- Location
- SW Manitoba
My svt won't cycle soft points
Svt-40 as a hunting rifle?
- Thread starter Collint2005
- Start date
What's your gas set at? If I remember correctly, mine's 1.3 and cycles everything hot or cold. Tosses the cases about 2 feet to my right and one to my rear.
Yup, White vinegar, an old sock, about 20mins of soaking and 10 of scrubbing. Make sure it's all off after or she'll rust.
Polish after stripping and voila, back to winter of '42 glory.
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I built a little 3-gun rack next to my computer desk. Stole the design idea from the ones at Silverdale. Holds my SKS, SVT-40 and Mosin all standing vertically. I like to leave them in it when we have guests over, always starts a conversation in 15 seconds or less.
Paranoid much?
My gear's locked up tighter than a nun's butt, worth less than $5G's, building has 24/7 security, an excellent neighborhood watch program and on the odd chance I were home when/if it happen, my wife'll nag them to the point where they're begging for jail or a bullet.
Both my neighbors are stay-at-home mom's and we look out for each other. I help them with things like groceries, pharmacy runs and household repairs and they help keep an eye on everything for us.
I sleep soundly at night myself and I live in what most people believe is the crappy part of town. It's not but, those of us who live here like the rest of T.O to believe it is and stay away from so we generally don't correct their misinformation.
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The 7.62x39 with the right bullet and under 100 yards will kill deer with no fuss. The 7.62 x 54 will do it farther away. And will do for moose. Don't think I'd want to use an SKS though. Unless you have one that will shoot well enough with those crappy sights.
- Location
- SW Manitoba
It's not the gas, the soft point digs in and hangs up on the feed ramp. I also have surplus Russian ammo that will stop both of my svt40 s every once and awhile. The rim is a hair wider than mfs and the rim digs into the shell below it as it is stripping of the mag. Mfs always runs smooth...
Go figure. You'd think Russian surplus would work well in a surplus Russian rifle. My rifle's been reliable with Bulgarian surplus but haven't shot it all that much since I had been swapping out the steel core bullets for lead ones since my range didn't allow steel which is a pain in the ass and really takes away from the fun. New range allows steel core so my rifle's gonna get out a whole lot more now. I'll save the cases with swapped bullets for hunting and will still swap the occasional bullets for working up more hunting loads.
- Location
- On a resonably direct route in NS
You said it ‘won't cycle’ at first, which sounds like a gas problem; more accurate to say it won't feed. This is certainly an issue that others have had, and that the SVT wasn't designed for soft lead bullets is part of the problem. But feed ramp and magazine geometry play a part.
You should clean and lightly polish the feed ramp, and possibly grind away a small amount, particularly if it's always hanging up from one side over the other. Then you have the magazine fitment, which is a little loose and out of spec. on most re-furbs. Some bending of the mag. lips might help, but the fit is basically up to the front beak part and the two small square lugs on the back. If you have the bolt open and you wiggle the mag. and press it up, you should be able to see how that affects feeding. If you need to shape the lugs it's a lot harder to add material than to take it off, so in the end it might work better to mate up two rifles, one with problem A and one with problem B, and switch mag.s to cure both of them.
Maybe the lead tip is too broad and rounded? You can shape or trim it more to a point. There might even be a tool out there to buy for it, as precision shooters are known to do this to lead projectiles in other calibres.
(I hate when people use FTF, which could mean both Failure to Fire or Feed, and FTE, Failure to Eject or Extract, and don't clarify. Hard to fix a problem with the wrong diagnosis.)
You're making sure to load the rounds in the magazine with each rim ahead of the one before? Or are you loading with clips? The ‘official’ way to load a clip is in a ‘pyramid,’ with the one in the middle highest and the others dropping below to either side:
_—¯—_
But it's hard to keep them that way when they're jostling around in your pack.
Dis-assemble and clean the mag.; maybe the spring's in wrong, or there's a dent in the body or rough edges on the follower?
- Location
- SW Manitoba
I've heard about modifying the feed ramp or filing the points but I can't be bothered. I don't plan to hunt with my svt's... Just tried a box of sp when I bought the guns.
The rim on the surplus is a little wide and digs into the shell below it, that's all. I've spent some time looking at it. Maybe it's out of spec.
I don't know if you've ever been silly enough to load a mag with top rim behind bottom rim but I doubt if that shell would strip off at all
The rim on the surplus is a little wide and digs into the shell below it, that's all. I've spent some time looking at it. Maybe it's out of spec.
I don't know if you've ever been silly enough to load a mag with top rim behind bottom rim but I doubt if that shell would strip off at all
Better pics of the finish I did, finally got around to getting them online. These ones show the beauty:
East meets West.
Sounds like they may not be "stacked" quite right, rimmed cartridges can be finnicky that way. You bear witness to one of the reasons rimmed centerfire cartridges have fallen out of favor. I've never had an issue but, I've heard many others who have.
East meets West.
Sounds like they may not be "stacked" quite right, rimmed cartridges can be finnicky that way. You bear witness to one of the reasons rimmed centerfire cartridges have fallen out of favor. I've never had an issue but, I've heard many others who have.
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MauserMike
CGN Ultra frequent flyer
- Location
- SW Ontario
M44 has that handy dandy bayonet, useful for approaching fallen game 
