M38 Carbines...Anyone Tinkering for Accuracy?

SHELL SHUCKER

SHELL SHUCKER

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I was out the other day giving my M38 Mosin Nagant its' first tryout since getting 'er.
This one came from Trade Ex and is typical of a lot of 1943 "Izzies" that folks got
during the M38 frenzy around Xmas.

The stock is an M44 stock with a mis-matched hand guard, but all of the wood is
quite fine and free of dings. There is the common repair on the left front fore stock and
the bottom plate on the magazine is re-numbered. So before I would go shoot the beasty,
I had to work some of the bugs out which are typical with arms rushed in production.

The first thing I did was de-foul the barrel with plenty of Wipe Out and nylon brushing.
I noticed the sights on this rifle are both off centered to the left, and the front sight
band can be moved left & right about 1/8th. of an inch. At 80 yds.,this equated to
around 18 inches either way. Not good, so lined up the front and rear sights and then
marked the junction of the sight band and barrel using a sharpened TIG tungsten rod to
make for easy sight adjustment at the range.
Before.
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Next step was to strip of the finish from the stock and match the stain between the
handguard and stock. I did this without sanding. After staining, I gave the stocks 3
rubbed in coats of Tru Oil to keep the Soviet look.
After
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I swapped out the trigger and sear/spring unit for a Polish set I had tuned for a previous rifle.
To ensure smoothness of pull, I had shimmed the trigger to remove any side play as well as
micro-polish the bearing surfaces of the trigger & sear/spring. The trigger still has that long
pull with heavy final release point, but it is very smooth. I will soon correct this horrid situation
with a Huber trigger.

I did some preliminary bedding under the barrel shank ahead of the receiver ring and behind
the upper rear tang of the receiver to prevent movement between action and stock using
the light loads I normally use. More bedding will be added after I finish load testing and getting
the better trigger. I also drilled out the stock to receiver bolt holes to ensure that the wood
doesn't touch the bolts.

Using a load consisting of 14.0 gr. SR4759 held in place with a lightly tamped pinch of kapok to
hold the powder in place under a 180 gr. gas checked cast boolit, I managed to get 6 out of 10
onto a 6" paper plate at 80 yds. The other four were used as sight verifiers.
That front sight post was way too thick for my eyes, so I have sinced thinned it down to a pin type.

Initial results look ok, but I'll get the bugger shooting tighter for sure.:)
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Great to see that you're having fun with an old mosin!!:)

Couple of questions right off the bat!!

As above did you test fire the rifle before all of the tinkering?

Second did you slug the bore before deciding to run .311" projectiles?

I run .312 lee 180 grain gas checked bullets with 14 grains of red dot in my mosin. 100 yard accuracy is 1 -1.5 MOA if I do my part.

I'm thinking that if you are using the same point of aim at 80 yards and got those results your bullet/powder choice may be of the wrong size/type. Also I'm not sure how clean you made the barrel but I tend to leave the copper in my barrels when i clean them as I find that if I take the copper out accuracy suffers for a number of shots after. Last year I took all of the copper out of 2 rifles that I shoot weekly, my Ross and an AG parker target rifle. They both shot groups almost double the size after the cleaning and it took about 15-20 shots with jacketed bullets to lay that copper back down and then the accuracy ended up exactly where it was before the cleaning.

Just my thoughts, I've done some accuracy work to a 91/30 and a Finn m91 but I've yet to load for a short barreled mosin variant. In fact when I read "M38" I always think carcano or a swede Mauser.

Also I'm not sure of the accuracy potential of a mosin carbine.
 
Tinkering for accuracy on a carbine that wasn't made to be accurate is doing so because it's fun. Especially one made at the height of W.W. II. That's a good reason, but don't expect to see much improvement. Minute of pie plate wouldn't be horrible.
I'd slug the barrel first and use a lighter bullet. There are several match grade 174 grain .311" bullets and hordes of 125 grain bullets.
 
To answer above questions... I didn't fire this rifle before starting to tweek it a bit, and especially to
thoroughly clean & inspect it for function or defects. (Yeah, those off centered sights could be called a defect.)
The stock trigger was so wiggly and the sear/spring unit so crude as well, I just had to do a basic trigger
tune just to smooth things out.

I touched up the crown and polished the camming surfaces of the bolt assembly as well before taking the rifle
out for testing. I will slug the bore to get a true diameter reading but hey, I had some older .311's that an amigo of mine gave me and they shot fine out out my 91/30, so I used up the last of 'em for this initial trail. I'm pretty sure that the bore of this rifle is bigger than .311" due to it's well used appearence. No worries, I'll have 'er dialed in better for the next shoot.

To match up the wood stain was pretty easy. After stripping off the old finish and giving the wood a good acetone cleaning, I first gave the handguard a coat of Varethane dark walnut gel-stain and let it dry, then rubbed in a coat of same brand "traditional cherry" stain.

For the butt stock, seein' that it was darker wood than the handguard, all I did was rub in a coat of the cherry stain and...bingo...fluke shot!:)

I figure this particular little rifle is capable of hitting minute of deer heart at 75+ yds. at the moment,
but I'll keep workin' at 'er till I get the bugger hitting minute of feral cat or grey squirrel at 100.;)
 
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