Jim Taylor
The Mosin Nagant Saga Continues
Tuesday, December 01, 2020, 14:37

Messin' With The Mosin ... I got to wondering if, since the barrel was originally held tight in place by 2 barrel bands .. what would happen if I floated the barrel? So I got out the handy Dremel tool and proceeded to "mill" out the stock until the barrel was not touching anyplace after the recoil block.

Shooting it .. still at 50 yards .. the shots stayed in tighter than before but still nothing to write home about. Since it seemed to make a difference I thought perhaps my turning down the bayonet lug on the barrel band affected things ... or maybe the rifling in the muzzle was more worn than the rest of the barrel. The answer to those questions?

CUT OFF THE BARREL!

So I did. I shortened it to a little over 17", then cut a dovetail and mounted a Marble's White Bead front sight.

In shop I set the rifle - with the bolt removed - in a rest and sighted through the bore at a clock about 25 yards away. Looking through the bore and then through the sights I could tell front sight was pretty low. BUT it was all I had at the moment so I decided to lower the rear sight.

Some grinding ... some filing ... removing the sight spring .. and it was much closer.

Since it had no spring to keep it in place I used Gorilla Glue, clamped it and let it set overnight.

Two rainy days passed and finally today I was able to get out to the range. Initial shots showed that I had the sight fairly close to center horizontally but that it was still somewhat low. Good enough. I started firing 3 shot groups.

The good news is that it does not seem to walk the shots around the paper. During shooting I discovered the gorilla glue did not hold the sight down so that will have to be addressed. BUT .. it is doing much better.

I have some commercial 150 soft point spitzers now and I also have a some .313" diameter 115 gr. cast bullets to try. The old gun may have some useful life left in it yet!