Torandir: I used to own a few of the SVT refurbs and shot them quite a bit. Accuracy was truly all over the page with no definite correlation to bore condition. My best one was a '41 Tula with only fair bore and not particularly good stock fit (and an early skinny stock, as well). With Chinese surplus it would shoot 1.5" 5 shot groups all day at 100m(in fact, from the very first zeroing groups to the last, before I sold it, every group was the same). My second best was a '43 Bulgarian "light refurb" which was almost as good, as you would hope given it was virtually a brand-new, factory matching rifle. Third best was a '41 Sniper that I worked with shimming to secure the receiver in the wood more firmly. It gave best results with PRVI FMJ- 1.5" 5 shot groups were possible though not common. Fourth best was my Lever Arms $200 Christmas Special! I tried a lot of bedding experiments with it. 7 or 8 inch groups as purchased. It improved a bit by increasing the forend tip up-pressure but really improved when I did a bit of inletting on the rear deck of the stock which rotates the barreled action around the front pin and turns it into a "floater". It would then routinely put 5 into 2" at 100m. All three '43 light refurbs I've owned in the past appear to have come from the factory floating at the forend tip and have fairly deep inletting for the action at the rear.
Those were the good ones. Others showed no real tendency to want to "group", yielding long strings or missing standard targets all together with some shots. Things to consider are: Are the metal upper guards firmly in place or do they shift between shots, changing the geometry shot by shot? Is the clamping of the stock at the rear by the trigger group adequate? It's easy to make it tighter with beer can or brass shims. Is the barreled action really loose, front to rear or side to side, before installing the trigger group? You can use gasket paper in different positions to snug it up. I suspect the poor fitting of the actions to the wood at the refurb facility is the main culprit. I checked carefully all the ones I owned and it was split between some forend tip pressure, very light forend pressure, and fully floating. Totally hit and miss as to whether the lower metal guard fit tightly onto the wood. Also, there are different versions of the lower metal guard- some have a ring the barrel sits on, some don't.
Have fun trying to make it shoot and let us know if you find something that works. I would stick to one type of surplus and leave that as a constant. Overall I definitely found mine worked best with light ball surplus.
milsurpo
