Last year i bought a 91/30 from JGsales. I had them hand select for rifling and crown. It's a 43/45 Hex Receiver Ishevsk with Ministry of Defense markings. The /45 means it was re-arsenalled in 1945.
I took it to my backwoods range and shot 4" groups shooting off my knee from a sitting position using Russian 148gr fmj.
Last week i took it down and took a 1/2" socket and sanded out the channel until i could slip a piece of paper all the way down the barrel without it touching. I then added a tiny amount of automotive cork material to the very end of the stock to keep the barrel from touching when fired.
Then i disassembled the trigger mechanism and polished up 4 contact points using a dremel with a wire wheel attachment and 400 grit sandpaper. It went from a long creepy 6 stage trigger to a long smooth 1 stage trigger. It also seemed to have lightened the overall pull a bit. I may shim the trigger to shorten it by about half but haven't decided for sure.
These two jobs took about an hour altogether.
I learned that the rear sight base is on an 11mm dovetail rail. It just so happens that all .22lr optics use 2/3" rails which is pretty much 11mm. Most pistol and scout type scopes are 1" tubes on 2/3" bases. How convenient.
Next i searched high and low for a Leupold fx2 2.5x scout scope. I knew i didn't want to modify the rifle in any way, so no drilling, tapping, and turning down the bolt handle. Yes, there are 40 million of them, but this one is mine... I don't want to bubba the thing. I finally found one that had been advertised 6 months ago on northwestfirearms.com (OR, WA, ID Craigslist for guns
). I sent him an e-mail and asked he still had it. I got it for $200 (vs $400 retail), it's never been mounted before.
Next i took off the rear sight. There is a pin to punch out, then if it's not soldered (about 1/2 arent') you tap it off. Mine was silver soldered. A quick trip to my father in law's place, a few minutes with torch, maul, and brass punch and she's off.
With Weaver medium rings i have barely less than 1mm clearance from the rear of the scope to the receiver. Most people buy expensive rail mounts that have the scope too high in the air and ruins the cheek weld. I don't understand why. Anyway, I gave it a few whacks with the palm of my hand and i'm confident it won't touch. The good news is the scope is leupold and if i break it, they replace it. Nice folks.
Next i sourced some PRVI ammo locally as well as WWB soft points with brass casing & boxer primers. I hit the range on a nice day and 60 rounds later and a very sore shoulder i have some brass and a distinct impression that the prvi 150g (2.5moa) shoots far better than Winchester white box 180g softpoints (4.5moa).
At this point I've scoured my reloading manuals and the internet for knowledge and picked up a box of Barnes TSX 150g .311 bullets, some Winchester standard large rifle primers, and a bottle of Varget and that's where i sit.
Last night i barely seated a bullet (in an empty casing) after full length sizing and trimming and chambered it, then extracted and measured to 3.090. Barnes recommends seating the bullet with the ogive .050 off the lands so my plan is to load up 6 batches of 5 rounds each with the following:
48g, 49g and 50g varget at 3.060, 3.050, and 3.040
Obviously i'll start with the lightest charge and longest COL and work up to higher pressures barring signs of overpressure and take notes on both group sizes and velocity.
There isn't much good reloading data for my combination, my Lee manual has data using .308 bullets, Barnes has nothing, Hogdon has nothing. quickLOAD suggests a maximum load of 51.2 grains with a COL of 2.880 so i think i'm pretty safe at 50 and a significantly longer OAL. As an aside, the longest COL i've found in a military or commercial round is 3.03.
Any thoughts or suggestions? I'm pretty new to reloading. If i can keep this rifle to 2.5 or better MOA it's likely my deer and elk gun this fall.
Thanks for reading.
I took it to my backwoods range and shot 4" groups shooting off my knee from a sitting position using Russian 148gr fmj.
Last week i took it down and took a 1/2" socket and sanded out the channel until i could slip a piece of paper all the way down the barrel without it touching. I then added a tiny amount of automotive cork material to the very end of the stock to keep the barrel from touching when fired.
Then i disassembled the trigger mechanism and polished up 4 contact points using a dremel with a wire wheel attachment and 400 grit sandpaper. It went from a long creepy 6 stage trigger to a long smooth 1 stage trigger. It also seemed to have lightened the overall pull a bit. I may shim the trigger to shorten it by about half but haven't decided for sure.
These two jobs took about an hour altogether.
I learned that the rear sight base is on an 11mm dovetail rail. It just so happens that all .22lr optics use 2/3" rails which is pretty much 11mm. Most pistol and scout type scopes are 1" tubes on 2/3" bases. How convenient.
Next i searched high and low for a Leupold fx2 2.5x scout scope. I knew i didn't want to modify the rifle in any way, so no drilling, tapping, and turning down the bolt handle. Yes, there are 40 million of them, but this one is mine... I don't want to bubba the thing. I finally found one that had been advertised 6 months ago on northwestfirearms.com (OR, WA, ID Craigslist for guns
). I sent him an e-mail and asked he still had it. I got it for $200 (vs $400 retail), it's never been mounted before.
Next i took off the rear sight. There is a pin to punch out, then if it's not soldered (about 1/2 arent') you tap it off. Mine was silver soldered. A quick trip to my father in law's place, a few minutes with torch, maul, and brass punch and she's off.
With Weaver medium rings i have barely less than 1mm clearance from the rear of the scope to the receiver. Most people buy expensive rail mounts that have the scope too high in the air and ruins the cheek weld. I don't understand why. Anyway, I gave it a few whacks with the palm of my hand and i'm confident it won't touch. The good news is the scope is leupold and if i break it, they replace it. Nice folks.
Next i sourced some PRVI ammo locally as well as WWB soft points with brass casing & boxer primers. I hit the range on a nice day and 60 rounds later and a very sore shoulder i have some brass and a distinct impression that the prvi 150g (2.5moa) shoots far better than Winchester white box 180g softpoints (4.5moa).
At this point I've scoured my reloading manuals and the internet for knowledge and picked up a box of Barnes TSX 150g .311 bullets, some Winchester standard large rifle primers, and a bottle of Varget and that's where i sit.
Last night i barely seated a bullet (in an empty casing) after full length sizing and trimming and chambered it, then extracted and measured to 3.090. Barnes recommends seating the bullet with the ogive .050 off the lands so my plan is to load up 6 batches of 5 rounds each with the following:
48g, 49g and 50g varget at 3.060, 3.050, and 3.040
Obviously i'll start with the lightest charge and longest COL and work up to higher pressures barring signs of overpressure and take notes on both group sizes and velocity.
There isn't much good reloading data for my combination, my Lee manual has data using .308 bullets, Barnes has nothing, Hogdon has nothing. quickLOAD suggests a maximum load of 51.2 grains with a COL of 2.880 so i think i'm pretty safe at 50 and a significantly longer OAL. As an aside, the longest COL i've found in a military or commercial round is 3.03.
Any thoughts or suggestions? I'm pretty new to reloading. If i can keep this rifle to 2.5 or better MOA it's likely my deer and elk gun this fall.
Thanks for reading.
