Mosin Nagant wonderment.....

BCRider

BCRider

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And not really in a good way.

After reading about how badly fouled even the re-asenalled rifles were I really went to town on scrubbing and copper stripping the bore. It took a while and a small mountain of patches but I finally got to where patches came out barely tinted at all.

Well today I was out and shot 20 rounds through the gun. Tonight the patches wetted with Hoppes #9 are coming out BLUE-GREEN AGAIN for a half dozen patches so far.

I'm wondering if the copper wash over the steel jackets simply do not stick to the bullets and come off in the bore. As it stands now I feel like I've stripped enough copper out of what WAS a clean bore to build up a pocket full of pennys ! ! !

The good news is that the clean bore managed to produce 5 inch groups for me with my "old guy eyes" that simply do not work well with plain irons.

For next time out I want to try one of those shooting glasses peep holes to deepen my depth of field and sharpen my vision. I'm pretty sure that this is now a 2 inch group or better sort of gun. It's simply that I can't produce them without some sort of vision aid.
 
Friend, think for a moment about what you are doing.

You re starting with a rifle with a bore of maybe .301" and ammunition with bullet diameters of about .311": an interference-fit of maybe .010". You put the ammunition into the chamber and pull the trigger. Suddenly, there is 50,000 pounds of gas pressure behind that bullet, starting the back end of it down the bore while the front end is standing still, upsetting the bullet even larger while, at the same time, it is being squished into the rifling and twisted through a right turn of a full turn about every 9-1/2 inches. The bullet distorts, of course, expands and shoves its way down the bore, sliding along, metal against metal, fifty thousand pounds of pressure hurrying it along and continually trying to hammer it into the sides of the bore. The sides of the bore are pretty good but, looked at under a serious microscope, they are open and porous and there is LOTS of room in there for a tiny splash of copper to get hidden.

Afterwards, you treat the bore with chemicals which dissolve the copper, it obligingly dissolves and presents itself as a bluey-greeny smear on your cleaning patch, exactly as you told it to.

Yup, the copper is coming from your bullets. Likely you are shooting copper-washed surplus ammo, which is bad for copper-fouling. Gilding-metal jackets such as you use handloading are less prone to fouling at normal velocities and pressures, and modern powders with tin incorporated into the powder line the bore with vapourised tin metal, which causes copper fouling to blow clear. Also, you can reduce fouling somewhat with lower-pressured handloads rather than the tank-killer monsters supplied by Russian Board of Ordnance.

SOMETIMES lapping a barrel will reduce fouling.

What year is your rifle?

Hope this is some help. I know it's frustrating but you have to remember that when Ivan Ivanovich was drafted back in 1891, he had the next 25 years to clean and scrape the nickel fouling out of his rifle! At least copper-wash DISSOLVES!

Good luck, friend.

Hope this helps.
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You need a stronger solvent to remove fouling, or let it sit a bit longer. Decades of fouling does not always come off in a few minutes of cleaning, nor will Hoppes 9 have any effect to it. When your all done, slug your barrel to know what your up against. Bore diameters can vary largely and help to determine what size bullet to shoot. Mosins can be very accurate with the correct load. .
 
.... but... but... what if I NEED to kill a tank? You know... just "because"? :D

It's interesting to see that you mentioned the surplus ammo and how it more easily wipes off the plated on copper wash as that is exactly what I'm shooting through it for now.

Hitzy, thanks for the Outer's suggestion. I keep forgetting to find a good copper cleanout product when I'm out. Last night's reminder from the patches and your suggestion will hopefully do the trick this time.

The goal is to gather up the dies and casings and reload my own and that may well turn the tide on this. But for now I just dip my hand carefully past the jagged edges of my SPAM can of ammo and pull out a neatly paper wrapped bundle of bullets with a nice QC tag written by some helpful comrade inspector and go beat up my shoulder for fun. :D

I've actually got a pack of 20 Privi Partisan rounds that I'm going to try for next time. But first I need to find a target for 100 yards that works with my feeble eyes to better let me key the sights onto. But hey, it's all part of the fun of getting old, right?

I hate to do it as it would sure mess up the lines of the gun but when it's all said and done I may just have to sigh and get a scout sight setup for it. It might be nice to do so even if I don't leave it on all the time. It would let me see what the rifles can do instead of being so badly limited by the guy pulling the trigger.

Either way though shooting my Mosin is some of the best fun I've had with rifles to date.
 
BCRider said:
.... but... but... what if I NEED to kill a tank? You know... just "because"? :D

It's interesting to see that you mentioned the surplus ammo and how it more easily wipes off the plated on copper wash as that is exactly what I'm shooting through it for now.

Hitzy, thanks for the Outer's suggestion. I keep forgetting to find a good copper cleanout product when I'm out. Last night's reminder from the patches and your suggestion will hopefully do the trick this time.

The goal is to gather up the dies and casings and reload my own and that may well turn the tide on this. But for now I just dip my hand carefully past the jagged edges of my SPAM can of ammo and pull out a neatly paper wrapped bundle of bullets with a nice QC tag written by some helpful comrade inspector and go beat up my shoulder for fun. :D

I've actually got a pack of 20 Privi Partisan rounds that I'm going to try for next time. But first I need to find a target for 100 yards that works with my feeble eyes to better let me key the sights onto. But hey, it's all part of the fun of getting old, right?

I hate to do it as it would sure mess up the lines of the gun but when it's all said and done I may just have to sigh and get a scout sight setup for it. It might be nice to do so even if I don't leave it on all the time. It would let me see what the rifles can do instead of being so badly limited by the guy pulling the trigger.

Either way though shooting my Mosin is some of the best fun I've had with rifles to date.
Click to expand...

I love the "feeble eyes" part of your post,I can really relate to that one.I'm thinking before too much longer the targets I'll need will be the proverbial "broadside of a barndoor" size!
And ya,the old Mosins are lots of fun to play with.
 
The $99 Comrade's Special we bought from Westrifle (1943 Ish. production, with the "Hurry up, Fritz is coming!" fit and finish) was so wildly befouled with copper that I've started finding it hilarious.

Every time I walk by it - once or twice a month - I give it a squirt of foaming bore cleaner. Then I come back later or even the next day, note the amount of "blueberry juice" in my catch basin, and run a rag through it. The rag comes out looking like it's been dipped in tar.

Gaze down the bore with the ol' Eyeball Mk. I, and she's getting shinier and shinier. The rifling's pretty good. I'm not seeing any pits - more sort of a consistent frosting.

The last rag I ran came out a little less horrible. Someday, they'll come out clean. I have no idea what I'll do then. I've started liking the battle...

Shooting "Stalin's Stovepipe" is a LOT of fun - plenty of buck and roar, and she'll do as well as I can do with iron sights at age 48. I like the old girl. For something that looks like the end result of a heroin binge in the design department of Cooey, it's a remarkably precise instrument.
 
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Dan, I found myself laughing and nodding in agreement at the same time. It's almost like it's a DIRECT CHALLENGE TO OUR MANHOOD to get these puppies to come out "white glove" clean.... :D


On a more serious note I've been considering what would make a good target for us fans of plain iron military sights used with "old guy eyes". Would it be too far removed from the general topic of milsurp rifles to start a thread about options and discussion?
 
For a TARGET, has anyone considered the old "tin hat" target which the Army used to use?

You start with a round black blob and then you cover the bottom half of it.

It is MUCH easier to keep your vertical hold on, than a simple black circle. Your best sight picture with this is with a centre hold (left-to-right) and a thin band of light between the front sight post and the "tin hat".

It is a very cheap target to make and it WORKS well.

BTW, Dan, my eyes are almost 20 years older than yours..... and this works for me.

Another truly EXCELLENT target is a simple BLACK SQUARE, whatever size you need for your eyes. For 100, try 6 inches. This gives you TWO really good aiming points on each target, one on the left, one on the right. With this one, using iron sights, you place the front post of the sight with its uppper-right-CORNER TANGENT TO the lower-left corner of the aiming-square. To use the other side of the square, place the upper-left corner of the sight post tangent to the lower-right corner of the square. Works very well. This same aiming square works very well with a SCOPE also: you use the crosshairs of the scope to FRAME any one of the corners, giving you 4 grouping targets per square...... if you and the rifle are up to using all four.

Hope this helps.
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Excellent ideas on the targets smellie. I may need to size them up a little from your suggested 6 inch square but the idea of them is good. I'll CAD a couple up and give 'em a try.

You might be older but it sounds from your suggestion of 6inch squares that you're more eagle like in vision than my decidely "mole" like vision... :D

My problem is that if I wear my distance correcting glasses the target is nice and clear but I can't focus on anything closer than 6 feet in front of me. And a rifle's front post is just a vague blur. So I'm shooting "au naturel".... at least in the vision department.

Shooting another long range single shot that has a small aperature target peep setup works well. So as I mentioned earlier I'm going to try to sharpen the vision up by using one of the tip down or stick on peep aperatures for my shooting glasses.
 
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