mosin countebore
- Thread starter wkp774
- Start date
This may not be quite what you're asking but the comment that M38 carbines were mostly counterbored is just not true.
When Intenationa Firearms started bringing them in at the Montreal warehouse, I went with Alan Lever to sort through thousands of them. They were all beautiful, mostly FTRed but carefully with care taken to either match the numbers or at least electropencil matching numbers on replacement parts.
When I say thousands, there were at least 5000 of the handy little rifles, in green crates, carefully packed for long term storage
Not one of the rifles I looked at, and I looked at over a thousand, picked randomly from the crates, had counter bores.
These were all Russian built rifles, stored in satellite nations, whom they were given to or just stored there for strategic reserves.
There was another batch that came in, around 1993, and it turned out they were all given to the Chinese to use in Korea, were battle captures and were in fair only to good condition. Most of those had pitted, counterbored barrels. Most of them were Russian built and likely the dregs of what they had in storage.
That might be where the myth came from
There were other batches from reserves in other nations, that did indeed have a 25-30% amount of rifles with counterbored muzzles. Almost, not all, of them went to the Century Internationl warehouses in Virginia.
Same for M91-30 muzzles, they only counterbored them if it was necessary to keep them in service and the rest of the bore was decent or serviceable.
The vast majority of them weren't counterbored, unless they came from battlefields and were put aside when they didn't pass specs for muzzle wear.
Most of the early M91/30 rifles that came into Canada, were the dregs from the storage warehouses and in truth had been ridden hard and put away wet.
Usually the very first rifles were at best GOOD ONLY NRA STANDARD CONDITION.
The next batches were mostly FTRed, some of which were counterbored but not only a small, at most 10%, of the thousands of them I picked through, to make sure I didn't get any mixmasters.
When Intenationa Firearms started bringing them in at the Montreal warehouse, I went with Alan Lever to sort through thousands of them. They were all beautiful, mostly FTRed but carefully with care taken to either match the numbers or at least electropencil matching numbers on replacement parts.
When I say thousands, there were at least 5000 of the handy little rifles, in green crates, carefully packed for long term storage
Not one of the rifles I looked at, and I looked at over a thousand, picked randomly from the crates, had counter bores.
These were all Russian built rifles, stored in satellite nations, whom they were given to or just stored there for strategic reserves.
There was another batch that came in, around 1993, and it turned out they were all given to the Chinese to use in Korea, were battle captures and were in fair only to good condition. Most of those had pitted, counterbored barrels. Most of them were Russian built and likely the dregs of what they had in storage.
That might be where the myth came from
There were other batches from reserves in other nations, that did indeed have a 25-30% amount of rifles with counterbored muzzles. Almost, not all, of them went to the Century Internationl warehouses in Virginia.
Same for M91-30 muzzles, they only counterbored them if it was necessary to keep them in service and the rest of the bore was decent or serviceable.
The vast majority of them weren't counterbored, unless they came from battlefields and were put aside when they didn't pass specs for muzzle wear.
Most of the early M91/30 rifles that came into Canada, were the dregs from the storage warehouses and in truth had been ridden hard and put away wet.
Usually the very first rifles were at best GOOD ONLY NRA STANDARD CONDITION.
The next batches were mostly FTRed, some of which were counterbored but not only a small, at most 10%, of the thousands of them I picked through, to make sure I didn't get any mixmasters.
