Surplus rifle rear sight adjustment accuracy

[minnesotagunner]

thats a doozy of a title. im just wondering how accurate the adjustments on the rear sights of older surplus rifles (specifically the mosin nagant). if you are shooting at 400 and set it on 400 will it be right on (probably depends on ammo?) or just be somewhat close within a few feet?

 

[Shadow 7D]

Like you said, depends on the ammo you are shooting,

your sights are straight, the bullet flies in an arch, the sight adjusts where the line intersects the arc. With milsup light ball, it should be close.

 

[minnesotagunner]

yea i just wasnt sure if they spent the time to actually make the adjustments match the drop or if they just made it a rough estimation. the base that the rear sight rides on does have a slight curve to it so maybe they did take the time to find it. what i was getting at is, does the sight adjust in a continuous path like (1,2,3,4,5...) or is it on a curve that gives more adjustment at a farther range like (1,2,4,7,12...) being that the bullet starts dropping faster once it starts loosing more energy

 

[Sunray]

Ever heard of sentences and puctuation?
Go here. http://www.surplusrifle.com/shooting/mosinsights/index.asp

 

[Cosmoline]

In my experience the calibration on most 91/30 tangent sights is pretty rough. 300 meters may be 300 meters or it may be something else. The one sure thing is the bullet will be hitting higher than it was at 100 or 200. Best bet is to find what your rifle likes best, then calibrate your tangent accordingly by adjusting and firing for effect.

The Finn Mosins and the better Mausers will have tangents calibrated more precisely, but you still have to be feeding them the right ammo to match up. Of course you can also fire something else and again calibrate the tangent to the ammo. For example if you're shooting 8x57JS handloads that hit POA at 300 meters when the tangent is at 400, 400 is your 300.

 

[rcmodel]

At the time the early Mosen-Nagant rifles were made, Russia used the Arshin as a unit of measurement. Not meters or yards.

One Arshin equals about 28", the length of a marching solders pace in the 18th. century.

The distances on the sight are in 100s of arshins, and were only for massed volley fire and not accurate marksmanship.

At some point prior to WWII, they ground off the Arshin numbers and re-stamped them with meters, so yours could be either one now.

http://www.convert-me.com/en/convert/units/length/length.arshin.en.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obsolete_Russian_units_of_measurement

rc

 

[Karl Hungus]

I don't know about Mosin Nagants, but the graduations on my K 31 are completely dead-on shooting GP-11 out to 800 meters. It's probably dead-on past that, but that's the longest I've shot thus far.

 

[minnesotagunner]

yep, sounds about right, got it out for the first time today and got completely pummeled on the bench. i realize ill mostly use it gfor short range "plinking" but its always fun to just sling rounds at long range.