Thinking about M91/30..

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Whiskey01

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I was thinking about picking up the mosin nagant M91/30 and the cheapest one I've been able to find is from Trade Ex Canada.

Has anyone had any issues with Trade Ex and do you know why it's so cheap there? They claim it's in excellent condition....

Thanks!
 
they don't have the same over head as other dealers as they are a father and son operation, so prives are cheaper. you will find different prices across the country, may i suggest to you to check out ellwoodepps, you can be sure with them that theyy will give you a better quote on the condition of a rifle barrel than most.bit more expensive but worth it
 
Trade Ex is awesome....!!!!!

No issues, fast ship, pleasent to deal with, Descriptions are top knotch..

Pete
 
baught a M91/30 from them in excellent condition
it was indeed in excellent condition and was at my door 3 days after i had placed the order
 
never bought milsurp from them (yet), but other items have been in BETTER than described condition.
 
mardig88

What was the bore condition and what kind of accuracy can you get?

Also, I can't seem to find ammo in stock anywhere...are you pretty much forced to reload for the Mosin?
 
I've been able to buy new manufacture hunting ammunition from my local gun shop. Finding surplus has been a little more difficult but Marstar just got some crates in stock.
 
Accuracy with a decent bore should be good. For mt, the gun shoots better than what my skills can achieve :)

Ammo has been indeed not the most common or abundant. Personaly, I've been getting surplus ammo. I also got some commercial ammo (brass cases) at a shooting range and I reload these.

Lou
 
Mosin's make good shooters with some tweaking. You can find all of that info via Google, just do a search for 'Mosin Accurising' or something similar, and you will get lots of results.

I suggest you reload for the Mosin, as you aren't going to get any real accuracy with surplus ammo. When you get yours, slug the barrel, if it is any larger than .3115 from groove to groove, sell it and buy another. Mosins use .310 ammo, but a good deal of bores are larger than that. The fattest jacketed bullets you'll get commercially are .312, so keep that in mind... unless you want to cast your own bullets, but personally, the last thing I need is another hobby. YMMV.

Edit: Oh, and remeber, commercial hunting ammo is available from companies like Igman, but keep in mind that they use .308 bullets. I'm not sure about Sellier & Bellot, but as a general rule, most commercial ammo for milsurps is undersized and under loaded due to liability issues.

Reloading is the only way to go, IMO.
 
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I got one from SIR about 25 years ago. Matching numbers and SA (Finn) marked.

I haunted gun shows and bought every box of Norma 180 grain hunting ammo I could find for about $20.00 a box until I got about five boxes ahead.

Killed a deer at close range with it and a bear at about 100 yards too.

Made some spectacular misses at close range too, once too low and once too high when the slider on my rear sight got moved.
 
Thanks all, I'm pretty convinced to pick one up now.

Tyler, that sounds like really good information. But I'm new to the sport. (Just passed my PAL and RPAL on Monday.)

If reloading, will the ammo still be corrosive? And is .310 ammo pretty easy to come by? I'm worried the most about finding ammo to shoot. It seems like people have a hard time getting 7.62x54R's
 
Whisley, take a short trip in the "reloading" section of the forum. Reloading takes a little time to learn but adds to the pleasure of shooting a rifle like the Mosin-Nagant.

Lou
 
Whiskey01 said:
Thanks all, I'm pretty convinced to pick one up now.

Tyler, that sounds like really good information. But I'm new to the sport. (Just passed my PAL and RPAL on Monday.)

If reloading, will the ammo still be corrosive? And is .310 ammo pretty easy to come by? I'm worried the most about finding ammo to shoot. It seems like people have a hard time getting 7.62x54R's
Click to expand...

I don't have any problems finding bullets or brass.

No, the reloaded ammo won't be corrosive, as commercial primers aren't. .310, .311, and .312 bullets are all easy to come by as they are all made by a good deal of ammo components manufacturers from Winchester, Remington, Hornady, Sierra, etc, etc. You can find all of the necessary components from powder, to primer, to bullets, to brass at any good gun shop that stocks reloading gear.

I bought a Lee 50th anniversary reloading kit back in September and I haven't looked back since. For the price of, say, 6 or 7 boxes of ammo at $20 each, you can get yourself a reloading kit and make match grade bullets for a third of the cost of crappy factory ammo.
 
The M91/30 Mosin Nagant is a well made reliable rifle capable of excellent accuracy. I have collected them for many (many Yikes!) years. My main interest is the Finnish variants, as they are rarer and improved Russian/Soviet models.

I would suggest, if you haven't already been there, to look at http://7.62x54r.net/ and http://www.mosinnagant.net/default.asp . They are both excellent on line sources of information on these rifles and their history.

The rifles available from Trade Ex and Ellwood Epps (sourced from Trade Ex and IZH) are excellent condition refurbished models. Some are original all stamped matching, some are forced stamped matching, some are electro pencil matching. Often, the parts are a mishmash of both Tula and Izhevsk components.

Like all surplus firearms, barrel condition varies greatly, from as new to uniformly pitted. Some have been counter-bored to improve accuracy due to a worn crown or muzzle (cleaned with a steel rod from the muzzle end as per service regs).

Rifles made between 1942 and 1944 often have very crudely finished receivers (lots of tool marks, etc.) due to wartime production cutbacks. They are just as safe, but not as pretty.

I would suggest you determine what exactly you intend on doing with it (collectible, casual plinker, target), view the above websites, then determine what specifics you want in your rifle. You can then request the dealer locate one that meets your requirements. I have bought from both sources, and am always satisfied with what I receive.
 
Timberlord: who is SIR?

Thanks rchmontreal, those websites look great.

Originally I had intended to use it as a target shooter. But a buddy of mine said that's pretty much impossible with a milsurp. However, from the sound of it here, a lot of people seem to get pretty good accuracy with the M91/30.

What kind of accuracy should I be expecting from a rifle listed as "overall excellent condition" at Trade Ex? I would still like to use it for target but I don't know if i'm hoping for too much.
 
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