Mosin Expert Help

[Matt G]

Went out and fired one of my Nagants for the first time Saturday... Open Sights 100 yard shooting was a blast. It is a Type 53 Chineese. Had a couple problems though. I am using corrosive silver tin ammo and had two casing stuck in the chamber after firing. After a few taps with a car antennea they free'd up really easily. Is the problem more the ammo or the gun. Also the bolt seems to hang up a bit when closing or opening, I cleaned it fairly well, just seems like it takes a little too much effort to close all the way or initially to open after the round is fired. Am I just expecting to much? (BTW I took out a first time shooter as well and stopped by Big 5 to pick him an M44 on the way home.)

[biscuitninja]

The rifles are generally refered to as Mosin's.

Now onto the issue. The issue is that the rifle is not clean enough. The forcing chamber has seen DECADES of use with lacquer coated rounds. Combine that with the leftover gobs of cosmoline and you get some sorta "glue" once everything has cooled down enough.

You also get this "glue" getting stuck into the metal over time. Just take a 20 gage bore brush and put it on a drill. GENTLY clean the area with some clearner and very light resurfacing. You could also do this with some VERY fine grit sandpaper and a wooden dowel. Good luck
-bix

[Matt G]

Cool thanx, I will attack it tonight... I am officially turned on to these rifles... especially for $35

[SLYoteBoy]

www.7.62x54r.net , www.surplusrifle.com , www.mosin-nagant.net all awesome sights for mosins. Tons of info , it still makes my head hurt lol. Good guides also on surplusrifle. Everything you need to know. And welcome to the sickness , when my C&R comes through ill be getting a PU replica , hopefully. Ive had good luck with the Hungarian silver tip LB ammo. Bulgarian HB is okay , had a couple bad rounds. and Russian HB I've had lots of problems. just putting that out there , I'd get the Hungarian silver tip if you can find it. it is lacquer coated though.

[merritt]

+1 on the brush, drill, chamber idea ... I used a .45 bore brush and some patches to thicken it up a bit. Don't forget the solvent (mineral spirits are cheap and work, there are a lot of gun specific ones that you can use too).

[Yute]

Really grease up the bolt area where the cocking piece cams with handle piece .

You also might want to check headspace.

I've found that the firing pin spring also plays a role in "sticky" bolts - some people cut a couple of coils off the spring to decrease tension, thereby making it easier to work the bolt. Shouldn't affect firing too much, if at all... My m39 had an ungodly amount of spring tension and I couldn't even open it when dry firing - a few snips laters and it was smooth as could be!

[6mmintl]

Hard turning bolt on 91/30 and its variants

About hard turning bolt:

A little tune up of the bolt body and cocking piece is all it needs.

If you look on the top of the cocking ramp/cocking piece you'll see a little ridge, if you look on the bolt body you will see a corresponding V groove in the bolt body that the cocking piece sits in in the cocked/open position.

If you stone down the top of the V in the cocking piece and touch up smooth the edge's of the V groove in the Bolt body you will have a much smoother break/closure during the initial turning down of the bolt.

Another area to look at is for Chamber burrs in the 2:00 oclock to 5:00 o'clock from the extractor rubbing against tht chamber end (closing bolt on empty chamber) and rolling a burr into the chamber, check for scrapes in that area from extraction, if you have them you will need to deburr and or polich chamber edges.

You do not need to cut any coils off of the firing pin spring to get a smoother less effort bolt lift to load the Moison 91 rifle.