Mosin 91/30 with odd things about it

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Schoro

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I recently received my package from Tradex for the 5 rifle package. In this package was a 91/30 and at first I didn't give it much notice. Since then I have seen several others from there but none like this one. The is one has the serial number on the receiver stamped with gold or gold paint. There is also a triangle with a 25 stamped in the centre which is gold stamped too. This is not a Tula, its the other one, matching numbers all around including the butt plate. The butt plate and bottom of the mag are also stamped same number with gold paint. What is this model, is this just the refurbished way of doing things? Anyone with answer would be gratefully appreciated... The year stamped is 1943





 
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An odd one. The izhvsk stamp would be a triangle with an arrow. Several other countries used a triangle with numbers. China, East Germany and Romania. The triangle 25 I am not sure about. As for the gold paint, ?? Someone did that to highlight the numbers.
 
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Somewhere along the way the numbers on many of them were filled with paint for whatever reason. I've seen white, red, yellow and now gold. I have no idea if it was original or if the paint fill was added during refurbishing. But it would appear that they used whatever was cheap and at hand as long as it was bright.

I see that the exterior machining on your '43 is every bit as much like some rabid garble gnawed it out of a block of solid metal as my own '43.... Must have been all the style at that point.... :D
 
Yeah the paint was probably done at some point during refurb. Several of mine are painted in red and a few in white. Never thought anything of it.
 
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Rifle does have the "Triangle-arrow" of Ishevesk. Definitely not a Chinese rifle. In 1943, the Russians were moving production machinery away from the German advance and dispersing their factories. It is possible that the "Triangle-25" is a sub-factory marking of a factory that made barrels. I have seen several MN rifles with paint used to highlight the serial numbers - not hard to do. Just a dab of paint on the lettering, then a swipe with a cloth to remove the high spots, leaving paint in the numbers.
 
buffdog said:
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Rifle does have the "Triangle-arrow" of Ishevesk. Definitely not a Chinese rifle. In 1943, the Russians were moving production machinery away from the German advance and dispersing their factories. It is possible that the "Triangle-25" is a sub-factory marking of a factory that made barrels. I have seen several MN rifles with paint used to highlight the serial numbers - not hard to do. Just a dab of paint on the lettering, then a swipe with a cloth to remove the high spots, leaving paint in the numbers.
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Good info...Thanks
 
BCRider said:
Somewhere along the way the numbers on many of them were filled with paint for whatever reason. I've seen white, red, yellow and now gold. I have no idea if it was original or if the paint fill was added during refurbishing. But it would appear that they used whatever was cheap and at hand as long as it was bright.

I see that the exterior machining on your '43 is every bit as much like some rabid garble gnawed it out of a block of solid metal as my own '43.... Must have been all the style at that point.... :D
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I'm pretty sure the guy who was good at running the lathe got sent to the front early on in the war, after owning several war time Nagants I was shocked to take the wood off my first hex receiver and find the barrel to be both well machined and nicely blued. :)

I have both an SKS and a 91/30 with white lettering, seen red before too but gold is new to me.
 
kennymo said:
I'm pretty sure the guy who was good at running the lathe got sent to the front early on in the war, after owning several war time Nagants I was shocked to take the wood off my first hex receiver and find the barrel to be both well machined and nicely blued. :)

I have both an SKS and a 91/30 with white lettering, seen red before too but gold is new to me.
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Its not the lathe operators fault that the finish is that bad. To increase production, the speed & feed rate of the machines where turned up as high as the tool bit would allow.
 
The only triangle with a 2 digit number listed in "The Mosin Nagant Rifle" by Terence Lapin is
26. This is a Chinese production mark from Factory 296 in Chongqing. The numbers are stylized
to flow with the sides of the triangle. Your rifle is definitely Russian made.

The mark on your one has cleaner, more precice stamping with upright numbers which would indicate a
post war Soviet refurbishment stamp. By which satellite country of USSR the refurb was done in back then
can only be researched deeper to get 'er right. My guess, until I see nice, detailed pics of the stock markings as well as the metal for now is East Germany.:)
 
I have heard before that some think the the colours may be a refurb mark in itself, that different colours may signify where they were refurbed.
 
desporterizer said:
Its not the lathe operators fault that the finish is that bad. To increase production, the speed & feed rate of the machines where turned up as high as the tool bit would allow.
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This happens in war time when a high rate of production is required....during WW 2 , many Russian soldiers were sent to the front without a rifle and told to pick up a rifle from a dead comrade as they advanced.....human life did not mean much to the Russian leaders at the time....
 
Gunexpert007 said:
This happens in war time when a high rate of production is required....during WW 2 , many Russian soldiers were sent to the front without a rifle and told to pick up a rifle from a dead comrade as they advanced.....human life did not mean much to the Russian leaders at the time....
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Don't get carried on that idea. In general, for every 1 german 3 russians died during WW2. That included disasters in 1941 and first half of 1942. "Human waives" were simply impossible even in theory except for some isolated occurrences. By summer 1942 Soviet Union officially acknowledged that it has no advantage in arms, resources or in number of people. In 1941, Germans occupied Ukraine, Belarus, Baltic, Western Russia, the territory were over 50% of the USSR population lived.
 
I just got a MN 90/31 like yours and it has a very similar dark yellow / gold on the serial number. Mine also has the 25 in a triangle above the serial number. My stock has the square with horizontal line on it that indicates it was in an armory / refurb building in the Ukraine at some point, at least that's my understanding from looking around at some sites.
 
Hi Folks,

The /25\ is a rearsenal mark from the factory responsible for refurbing the rifle. Best guess is the Balkans, but that's by no means gospel.

It's usually associated with red-painted marks; numbers and such, but earlier examples did have the white paint.

Regards,

Josh
 
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