WOW! I'm glad I didn't chop up my Mosin Nagant!

[Ash]

"Not every Mosin is a museum piece."

Ah, but I have lost count of the true museum pieces that have been chopped. Folks who do the chopping rarely know what it is they are about to chop. Ignorance has killed many Mosins - and other rifles. And, the vast majority of chop jobs that appear here don't last. Most which have been pictured on this site now reside somewhere else, generally collecting dust, as the owners have moved on. A field of ruined water mellons after the deer have left.

Do as you will. Private property is indeed private property and a man can do with his rifle what he wants. I'll get a good chance to look at your work as it collects dust in a pawn shop a few years from now.

 

[docsleepy]

You might find other " modified " Mosins in a pawnshop, but you aren't likely to find mine! With its duckbill modified stock (so it fits in a benchrest front rest), black painted water pipe barrel sleeve, and weird contraption of a scope, it looks like a horror show.

When I took it to the 800 yard range, it drew a big crowd just to look at it. Only redneck sniper types can tolerate such a contraption. It fascinates us.

But the pawnshop owner will probably offer $80, and to me it shoots as good as many $400 rifles. What I like about it is that the zero is absolutely rock stable. Groups are about an inch and a quarter to an inch and a half, nothing to write home about, but it is always the same.

So with more than 300% separating me from the pawnshop, we're unlikely to ever strike a deal! Some great grandkid is going to be telling stories about this rifle several decades from now.

 

[itsa pain]

hdbiker,

Save your $ and slip a cocktail straw over your front sight post and trim to your desired POI . They work like a charm.

Jackal,

The deer I have shot with my unmodified Mosin rifles didn't get the memo that these rifles weren't ready to hunt .

A cocktail straw looks like a 2 inch pipe when aiming at anything over 40 yds. A much better fix for a high shooting mosin is to shave off a little off the bottom of the rear site and after a while you can get the scale to work right at the distance

 

[itsa pain]

While at a yard sale last summer I bought a as mew (1946 ) model #44 Mosin Nagant, all matching except for the stock, pristeen bore for 75 bucks. I've put about 100 rounds of surplus ammo threw it so far. It's a clunky rifle but looks cool. I found a nice dog collar sling and some stripper clips at the fall gun show. I shoots about 4 inches high at 50 yards so I might send the front sight to Smith Sights to have it made elevation adjustable. I found 200 rounds of surplus ammo at LGS for 7.77 per 20 rounds. hdbiker

I thought all mosin front site were adjustable for elevation shave some off the bottom of the rear site to lower point of impact .Very easy fix and real cheap. better then having high front site over the protective wings

 

[DPris]

There will always be those who'll reduce a collectible gun, surplus or commercial, to scrap metal value in tinkering. Nature of the game.

All property is transitory, also nature of the game.

Several of my commercially-made guns of all types have been altered to at least some degree (some majorly) from their original factory configurations.
Has that affected collector value or status somewhere & somewhen down the road? Sure.
In some cases, it's lowered any projected value to strict collectors that might attach if left original.
In others, it's enhanced value, because it's also enhanced "usability", which I'm more concerned with.

You'll never see either of my sportified Mosins in a pawn shop while I'm alive. After I'm gone, or possibly not too long before I leave, both will be passed down to nephews.
While I'm here, and while they're here, they were modified to fit my preferences, and my enjoyment.
Neither was collectible.
Neither was a sin.

Even if both end up being sold sometime in the future by those nephews, I still enjoyed them, and I still improved them, as SHOOTERS, for ME.
I pay the money, I get to do things like that with what it buys.

I generally dislike the idea of chopping up a good sample of a classic military rifle, but quite frankly, with millions out there, so many of the Mosins on the gunshop rack are beat-to-hellers with warped wood, cracked stocks, wandering handguards, loose barrel bands, flaking varnish, mis-matched numbers, worn rifling, variable-sized bores, rusted external barrel surfaces, and so on (not to mention poor sight elevation regulation), that I modify my views on that as guiltlessly as I modify the guns themselves.

Neither of mine was a 39 Finn, neither was anything special, both had issues.

The Mosins you'll see far more of in the pawnshops will be the regular military-trim rifles, once the cheap surplus ammo runs out, removing 50% of the reason so many people are buying them.
The vast majority are not acquiring Mosins as collector pieces, it's very simply a matter of Cheap Gun/Cheap Ammo. Eliminate half of that equation, and the rifles will lose much of their appeal for the biggest market share currently picking them up.

It's people like me, who put money & effort into personalizing an otherwise dime-a-dozen Mosin, who are probably more likely to hang onto the things long after the surplus ammo runs out, because we have more invested in them than just "cheap". We're more likely to have squirreled away several thousand rounds in sardine cans while it's still available, we're more likely to invest in reloading dies & components to keep the guns going after that's gone.

The guy who buys a cheap Mosin & just whacks off most of the front wood to lighten it up some, is a different class, as is the strict collector who only buys the most minty examples, the widest range of serials, certain years, certain styles, and certain makers or nationalities.
There's still room for all of us.

A beat-to-spit Mosin is no holy object to be enshrined and worshipped behind glass.
Those of us who take a beater & make it into a better shooter have nothing to apologize for.

As for the true collector pieces, there's a special place reserved in California for those who destroy the originality of a Finn in good shape, right next door to the section reserved for those who re-finish an 1886 Colt Peacemaker & add imitation pearl grip panels.

For every butchered Mosin, there are millions left un-butchered.
For every re-finished 1886 Peacemaker, the un-finished originals greatly out-number them, too.

The Mosin is a durable, reliable, and reasonably accurate surplus rifle.
It is neither a refined design, nor a beautifully finished sample of the riflemaker's art.
As such, there's nothing whatever wrong with taking a $99 conglomeration of raw material and turning it into a better-looking, better functioning, and better-shooting tool if that meets the needs, desires, or preferences, of its owner.

The PU sniper Mosin, incidentally, will remain as it came.
Good shape overall, shoots OK as it sits, and that one IS a collector piece.
Denis

 

[fpgt72]

But the great part is...it may be a dime a dozen now, but who knows down the road. I have told the story on the Krag my father in law sportered back in the 50's....it was a dime a dozen....actually $15 each out of a big barrel....and he bought that because he could not afford the $25 for the springfield....tell me what is a Krag worth now if it was not sportered.....vs in as issued condition.....I have even seen Lee navy's sportered....and no not the ones they made as sporting rifles, actual Lee Navy's. The justification because it is inexpensive is just too shallow to even grasp.

Just because it has little monetary value now does not mean it always will. I love the comments people make trying to justify their destroying history....and they all have history.

 

[DPris]

I recall $15 surplus Mausers.
Countless numbers of those served as first deer rifles, many were left as is (my longtime buddy since high-school over 45 years ago still has his), many sporterized with a hacksaw to dump the un-needed weight of the full military wood, many were more professionally rebuilt into a high-quality hunter.
Those not left in military trim were working guns, not museum exhibits. I can't fault that.
There remain enough in unaltered form to provide historical & display purposes.

Your Krag was not manufactured in the millions. Quite a difference.

And, I'd point out that your father-in-law bought the rifle for a need, modified it for a reason, and quite likely was happy to have it serve his purposes.
It sounds like he didn't do it just to try out his new band saw & blowtorch between beers on a slow Saturday afternoon in the garage.

I can understand & agree with preserving historical objects, but essentially you're saying no military rifle should ever be altered because of its historicity, or because we should pass them all down intact (literally millions on millions between Mosins, Mausers, Enfields, Springfields, etc.) to the uncertainty of unknown future generations who simply won't have enough museums to stick 'em all in, won't have enough collectors to buy 'em all, and most likely won't want to keep 'em around in the closet if they can't shoot 'em.

I disagree.
I'm under no obligation to leave every gun I acquire just as it left the factory so some unknown guy a hundred years from now will have a pristine collector piece.

I do have a handful of classics that are unfired & will remain unaltered.
I won't speculate on what a rusty, warped, flaking Mosin with a well-worn bore and typical 1943 Iz workmanship might be worth to somebody two or three generations into the future if left in "original" shape as I got it.

It's here now, it's no great value, it never would be a great value, no collector would ever have looked twice at it, now or a century from now, and it's been reborn into a more practical tool as a truck or ATV gun.
The fully sportified one shoots a bit better than the PU sniper, the mildly sportified one outshoots both with iron sights vs glass. You never know with a Mosin.

There are simply enough of the things to go around.
Standard 91/30s are not rare, a great number are far below any type of collector interest in either configuration or condition, and those who choose to experiment have the advantage of generally sound design and construction in the metallurgy to use as the basis for doing so, at very affordable prices.

I can, incidentally, sympathize on the Krag to a degree.
My cousin has an unaltered one that came down through the family to him, and at my local shop there's a hack-jobbed Krag that's been sitting on the used gun rack for three years now, unsold.
But- the Mosins are just too many in numbers, too indifferently stored, and too variable in condition to fall into the same category.
Denis

 

[Ash]

But the Krags stayed here - their quantities therefore are in line with Mosins in America. There might have been millions manufactured, but there have not been millions imported into America. There were almost half a million Krags manufactured in America, the bulk remained here. There are not half a million Mosins in America.

 

[DPris]

There are far more Mosins here than Krags.
I've seen maybe 10 Krags in my entire life.
I've seen Mosins, and/or the cases left behind by ignorant asses who don't pick up behind themselves, all over.
And that's gunshops, gunshows, gun ranges, and open land where people shoot 'em.
They far outnumber Krags in the US, remember they've been imported in good numbers for at least 15 years.

The point still remains- there are too many Mosins in indifferent non-collector condition to bother keeping every one as a holy heritage to be passed down to an unknown future perfectly intact.

They're just not that special & never will be.
They were built to be tools, not collector pieces.

It's nice today when we find a pristine S&W Model 3 with box & a sales receipt, those show what the guns were like new, they are history, and they cause the type of heart attacks that collectors live for.

But- that's not what the guns were built for.
They were built & sold to be used, and in many cases that meant used HARD.

The Mosins have already been overhauled by the Russians after WWII. They are neither well-kept nor entirely original when they get here.
They are far from pristine.
They are far from beautiful.
They are far from being finely crafted.

They are relatively crude designs, refurbished over half a century ago, stored carelessly, in highly variable condition today, here in great numbers, and just flat not that special in the most common 91/30 forms.

If you want to keep yours in "original" form, have at it.

Mine were meant to be tools.
They have been modified into more efficient tools.
You got yours, I got mine.
You want to shoot yours in a more "authentic" experience with all its faults & flaws, fine with me.
I want my two to be better than what they were, and I have the PU to keep as a piece of unaltered history.

There's no real collector interest in the greatest majority of the Mosins here, and more than enough good samples to carry on to your unknown great-grandchildren.

I will continue to feel zero guilt in enjoying my product-improved Mosins, and I wish you great happiness in dealing with your Mosins in "original" form.
Denis

 

[itsa pain]

"Not every Mosin is a museum piece."

Ah, but I have lost count of the true museum pieces that have been chopped. Folks who do the chopping rarely know what it is they are about to chop. Ignorance has killed many Mosins - and other rifles. And, the vast majority of chop jobs that appear here don't last. Most which have been pictured on this site now reside somewhere else, generally collecting dust, as the owners have moved on. A field of ruined water mellons after the deer have left.

Do as you will. Private property is indeed private property and a man can do with his rifle what he wants. I'll get a good chance to look at your work as it collects dust in a pawn shop a few years from now.

I thought you were to say "Father forgive them for they know not what they do". Come one you would have to live 150 years before Mosins will be worth anything. It is funny where the purists say you will destroy the value of the piece. I have 30 surplus semi's bolts and yet to find any "purists" willing to give me more then 150-250 being they seem very cheap. Those who speak the loudest pay the least. If someone finds the people who pay well for untouched mil surps please let me know

 

[Ash]

Dpris, you are wrong There are not half a million run-of-the-mill M91/30's in country right now. There were more Krags in America than Mosins - the lack of Krags around right now is merely the glut of Mosins. On the other hand, Krags of old have been used up, sporterized, etc until original specimens are few and far between. At present, Mosins are more plentiful on the import market, but that is a different thing entirely.

But, that's fine by me, I have only a few Mosins these days (my height was 70 of various kinds) though I do know and understand the rifle. My few are the ones I chose to keep, none are common run-of-the-mill Mosins. But, my observations of Bubba remain - a wanton sporterizer who then leaves his results to collect dust at the local pawn shop. That is where most of them go. And Bubba is never content to pick up the works of his brethren when virgins are about to despoil.

Ash

 

[DPris]

I ain't Bubba.

And you create an overly broad denigrative characterization of anybody who modifies a Mosin by your wordage.
I could easily characterize you as an elitist collector snob in return, but you may notice I haven't & won't, and I've said there's room for all of us while wishing you full enjoyment of your Mosins in any way you choose.

The two I sportified were not collector pieces & I flatly refuse to think those beaters should have been preserved intact for unknown future generations. The wood on one was warped so badly up front it was placing pressure against one side of the barrel & affecting accuracy. It sure didn't shoot three under an inch with that warped wood on it, but it did after being re-stocked.

Keep a poor specimen with below-average workmanship to begin with (the '43 Izhevsk), barrel rust, and deteriorated wood absolutely intact so MAYBE somebody a hundred years from now could gaze reverently upon it as a representative sample of the entire Mosin family?
Bull puckey.
Here & now, it's rebuilt into a better tool, for somebody to actually use here & now.

We'll continue to differ on the issue, which is fine.
Regardless of your conception of the exact numbers, there's simply a hell of a lotta Mosins floating around & those of us who modify poor to average specimens are not monsters for doing so.
Denis

 

[Ash]

A man is standing in the toilet and the toilet paper is gone and he's just unloaded quite a load and is wishing he had some. The here and now, he ponders. So, he pulls out a twenty, wipes his butt, and flushes it down the toilet. The here and now.

You might bristle at the broad brush, but the reality is, the truth backed up with mountains of evidence, is that the majority of guys who would chop a Mosin do not know what is valuable or what is not. Do you? Could you tell a Cossack among a pile of 91/30's? A Dragoon? Perhaps you could. Most do not, and proceed to chop very valuable and rare rifles. A Tikka might not be as rare as an SAT M91, but in all variants ever made, Tikka made less than 70,000 total Mosins. The majority of these were lost during WWII. It is a rare rifle. There is now one less.

Even so, the fact remains that sporters almost never, virtually never, increase value nor do they increase performance. It is playing dress up with a rifle. Claims abound, of course, and a rifle might become somehow more accurate because of improved bedding or the like, but most, the vast majority, are simply chopped down, restocked, and called sporterized. They then get disposed of at the local pawn shop.

Now, I have seen, gasp, with my own eyes truly amazing Mosin sporters. One I saw started life as a Remington M91 (I sold one once for $1,400, but it was as US-issued M1916) and was remachined to move the bolt handle to behind the charger guides, was in a truly custom stock that the gunsmith fashioned from hand, and retained other features I cannot recall. It sold for about $400 and had no equal among sporters I have ever seen. I know of another in 218 Bee that still hasn't sold at the gunshows around here (been more than a year on tables). What it started life as I do not know because it DID have a new barrel.

But I have seen a sporterized M1908 Mosin carbine. It would have been worth more, thousands more, perhaps more than five grand, perhaps as high as ten grand. It was purchased for less than two grand and just about never will see the chance for restoration as the parts are just not available. I have seen said VKT m27 sporterized, piles of M28's, m28/30's, and M39's, all of which were valued greater three or four times greater than their sporter condition would ever bring. All of them "Russian junk."

I have in my day sporterized. There is, sadly, an Indian 308 Enfield in such guise which includes a synthetic stock. It is worth less today than it would have been. My Dad sporterized a Tikka M91/30 in the same way. In my case, I learned a lesson that many mention here. It is not elitism, it is experience. I have seen Bubba, and rarely does he do anything more than wipe his butt with a twenty. You are not Bubba? Okay, so you say. Do you understand the Mosin? Not if you call it a crude design.

What of that rough 1943 specimen? It tells volumes. It was manufactured in a state of dire emergency, where the enemy was ravaging vast swaths of a nation, literally at the gates. It speaks of a barbaric time where cold steel flashed, men died at each others bare hands at times, and the fate of two great (though sinister) nations hung at the balance. Those rough machining marks you are so quick to dismiss tell a story.

What of the refurb process? The same process our own martial arms went through? What story does it tell? It speaks of a Cold War and of a philosophy that nothing would go to waste, that if time came, eveyone could be armed, peasant and shop keeper alike. I might not like the politics of the Soviet Union (I despise what they did), but that nation, which otherwise did not trust its people, was prepared to pass out military arms to them in the event of national emergency.

It tells of a philosophy that a rifle had to be solid, functional, and reliable. Aesthetics mattered little if it worked. The same philosophy existed in US arsenals, by the way, where Winchester, Springfield, or other parts got shared when it came time to refurbish a Garand (or m1 carbine, etc). Does that mean an arsenal refurbished M1917 (the most common martial arm issued in WWI) is of no value? Are you so shallow that aesthetics alone drive your decisions?

In the end, these are at one moment merely a collection of steel and wood and at the other moment, they are expressions of a history that goes far beyond mere appearance but is reflected precisely in that appearance which you might so casually discard not in the name of accuracy or precision. If you want those, even in a Mosin, there are rifles that fit the bill. You want true accuracy but don't want to pay for it in a Mosin, get a modern bolt gun.

But no, it is not about accuracy nor about the inherent attributes of the rifle. It is about what you can do with your hands. This is not restricted solely to rifles, but anything from furniture cars to houses, etc. You produce a painting and are proud at your artistic prowess yet wonder why I'm not impressed that you painted over the hood of a 1928 Chrysler. You sporterize a Mosin and announce that it is as good as any modern bolt gun and then get offended that I'm not only not impressed but lament that another piece of history is gone. Sure, they're a dime a dozen, just like 1853 Enfields once were. How many of them remain today in original guise? It may not matter to you that when you die, that rifle remains permanently altered and will never have the value it once had. To some of us, and it has nothing to do with elitism, you have despoiled yet another water melon patch to no lasting purpose.

The rifle is yours to do with, and I do not take it away. But your mechanical prowess at dressing up a Mosin to look like a Remchester (while ignoring all the others so treated and languishing abandoned at pawn shops) does not impress all of us. You want us to get along. How might that be if you cannot see the beauty in a beaver-gnawed action and I cannot see the beauty of a chop job?

 

[justice06rr]

A man is standing in the toilet and the toilet paper is gone and he's just unloaded quite a load and is wishing he had some. The here and now, he ponders. So, he pulls out a twenty, wipes his butt, and flushes it down the toilet. The here and now.

What does that have to do with anything??

Its your $20bill and you can do with it as you wish. There are millions of it produced; one $20 down the drain won't make a difference. Poor example IMO.

I don't even think people know enough about collector Mosin's to buy one and sporterize it. Your average Joe will buy a run of the mill 91/30 and sporterize it.

I'm no collector, but I sporterized a crappy 91/30 with a pitted bore. The thing could barely hit paper at 25yards.

You know how much I sold it for? $250 to the next guy, who doesn't know (or care) of its collectible value (that doesn't exist) to begin with.

Now I still see other collectible Mosin's the fetch a fine price. But your average Joe will not drop money to buy that when he can get a beater one for $160.

 

[Ash]

"I don't even think people know enough about collector Mosin's to buy one and sporterize it."

That is my point. Thanks. The average joe who sporterizes doesn't know squat about the rifle he cuts up. He has no idea what it is.

The $20 is the same. Here and now. Keep the money and go home to change underwear. Here and now. Sure, your money, which is the point. You can do as you will with it. Doesn't make it smart or even a good idea.

Doesn't know or care? That is also the point. The guy who chopped up that Russian dime a dozen junk carbine had no idea he was cutting up one of the rarest martial arms around with insanely high collector value. But he needed to wipe his butt.

As to money, I see lots of money bandied about, and I'm proud of you. But gunbroker and other places, including watching shows, say something completely different.

Tell me, what of the rifle you cut up? A beater? Was it from the Spanish Civil War? Do you know? Have you a clue? Did you know that SCW Mosins often fetch more than $400? You sold yours for $250? Did you do well or get screwed?

 

[josiewales]

I really see no need to do anything to a mosin at all! This was at 85 yards with the stock sights.

 

[itsa pain]

A man is standing in the toilet and the toilet paper is gone and he's just unloaded quite a load and is wishing he had some. The here and now, he ponders. So, he pulls out a twenty, wipes his butt, and flushes it down the toilet. The here and now.

You might bristle at the broad brush, but the reality is, the truth backed up with mountains of evidence, is that the majority of guys who would chop a Mosin do not know what is valuable or what is not. Do you? Could you tell a Cossack among a pile of 91/30's? A Dragoon? Perhaps you could. Most do not, and proceed to chop very valuable and rare rifles. A Tikka might not be as rare as an SAT M91, but in all variants ever made, Tikka made less than 70,000 total Mosins. The majority of these were lost during WWII. It is a rare rifle. There is now one less.

Even so, the fact remains that sporters almost never, virtually never, increase value nor do they increase performance. It is playing dress up with a rifle. Claims abound, of course, and a rifle might become somehow more accurate because of improved bedding or the like, but most, the vast majority, are simply chopped down, restocked, and called sporterized. They then get disposed of at the local pawn shop.

Now, I have seen, gasp, with my own eyes truly amazing Mosin sporters. One I saw started life as a Remington M91 (I sold one once for $1,400, but it was as US-issued M1916) and was remachined to move the bolt handle to behind the charger guides, was in a truly custom stock that the gunsmith fashioned from hand, and retained other features I cannot recall. It sold for about $400 and had no equal among sporters I have ever seen. I know of another in 218 Bee that still hasn't sold at the gunshows around here (been more than a year on tables). What it started life as I do not know because it DID have a new barrel.

But I have seen a sporterized M1908 Mosin carbine. It would have been worth more, thousands more, perhaps more than five grand, perhaps as high as ten grand. It was purchased for less than two grand and just about never will see the chance for restoration as the parts are just not available. I have seen said VKT m27 sporterized, piles of M28's, m28/30's, and M39's, all of which were valued greater three or four times greater than their sporter condition would ever bring. All of them "Russian junk."

I have in my day sporterized. There is, sadly, an Indian 308 Enfield in such guise which includes a synthetic stock. It is worth less today than it would have been. My Dad sporterized a Tikka M91/30 in the same way. In my case, I learned a lesson that many mention here. It is not elitism, it is experience. I have seen Bubba, and rarely does he do anything more than wipe his butt with a twenty. You are not Bubba? Okay, so you say. Do you understand the Mosin? Not if you call it a crude design.

What of that rough 1943 specimen? It tells volumes. It was manufactured in a state of dire emergency, where the enemy was ravaging vast swaths of a nation, literally at the gates. It speaks of a barbaric time where cold steel flashed, men died at each others bare hands at times, and the fate of two great (though sinister) nations hung at the balance. Those rough machining marks you are so quick to dismiss tell a story.

What of the refurb process? The same process our own martial arms went through? What story does it tell? It speaks of a Cold War and of a philosophy that nothing would go to waste, that if time came, eveyone could be armed, peasant and shop keeper alike. I might not like the politics of the Soviet Union (I despise what they did), but that nation, which otherwise did not trust its people, was prepared to pass out military arms to them in the event of national emergency.

It tells of a philosophy that a rifle had to be solid, functional, and reliable. Aesthetics mattered little if it worked. The same philosophy existed in US arsenals, by the way, where Winchester, Springfield, or other parts got shared when it came time to refurbish a Garand (or m1 carbine, etc). Does that mean an arsenal refurbished M1917 (the most common martial arm issued in WWI) is of no value? Are you so shallow that aesthetics alone drive your decisions?

In the end, these are at one moment merely a collection of steel and wood and at the other moment, they are expressions of a history that goes far beyond mere appearance but is reflected precisely in that appearance which you might so casually discard not in the name of accuracy or precision. If you want those, even in a Mosin, there are rifles that fit the bill. You want true accuracy but don't want to pay for it in a Mosin, get a modern bolt gun.

But no, it is not about accuracy nor about the inherent attributes of the rifle. It is about what you can do with your hands. This is not restricted solely to rifles, but anything from furniture cars to houses, etc. You produce a painting and are proud at your artistic prowess yet wonder why I'm not impressed that you painted over the hood of a 1928 Chrysler. You sporterize a Mosin and announce that it is as good as any modern bolt gun and then get offended that I'm not only not impressed but lament that another piece of history is gone. Sure, they're a dime a dozen, just like 1853 Enfields once were. How many of them remain today in original guise? It may not matter to you that when you die, that rifle remains permanently altered and will never have the value it once had. To some of us, and it has nothing to do with elitism, you have despoiled yet another water melon patch to no lasting purpose.

The rifle is yours to do with, and I do not take it away. But your mechanical prowess at dressing up a Mosin to look like a Remchester (while ignoring all the others so treated and languishing abandoned at pawn shops) does not impress all of us. You want us to get along. How might that be if you cannot see the beauty in a beaver-gnawed action and I cannot see the beauty of a chop job?

get your own blog dude

 

[DPris]

Ash,
I'm not trying to impress you. Your opinion of my guns bears no relevance to my life & their use whatsoever.
And I'll continue to maintain my own opinion that preserving each & every Mosin floating around America for its theoretical historical "value" would be idiotic.

Your implied suggestion that nobody should individualize a well-worn tool because they don't know what they're doing and/or somehow "owe" future generations the right to see even a clunker intact I find equally idiotic, in the case of the ubiquitous Mosin.

We won't agree, and my purpose in getting into this thread was not to persuade you that not every Mosin is sacred & inviolable, but to express the other side of the issue originally raised here, for those who may be undecided.
They can make up their own minds.

If a buyer's happy with a Mosin as it comes, great. If not, he commits no sin against either God or the future of mankind in setting a run-of-the-mill rifle up to better suit his needs or tastes.

Denis

 

[ball3006]

I hear you. All of the Finn Mosin Nagants I have were purchased for under 100 bucks and now run in the 300-500 buck range......As I have said in the past, they ain't making them anymore......chris3

 

[itsa pain]

I hear you. All of the Finn Mosin Nagants I have were purchased for under 100 bucks and now run in the 300-500 buck range......As I have said in the past, they ain't making them anymore......chris3

But that is because they are finnish altered. if you can make it until 2080 then the Russian mosins might be worth something

 

[DPris]

The truly good/collectible ones always rise to the top, in both desirability and price.
The rest, not so much.
Denis

 

[Scoped]

I just bought a mosin for $180, regular 91/30. I figured that the only way the price can go is UP

 

[Ash]

Dp...idiotic...really? Keeping a rifle in the way the designer created it and the original government arsenal manufactured it is idiotic? Really?

I notice you have not answered the question. Do you really know what you chopped up? Really? Do you? Have you any clue what it was you chopped and then sold? If it was such a great rifle, if your work so splendid, why did you sell it?

Idiotic?

 

[DPris]

Yes, keeping a beat-up obsolete clunker that's hanging on 50 years beyond its realistic life span as a viable battle rifle in a long past era intact simply because its designers built it that way is idiotic.

When the original circumstances that created the Mosins has long passed, they are no longer usable as main battle rifles, and many have seriously deteriorated, there is no sacred responsibility to leave lesser samples alone.

You appear to be projecting a bizarre sense of holiness and an unrealistic sense of duty into Mosins that I'm really not seeing.

I own over 30 guns modified in some way from how their designers created them, some quite extensively.
Again- guns are tools, not objects of worship, and there is absolutely no obligation whatever to leave them as they were first built if they can be improved on and there is no realistic collector value.

If you're speaking to me regarding the chopped & sold question, I think you have me confused with someone else.
I've "chopped", but the only Mosins I've sold were lesser-grade specimens in full military trim that I saw no overriding reason to keep.
Denis

 

[Ash]

Idiotic and bizarre sense of holiness? So very high road of you there, Denis.

Oh, and still, have you any idea what you have chopped? Do you? No? What makes it lesser?

And gentlemen, Denis believes that keeping a rifle in original condition is idiotic.