to me) is that it does so with the same old prehistoric iron sights and cast bullets.
A 100-yard target shot with cast bullets. This rifle had been zeroed for 50 yards, which is why the shots are below the bullseye.
When these rifles were new back in the 1930s and 1940s, primers were corrosive, and corrode the bore they did. And obviously the soldiers who carried them did little to clean them adequately. I’m not faulting them; those troops had other things on their minds and I’m just making an observation. I’ve been driving myself nuts using the new borescope when I clean my modern rifles trying to get every speck of copper and carbon out of the bore, and I’ve been living in anguish every time I see a machining defect or scratch in these firearms. As the Mosins show, I’ve been worrying for nothing. A bore that is in pretty rough condition can still be accurate.
When I first saw Mosin-Nagant military surplus rifles for sale in a Big 5 sporting goods store years ago, I dismissed them as junk. Wow, was that ever a mistake. I’ve previously written about being smitten with these Russian rifles, and my appreciation for them continues unabated. Back in the day, you could pick them up for $79. That was after the Soviet Union collapsed and the Russians were sending Mosins over here by the boatload to raise cash. Then, during the Obama administration, the flow of these rifles to the US stopped. Today, a Mosin will set you back $300 or more (and it’s mostly more). I recognized the inherent quality and probable appreciation after shooting the first one I bought. I knew Mosin prices would climb and I picked up several. My two favorites are the ones you see in the photo above.
I use the first Mosin I ever bought (the one on top in the above photo) for shooting jacketed bullets. It has a bore that looks like a sewer pipe, but it is accurate. Here’s a recent 100-yard target.
There are 20 shots on this 100-yard target. The two that went low? Chalk it up to operator error.
I don’t use surplus 7.62x54R ammo in my Mosin-Nagant rifles. Surplus ammo used to be cheap and readily available, but not anymore. Even when surplus ammo was around, I didn’t use it because the primers were corrosive. I shoot only my reloads in the Mosins. Just about any 150-grain, .312 diameter jacketed bullet works well with 43.7 grains of IMR 4320 propellant. That powder is no longer available, but I have a stash. When I use it up, I’ll probably switch to Varget or IMR 4064 (both powders are said to work well in the 7.62x54R cartridge).
My Mosin-Nagant jacketed bullet load. It’s very accurate.
The other rifle Mosin you see above (the one on the bottom) is a beautiful hex receiver with a bore that appears to be brand new. When I fired it with jacketed bullets, it grouped very well, but it also shot very high with the rear sight in its lowest setting. I thought I would have to find a taller front sight, but I tried a few cast bullets and to my surprise, the rifle shot to point of aim at 50 yards. When I tried my cast bullet load at 100 yards, it was a scosh low. I went up one click on the rear sight and it was perfect.
My first 5 shots at 100 yards went low, wo I went up one click and put nearly all the rest in the 10-ring. Cast bullets can be very accurate.
My cast load for the Mosin is a 200-grain bullet sized to 0.313 inches over 18.0 grains of SR 4759. Like the IMR 4320 propellant mentioned above, SR 4759 is a discontinued powder, and like my situation with IMR 4320, I also have a stash of SR 4759. When I run out of it, there are other powders that work well with cast bullets. I’m looking forward to developing a new load with them. The load you see here sets a high bar, but I’m sure I can find a load that will match it.
I hadn’t shot cast bullets in my Mosin in a while. It didn’t matter; the rifle still shoots this load superbly well.
With both the Mosin-Nagant rifles you see above, I’ve refinished the stocks with several coats of TruOil (I sanded the stocks as little as possible to preserve the original cartouches). I’ve also glass bedded the actions and cleaned up the triggers. Both rifles are fun to shoot and both are superbly accurate.
If you would like to read more on our Mosin adventures, you can do so here:
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.
Help us bring more content to you: Please click on the popup ads!
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.
