I killed a Mosin

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Whacked

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Today I killed my Tula M44 hex

I decided it was time to do something about the heavy trigger.
So I cut up a bunch of shims from a soda can and busted apart a staple remover for the spring. Took everything apart and started experimenting with shim depth.
In the process I fumbled fingered and the sear spring tumbled off the table.
Not really thinking I rolled my chair away, yep, found the spring
Busted the spring in two.
Now my M44 is dead, well at least on life support until I can order a new one.

As a 'after the fact' experiment, I clamped one of the pieces in a vice and started tapping it with a claw hammer. I wasn't putting that much effort into it, maybe a little more than the hammer weight. Sure enough I snapped another chunk off.

I wouldn't have thought that something intended as a spring would be of brittle material. I guess age and war-time manufacturing played a big part.

So, be careful. what started out as a $1.75 trigger mod is now going to cost me $17-25 + S&H
 
Look on the bright side, you found a point of failure and it didn't hurt anything. Modern springs should be more resilient, and it's not likely to fail you when you least expect it to.
 
well, haven't found anyplace that sells new manufactured parts.
Best I can find is Finnish NOS or cannibalized parts.
 
If you can take the original trigger spring and reinstall it, I can give you a fix for the problem. I rebuilt my mosin into a bench rifle, and the trigger was solved by hammering a .45 case into a plate and slipping it underneath the spring assembly. It changed the trigger from a 2-stage to a single stage, and works smoothe as butter.

If the trigger spring broke, don't despair... they only made 17 million Mosins, and if you'll check around, there are parts out there... try a gun show. If you really want to fix it, buy one of the drop-in Timney triggers and you'll get excellent results. Of course the trigger costs more than the gun, but it's like having an axe with two heads and three handles...
 
i got lucky and found a 1931 tula with the best trigger so i measured everything to find out why. spring tension plays a big part but also noticed where the trigger is when it breaks seems to be more important than anything. so i set my 1943 sniper with one thin brass shim to break when the trigger is all the way back at the trigger guard. sometimes you have to file the back of the trigger a little bit at bottom edge to get the break so its all the way back at guard. then cock the rifle and test the safety of the mod by hitting the butt stock against a piece of wood on the floor if it doesnt break loose your good.
 
you can make a spring with piano wire, just wrap it around a screw of proper diameter and when you unscrew it out of the coil... bingo, you have a piano-wire spring
 
sansone said:
you can make a spring with piano wire, just wrap it around a screw of proper diameter and when you unscrew it out of the coil... bingo, you have a piano-wire spring
Click to expand...
Wrong kind of spring. The trigger spring on the mosin is a leaf spring and part of the sear assembly.

Matt
 
Well, gun shows are few and far between and involve at least a 45min drive for the closest. Last time I went to that one it cost me $20 just to get in the doors ($10 parking, $10 entry). Plus, they dont have the 2013 schedule up and I would like to go shooting again before the end of the year.

Heres a few places I've found online:
$16 with extra trigger, pin and bolt.
https://www.libertytreecollectors.com/productcart/pc/viewPrd.asp?idproduct=314&idcategory=17

$25 pretty much all the innard springs including the trigger mod spring
https://www.buymilsurp.com/spring-kit-mosin-nagant-5-springs-trigger-return-spring-p-41659.html

$16 Finnish NOS mod spring, also sells 'em on ebay
https://www.crsurplusspring.com/FinnSear.html

I'm leaning towards the finn springs, get another for my 91/30.
I've thought about the timney trigger, but I would like to keep mods to the M44 to a minimum as its is not as dirt common as my 91/30
 
There's no doubt at all that your original spring either degraded from age or it simply was not tempered back enough when it was made and has been on the edge of disaster since it was installed. There's simply no way it should have been that brittle.

Sansone, in this picture below that I got from his links the spring we're talking about is also the sear. It's the big bit with the hole in one end in the middle of this picture. The square'ish post sticking up is the actual sear.

DSC04235.jpg

Whacked, when you get your new parts you can slick things up even more by smooth stoning the lip of the sear and also the area of the spring where the trigger rides and glides during the pull. And if you fold up a "strip of 1000 grit wetordry sandpaper you can "shoeshine" the knee of the trigger that rides on the spring to again slick up the trigger travel. You'll lose a lot of the gritty feeling in the trigger with all this. You'll still have the usual long "creep" but it'll be a smooth sort of creep instead of feeling like you're dragging a shovel through some coarse gravel.... :D

When I did my own Mosins I found that I was able to use a piece of the soft pipe strapping steel strap to make a nice and pretty much perfect shim. In this next picture you can see all the stuff I did to mine.

Mosinmods.jpg

The pipe strapping shim for the sear/spring, The music wire trigger pull back spring I made to eliminate the free travel flopping around. The pop can shim stock shows a thin shim for the sear/spring but in the end I used the pop can for shims to cut down on the side to side play in the trigger mount. The inset corner is the spring installed on the trigger. And yes, it actually pulls the trigger back lightly against the sear/spring. I prefer this to having it push the trigger forward and having to pull through all the pre-travel. With all these mods the trigger pull has reduced from a Hulk like grunt to a firm but smooth pull that I consider nice for what these rifles are. My Mosins also have the little set screw mod to set the depth of sear engagement on the bolt. But I found that trying to get these down to anywhere near a low amount of creep resulted in a questionable ability to engage and hold the striker back. So I opted to reduce the creep a little on one which was rather excessive and to simply set a touch of tension in the other with very little reduction in the creep. The resulting feel is pretty good but the triggers still need to move about 1/8 inch before the break. This seems to be a nice enough compromise for a stock rifle of this sort.

The hunk o' steel with the drill bit sticking out is the "tool" I made up to wind the hair spring for the trigger. The music wire used is .032 that I bought from a local hobby shop that caters to model airplanes. Model railroad shops will have this wire as well. The little dot on the face of the tool base is a cut down nail that sticks up slightly to hold the wire end as you wind the rest around to form the coils.
 
I did the soda can mod on mine. I would recommend NOT gettting a Timney or anything else, at least until you try out the shimmed trigger. Mine is, honestly, excellent. Then again, if you get the Finn that means it is already bent, right?

Sorry to hear about your bad luck. I lost a spring out of my .22 bolt last time I took it down. I feel for ya.
 
Well,... just ordered 2 of the Finn springs.
He says they are around 5-ish lb pulls and thats an improvement all in itself over what I have now.
While I wait I might as well work on floating the barrels.
BTW, nobody seems to cover the handguard piece when checking for barrel float. Is there really that much clearance that it isnt a issue? I don't know of a way to check that. Well I guess I could run some measurements...

next on the list is some smith sights, maybe even pillar bed my 91/30...
 
7 days from order placed to parts in had from crsurplussprings.
I finally had time to install the trigger/sear spring.

First thing I noticed, no trigger flop. I mean none! no need for the slack spring mod.

second thing, when I work the bolt, I can hear it rubbing in the channel of the guide rod. The channel on my bolt is VERY rough milled. So i'm going to have to do something about it. file/polish the channel to smooth it out or take the lazy way and aluminum can shim the trigger/sear spring.

third thing, and this one has me a little worried. sometimes, not all of the times I worked the bolt and dry-fired I noticed this. what happens is while i'm slowly pulling the trigger I notice the rear of the bolt lift upwards, maybe a mm or 2, then steadies just before release. never noticed this before. I checked my 91/30 and it does the same thing. is this to be expected on a old mil-surp and i'm over-reacting or this a potential disaster?
 
I have 4 mosins and all of the bolts lift a little before firing. Receiver tolerances are just not that great. BTW smoothing out the bolt channel where the sear rides is not that hard, just a Dremel and a little polishing time. I am in the midst of building a scout off of a 91/30 action, messed around a lot with cleaning up the trigger and decided to go with the Timney instead. The Timney is an amazing trigger, but a bit pricey. Every time I got the stock trigger to behave anywhere near where I wanted it, it would fail the drop test. Make sure you drop test it multiple times after modding the trigger. Better safe than sorry.
 
good to know about the bolt lift.
I dropped tested the mother out of it, might have annoyed my neighbor 'cause I did it outside on the sidewalk. metal buttplate hitting concrete hard makes a lot of noise :)

Really like the finn trigger/sear spring. nice, smooth even pull with a decent break. still a bit of a longer travel than I would prefer but what the heck, it IS a $100 rifle :)
 
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