Very nice Finnish Mosin Nagant found at gun show this last weekend, what is it?

[lejarretnoir]

Corrosive crap? Isn't that what the Finns fed it for over thirty years?

Exactly! I shoot it in my nice Finn 91/30 and the bore is still shiny after 300-400 rounds of milsurp out of a new 1944 .3095 bore.
1" to 2" 5 rds. groups @ 100yds on a good eyesight day off the bench. The Finns know how to make a barrel

 

[Phat Eagle]

Found a little more info about the model you bought, thanks to an AWESOME resource book "The Mosin-Nagant Rifle" by Lapin:

The large number of M1891s available to the Finns encouraged them to experiment with various methods of salvaging otherwise unusable barrels. Capitalizing on Italian success with the Salerno process of barrel relining (sleeving the barrel and recutting the rifling), the Finns rebored about 13000 M1891 barrels at the government's Arsenal No. 1 (Asevarikko-1, or AVK-1) at Helsinki during 1925-27. This so called "P" series, from Suomessa putkit tehttu ("[rifle] bores made in Finland"), the rifles being identifiable by the capital P on the chamber followed by a dash and the numerals 25, 26, or 27 designating the year. As part of the "P" process old markings were removed and the barrels renumbered. Those barrels not used at the time were placed in storage and used a decade and a half later as part of the World War II production of the m/91.

Pretty cool little curio you have there...

 

[mkrnel]

Found a little more info about the model you bought, thanks to an AWESOME resource book "The Mosin-Nagant Rifle" by Lapin:

The large number of M1891s available to the Finns encouraged them to experiment with various methods of salvaging otherwise unusable barrels. Capitalizing on Italian success with the Salerno process of barrel relining (sleeving the barrel and recutting the rifling), the Finns rebored about 13000 M1891 barrels at the government's Arsenal No. 1 (Asevarikko-1, or AVK-1) at Helsinki during 1925-27. This so called "P" series, from Suomessa putkit tehttu ("[rifle] bores made in Finland"), the rifles being identifiable by the capital P on the chamber followed by a dash and the numerals 25, 26, or 27 designating the year. As part of the "P" process old markings were removed and the barrels renumbered. Those barrels not used at the time were placed in storage and used a decade and a half later as part of the World War II production of the m/91.

Pretty cool little curio you have there...

Thanks for that info, so mine is one of only 13,000 made! I wonder how many survived Finnish service in those wars with Russia and out of that how many survived unused like mine?

 

[dimon]

IMHO it looks like a rifle with all russian parts, but the stock. Seems like the Russian markings on barrel shank were ground off and restamped with P-26 etc. This must be an early manufactured Russian M91 with bore made for early round nose bullet cartridge. These were .308 in diameter, as I remember. (i am still at work, and when get back ashore will check with R.N. Chumak's book on these cartridges).

 

[jongun]

I'd say keep the milsurp ammo away from it. Get a few boxes of Prvi ammo, save the brass, and when you have a good supply start reloading.

Definitely agree with this. You got a beauty there bud and it deserves quality ammo. Nice thing about reloading is that you can load down to make some fun plinking rounds that won't put any unnecessary wear on your rifle and you can shoot all day without feeling a thing. Made up some subsonic loads for my M44 and have had very happy accurate results at 25m.

 

[mkrnel]

IMHO it looks like a rifle with all russian parts, but the stock. Seems like the Russian markings on barrel shank were ground off and restamped with P-26 etc. This must be an early manufactured Russian M91 with bore made for early round nose bullet cartridge. These were .308 in diameter, as I remember. (i am still at work, and when get back ashore will check with R.N. Chumak's book on these cartridges).

I think most Early Finnish Mosin's were nearly all Russian parts. The Cleaning rod has a very large head on it unlike my Russian Mosin's and the butt plate is about 1/4" thick and was never serial number stamped, and the sling swivels and notched front sight are not Russian, these other parts are all probably Finnish parts!