Radium on Mosin Nagants?

bogusiii

bogusiii

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I was just looking at a greasy Mosin Nagant 91/30 and saw brown-ish residue in the serial number on the top of the breech. It looks like someone used a white substance to highlight the serial number and that substance has turned brown. It dawned on me I've seen quite a few Mosins like this. Because it appears on many rifles right out of the crate I can't put it down to over zealous collectors.

Then I look at old radio dials that were painted with radium. It was originally white but over 70 years it has turned brown.

Radium was used a lot in WW2.

So my question is, has anyone ever checked out the beech of a Mosin with a gieger counter?
 
Never have but if I owned one I would check just for giggles.

Remember, don't lick the breech guys. On a serious note, radium is actually pretty hot stuff. Even after 70-80 years it would only be around 3% less active.
 
Russians never used Radium on any ordinary Mosin or any other rifle at all.

Supplies of any and all radioactive material where always in short supply in USSR and after 1941 it got really bad.
Even medical grade stuff for Rontgen x-ray machines can be found on Lend-Lease lists.

Aircraft instruments would be the only place Russians used radioactive material.If you look at pictures of them on surviving planes you can find very few had "green" arrowheads.
BTW.I don't think they used Radium for that but I can be wrong.
 
donor said:
Russians never used Radium on any ordinary Mosin or any other rifle at all.

Supplies of any and all radioactive material where always in short supply in USSR and after 1941 it got really bad.
Even medical grade stuff for Rontgen x-ray machines can be found on Lend-Lease lists.

Aircraft instruments would be the only place Russians used radioactive material.If you look at pictures of them on surviving planes you can find very few had "green" arrowheads.
BTW.I don't think they used Radium for that but I can be wrong.
Click to expand...

How about post war refirbs when they were swimming in radioactive stuff? Of course it could be just gunk.
 
The simplest answer is usually the best.

Ask yourself this: "Why would anyone smear Radium onto a Moisin-Nagant?"

There is NO logical answer.

Those rifles were stored away at a time when a Dollar bought you TEN big chocolate bars or sent TWENTY-FIVE letters...... and Radium was $10,000 a GRAM.

Just gunk, contaminated with BROWN Cosmoline-like Grease.
 
donor said:
Russians never used Radium on any ordinary Mosin or any other rifle at all.

Supplies of any and all radioactive material where always in short supply in USSR and after 1941 it got really bad.
Even medical grade stuff for Rontgen x-ray machines can be found on Lend-Lease lists.

Aircraft instruments would be the only place Russians used radioactive material.If you look at pictures of them on surviving planes you can find very few had "green" arrowheads.

BTW.I don't think they used Radium for that but I can be wrong.
Click to expand...

When the Soviets got wind that the Americans were working on the bomb, they started scrounging for any radioactive elements they could lay their mitts on, for research. That's where the Lend Lease stuff went. Very small quantities on hand before that. They even managed to pilfer U 235 and Plutonium samples, from the Manhattan project.

Grizz
 
Manhattan Project was an open book to Joe Stalin.

Only people who didn't know about it were the ones paying for it and the ones who got it dropped on them.
 
they used radium not because it was white, but because it glows in the dark. the last thing you need as a soldier is a rifle that glows, so i bet dollars to doughnuts they never did it
 
Ah...but that may be it!! Radium glows but very little. Just enough for Ivan to make sure he picks up the right rifle in the middle of the night.

I don't believe that but it's almost Russian enough to be true.
 
the white fill on surplus firearm crests and insignia where added by collectors after the fact so other collectors could be impressed (or not) with what they where looking at without having to strain their eyes...i've yet to see an actual serving firearm with the stamping filled with white crayon....

with what radium cost in the soviet union in 1944, coupled with the low literacy rate of the soviet army, i really doubt that they filled SN's with glow in the dark elements.
 
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