re-barreling a Mosin Nagant.

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lobo9er

lobo9er

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saw this mentioned in another thread. How hard would it be to rebarrel one for a 30-06, 308 or something that has more factory hunting ammo available? Possible, but cost would equal to just buying a new rifle? This is purely for conversation.
 
$150 - $300 for a new barrel
$150 - $250 for fitting it.
Probably another $200 - $300+ to figure out how to make the rimmed cartridge magazine feed rimless ammo and modify the extractor to extract it.

So for between $500 and $850?
No problem.

rc
 
It's not a new idea. Bannerman rebarreled a bunch of M91's to .30'06 back in the 20's and 30's. You can still find them, though not all are safe to shoot. Until the end of the CW 7.62x54R was not easy to find and was expensive. Since the influx of new ammo that's completely changed.

And of course there's a ton of modern factory hunting ammo available in 7.62x54R. S&B makes some 180 SP under its name and under the Winchester brand that's good and not too pricey. Norma and Lapua make very high end stuff. Privi from Serbia makes good stuff. Wolf and other Russian outfits make cheap SP that has some grenading tendencies but will get the job done.

And there's also handloading for the round, which has gotten about ten times easier in the last few decades. Bunch of places make brass and you can find .311-.312 bullets easily.
 
I would like to build a rifle at some point something that could be handed down if there is someone to hand it down to in the future. One of the coolest things about building/making things it will be here a lot longer me. wether its sitting in a garbage heap or on someones desk, it will be here some where lol.
 
The Finns have created a variety of wildcats based on the 54R by necking it up. They're pretty much unknown stateside but I've seen references to them ranging from very tiny diameter bullets out to at least 9.3 mm. So yeah it can be done. I think the only reason would be if you have only a few rifles and a whole bunch of the wrong size bullets to shoot out of them. Or just for kicks. But it's a lot easier to get a scrubbed up Mauser action and build off of it.
 
Bannerman and others did not rebarrel the MS 91s to .30-06 and that is why they are considered un safe.

They mearly ran a .30-06 chamber reamer into the breech of the existing barrel.

This meant the "new" chamber had too large of a diameter for the base of the .30-06 cartridge and so case blow outs and head seperations were possible.

I actually looked for one on purpose as a kid to use as an aggressor gun in JROTC as we had access to .30-06 blank ammo for our M-1 Garands and I believed that would be a good use for one of the reamed out guns.

The Russians appearently did come conversions based on the 7.62x54 case opened up to 9.3 mm as well and offered it in both MS actions and their Medved Bear commerical hunting version of the SVD.

I would think that reaming out the existing chamber and sleeving it to be reamed to a different .308 to .311 bullet using cartridge might be doable. Think something like the "navy" 7.62 NATO conversion sleeves for the M-1 Garand. SOmeone was offering a .30-06 to 7.62x39 sleeve that was lock tighted in and removable with a broken case extractor and I would think something like that might be made for the 7.62x54 chamber in 7.62x54.

Just had a thought that wil lrequire looking at some charts.......

-kBob
 
Bannerman cut back the barrel so he could rechamber to 3006. This reduced the chamber area of the Mosin barrel which made it unsafe. If you look at a Bannerman rifle, it will be appearant....chris3

Forgot to add.....the 762x54r cartridge is a very accurate round. Why mess with it? Several of my Finn Mosin Nagant rifles will shoot one inch groups all day long, if I do my part....chris3
 
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I just came back from the safe after looking at some charts.

Although I do not think it would feed from the magazine ( I only had one dummy .30-30 where I could get to it easily and could not make the magazine interrupter work with just the one) it occurs to me that one might sleeve a 7.62x54 to take .30-30 or make a .30-30 "shell shrinker" of sorts.

Personally the only thing I would do to a 7.62x54 rifle to make it more useful in hunting is feed it 7.62x54 ammo I bought or reloaded with the bullet style I wanted and be done with it.

If I was joe survivalist (lower case) I might be tempted to buy a few pistol caliber shell shrinkers for it and use them now to see if and how they worked.

If I was wrong about bannermans modifications I am sorry, however the NRA warnings on the guns were that the rear of the chamber was to wide and might allow blow outs on guns converted to .30-06.

-kBob
 
You can always make "mexican match" ammo for your Nagant. Simply pull the bullets from the steel cases, dump the powder, add a charge of appropriate propellant, chamfer the case mouths, insert a bullet of proper choice.

My $.02
 
Personally the only thing I would do to a 7.62x54 rifle to make it more useful in hunting is feed it 7.62x54 ammo I bought or reloaded with the bullet style I wanted and be done with it.
Click to expand...

There aren't many bullets you can find in .308" that you can't get in .311" or .312" these days. And if you're dying for a match grade Mosin in .308" bore they already exist. Some of the Finnish Mosins have .3085" bores and will shot .308" bullets very nicely. Specifically the pre-war ones and I believe the post-war m28 match rifles.

Here's a nice one:

http://www.gunbroker.com/Auction/ViewItem.aspx?Item=325466415

It's far too rare and valuable to hack up, but you really don't need to. Use a Darrell scout mount and an LER scope if you don't like the irons.
 
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