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.
