A few questions about the Mosin-Nagant.

[Michael R.]

Hello,
Every day I am geting closer to convince my dad to buy a mosin nagant. So, I have a few questions about them.

1. What is the best online website to buy them from? aimsurplus has good prices but i don't know about the condition of their rifles. Buds gun shop is exactly the opposite.

2. If I do buy one, I am going to have to field strip it all the way down and clean the cosmoline off of it, right? When I do this, which degreaser will be the best to use for this purpose?

3. If there was any tips and tricks about shooting a mosin nagant and how to get the best accuracy out of it, you could post those too. I reload, so I plan to reload for it in the near future.

Thanks

 

[jmstevens2]

I get all my stuff from AIM, but then I can drive there in a half hour. Surplus is cheap, brass to reload is not. The surplus stuff is all steel case berdan primed.
http://7.62x54r.net/

 

[Michael R.]

Thanks, any other info will be appreciated.

 

[Grunt]

Best thing you can use to get the cosmoline off is mineral spirits. One area you want to pay VERY close attention to is the chamber. My first Mosin was a 1940 91/30. Of course, I didn't know as much about cosmoline removal then and I had problems with the bolt sticking after being fired. I finally found that there was cosmoline in the chamber and the easiest trick to removing it was to chuck a cleaning rod into a cordless drill, screw on a 28 gauge chamber brush, dip it into mineral spirits and buzz the cosmoline out of the chamber. After that, I didn't have any further problems with sticking bolts.
One other thing, sounds like you are a young man so let me give you a history lesson. Once upon a time, rifles like Krags, Springfields and Mausers were a dime a dozen. They were war surplus and a lot of folks took to "sporterizing" them by cutting down stocks, barrels and other metal parts. These days, unmolested rifles bring a premium while the hack jobs won't bring much since their historical significance has been destroyed. History also has a way of repeating itself. Today, Mosin Nagants are cheap and a lot of folks want to cut them down just like people did years ago to Krags, etc. Might want to avoid those same mistakes and leave your rifle in its original condition. Some folks will say that Mosin Nagants won't go up in price all that much anyways but keep in mind, I got my 91/30 for $50 years ago and today, they are generally going for $99-150 retail. So that's 100-150% profit if I wanted to sell my rifle. My M44 carbine was bought for $75 a few years ago and now they are seeing prices of $200+ so again, if I wanted to sell it,, it didn't loose any value and has actually gone up a lot. In the end though, it's your rifle and you are free to Bubba it as you want but I just felt you might want a friendly heads up if you ever get the urge to start chopping away on what today is a common and cheap rifle...just like the other were years ago.

 

[TurtlePhish]

I have an AIMsurplus Mosin, it was in great condition and all matching. Just needed a lot of cleaning... use mineral spirits and denatured alcohol. When you clean the bolt, trigger group, etc. (pretty much all the small parts) just put them all in a big bucket of mineral spirits and let them sit for a couple hours. Take them out and blast them off with brake cleaner, then coat with oil and they should be fine.

Some cheap, easy accurizing tips: The Finns would take their Mosins and wrap oiled cloth around the barrel for 5-6cm a few inches behind the front sight and then put it back in the stock- it put pressure on the barrel and kept it from wandering excessively when it heated up.

Also, when you open the gun up to clean, polish the rectangular bit that sticks up into the bolt from the combination sear/trigger spring. It's a little silver piece attached to the receiver by a screw that goes through the trigger. Polishing the rear face and the top will improve trigger pull tremendously. If you don't know which parts of it I'm referring to by my admittedly vague description, polish anything that looks like it has wear marks or touches anything else in the trigger mechanism. Rubbing it on a block of wood with some 600 grit lapping compound worked wonders for me.

Mosins are great guns- have fun

 

[Elbert P . Suggins]

I have bought several over the past 4 years. They have increased in value at least 50%. Especially the three M44s which I got from a small private dealer for $120\apiece 2 years ago and I can easily get $200 for them now. The supply has dried up. The supply for the long guns will dry up eventually regardless of what people say. Also I bought a pristine Polish M44 last year for $160 and was offered $300 for it last month. That is better than money in a shakey bank nowadays.

 

[leadchucker]

1. AIM, Buds, Cabelas, SOG, Classic, J&G, etc., it doesn't matter. They all get their guns from an importer, who in turn gets them from a former Soviet republic. They've all been "refurbed" to a basic issuable condition, and have been in crates buried in the USSR since the sixties. Quality can vary a bit. Some batches from some sources can be better or worse than others, but condition is more luck of the draw than anything else. Almost all of them will be decent shooters.

2. Completely disassemble it. It's not hard to do. Clean every metal part in some good strong solvent (I prefer lacquer thinner) with some brushes and swabs, and then coat the parts with a good gun oil. As has been said, pay particular attention to the chamber. Scrub the stock and handguard in mineral spirits with a good stiff bristle brush. Even then, some cosmoline will likely ooze out of the wood the first time you get it hot shooting it, so take rags with you to the range.

3. You can certainly reload the round, but unless you plan on serious targeting or hunting, it's not cost effective. Buy the commie surplus ammo. It's cheap enough, and it's what those old rifles have shot for over a century. I would avoid the lacquer coated ammo. That's where a lot of the sticky bolt syndrome begins. All the surplus ammo is mildly corrosive, so it's a good idea to clean the rifle after shooting with hot soapy water, followed up by oil.

Oh, they all shoot a bit high. They were sighted in that way in accordance with Soviet military doctrine.

 

[ball3006]

Mosin Nagants?

You won't be satisfied with just one. All but the one on the right are Finn rifles.....chris3

 

[Michael R.]

thanks lead chucker and others

 

[Steel Horse Rider]

When you have it apart and the external cosmoline wiped off, set the wooden parts of the stock out in the direct sun for as long as you can. The stuff will just ooze out of the wood, or if you are daring you could put it in an oven set for 150 degrees or so, but I am not sure I would want to eat the first cake baked after that!!!

 

[rojocorsa]

I will say one thing, if you learn to shoot a Mosin well, you will be able to shoot virtually any other rifle well.

You will never complain about triggers, sights, or recoil or anything like.


If you can find Yugoslavian 7.62x54R surplus (aka M-30 ball), that seems to be the finest surplus ammo for it. It seems hard to find these days, however. The Soviet surplus from spam cans inst bad, IMO.