Mosin Nagant Re barrelling

[1891/30]

I have an beautiful original 1891/30 Mosin Nagant sniper rifle with original PU scope. Amazing rifle. The only thing is its bore is shot out. I was thinking of rebarrelling it with an arsenal refurb. I looked it up and it seems that these barrels can be extremely hard to remove. 540 ft/lbs of torque in this case.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YOjYro4w0Bc

I was just wondering if when I replaced the barrel (and kept original for collectors sake) I had to tighten it to this same extreme torque value?
Any opinions?

 

[fiddler]

I have an beautiful original 1891/30 Mosin Nagant sniper rifle with original PU scope. Amazing rifle. The only thing is its bore is shot out.

Define "shot out"?

I've had more than a few old milsurps that didn't shoot so well, but after slugging the bore found there was still a substantial amount of difference between lands and groove. Shooting one Mosin with a .311 bullet gave poor results, but increasing diameter to .312 or .313 holds decent groups.


Not sure if you've tried that, but its easy to write off an old rifle that can't hit the side of a barn from the inside... or can it?

 

[tiriaq]

I have had mixed success removing MN barrels. To avoid destroying the collector value of your rifle, it would be necessary to remove the barrel without doing any damage whatsoever, so that the rifle could be restored at a later date. MIght or might not be possible.
Have you really cleaned the barrel? What looks like a shot out bore could be metal fouling.
The amount of torque required to install a replacement barrel is controllable. If it looks as if an excessive amount is going to be needed to bring the barrel to index, the shank could be adjusted.

 

[ghostntheshell]

Yup. Make sure it's shot out. I have an old M44 that I was sure was ruined by corrosive ammo and YEARS of neglectful cleaning. It shot great, and the barrel doesn't look so bad now that I've shot a bunch of ammo down the pipe and cleaned it up.

 

[smellie]

Likely one of the BIGGEST contributors to the inaccuracy of the Moisin-Nagant rifle is the American insistance on feeding the poor things with .308" diameter projectiles.

A friend and myself spent a lot of years playing with military rifles, just to see how much accuracy we could get out of them. We tested a whole bunch, including almost half a dozen MNs, and found that group size with an MN with a good bore shrank something like 40 to 50% when shot with .312" slugs as opposed to the "ideal" .308". We further established that you can pretty much expect the rifle to shoot better with .312" than with .311".

Also when dealing with "shot-out" barrels, remember the old-fashioned FLATBASE bullet. They might not be as pretty as those nice boat-tails but they cost less.... AND if your load is up there close to mil-spec, the smack on the base of the bullet serves to UPSET it.... with the result that it shoots better because it is making good contat with the rifling in a well-sealed bore. Boat-tails don't upset nearly as well as flatbase bullets.

If none of these work, you can always go to a custom bullet maker and find some .314" or even larger.... or get the tooling and bump up your own. If you have a bright bore, you can do a great deal with cast bullets, too.

There's always hope.... and another experiment for a sunny summer afternon at the range.
.

 

[Andy]

I have a Mosin PEM sniper repro that had a good bore, but it slugged to 0.316". I used cast bullets of course, and it shot well, but I grew weary of the outside neck turning that was required in order to provide the necessary neck clearance with that oversized bullet. I bought a barelled action (with an excellent 0.312" bore), and swapped the whole thing out, rather than go to the trouble of removing two barrels and installing one. My scope mount installation was better done than the previous one as well.