Buying A Mosin For Long Range Shooting

[ZRTaylor]

tahunua001: I like the sound of the oil finish. I'll start some reasearch right away. Thanks for the info. I'll have to go see if the Timney is a single or double stage trigger. Might be worth shooting for a few months from now.

emcon5: Ah, see I thought the shellac was the original "as issued" finish. I didn't know it was refinished before sitting in warehouses for god knows how long. Point taken in regards to the oil finish.

Duzell: I do like the handguard and barrel banded look. I'll take a peek at Boyd's but I don't think I'll be going that spendy when I get a temporary second stock so I can refinish the original.

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In other news I put a few rounds through her today. Saved the first casing out of the chamber for good luck. When I went to clean her I removed the CLP from the bolt and replaced it was some very light grease I'm experimenting with and noted about a 30% improvement in the way the bolt seemed to handle. I think I'm going to have to take it easy for a while though. I can easily see danger of developing a flinch that everyone was talking about. Especially without a butt pad. I think I'll stick with a training 22 for now and take this rifle out plinking from time to time. Maybe that will help to normalize the sense of the recoil.

 

[emcon5]

Ah, see I thought the shellac was the original "as issued" finish. I didn't know it was refinished before sitting in warehouses for god knows how long. Point taken in regards to the oil finish.

Any of the current imports have been reworked at some point, often more than once. The square with a diagonal line stamp is a refurb mark, you can see one pretty clearly on the butt of my blonde 91/30 I posted above, and you have the same mark twice on the barrel shank of your rifle, below the serial number. I think I also see the refurb stamp on the butt of your rifle, aft of the sling slot (same location as on my blonde).

 

[Clark]

I have rebarreled Mosin Nagants with 45/70, 30-30, surplus 30-06 barrel in 7.62x54R, and a VZ59 machine gun bull barrel.

Some of the stuff I was doing and posting in 2003 with Mosin Nagants, I no longer do:
I no longer pillar bed with brass tubing, I now do 1010 steel, see drawing below.

I have tested washer under the sear screw.... works a little but has problems.
I have tested polishing the sear, no good.
I have tested polishing the cocking piece, no good.
I have tested reducing firing pin spring force, no good.
I have tested the Huber concept trigger, no good.
I have tested bending the sear, but keeping full sear engagement... That works!
I have tested the Timney trigger for the Mosin Nagant and that is even better than bending the sear. I gets the trigger force even lower and provides a safety.

How I relieve the pillars for the Timney trigger.
Good luck finding a nut at the hardware store with that 1/4-32 thread.
I used pieces of Mosin Nagant stock hardware.
I made them into round nuts for pre compressing the pillars during glass bedding into the stock.

How I adjust a Timney Trigger

The Hooke's law curve [stress vs strain] for before and after bending the sear. See video below.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSmvBGYFUK4
video on the Timney trigger
26 second video I made showing the Timney trigger safety



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPn8IdNJ_SE&list=TLX8kNiJ92THs
5 minute video I made on MN trigger improvement study

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEyS9Q_u10I
Another 5 minute video, this one shows 8 different home made scope mounts for the Mosin Nagant

What does it all mean?
Want easy answers?
Buy the Timney trigger.
Buy the ATI scope mount.
Buy a welded bolt handle.
Get someone to drill and tap your receiver

Avoid Huber triggers
Avoid polishing Mosin Nagant sear or cocking piece
Avoid washers under the sear.
Avoid bending the sear so much that engagement is reduced
Avoid VZ59 barrels relived for Mosin Nagant extractors with random clocking

 

[skizzums]

i have to disagree with you, i have put washers under the trigger and has pretty good results compared to nothing at all, at least 50% less trigger pull than it was as stock. i have never had a problem with it. i'm sure the timney trigger is far superior, but i'm not willing to drop that much dough on a timney trigger for a 90$ rifle.

 

[Tempest 455]

I use the Timney on the above rifle and it's a huge improvement. Ditto on bedding with steel. Finding the right load is probably the biggest factor. They are picky as two barrels/chambers are not the same.

 

[ZRTaylor]

What's the basic principle of pillar bedding with the Mosin? Judging from the diagram is it just using steel tubing along the bolts fixing the receiver to the stock to isolate the action?

emcon: I was wondering what those were. Looked them up on 7.62x54r.net and I think they're Ukranian. Another piece to the puzzle, so to speak.

 

[Clark]

My thoughts on how glass bedding or pillar bedding works:

When the bullet as gas go in one direction, the rifle goes in the other.
There are two equations associated with recoil:
[Mass1][Velocity1] = [Mass2][Velocity2]
Energy = [Mass1] [Velocity1][Velocity1]
With these we see that that rifle gets the same momentum as the bullet and gas, but much less energy, because the rifle has higher mass.
When the stock is loose, there is less rifle mass that is part of the recoiling reaction.

But if the connection of the barreled action has too much compliance [same thing as not enough stiffness]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stiffness
Then part of the time the stock mass will be fully part of the equation, and part of the time it will be only partially.
For maximum accuracy, we would like the action to stock connection be so low in compliance that the stock recoils perfectly with the action.
To test the compliance, I hold the stock wrist in my right hand and smack the barrel with the heel of my left palm. I want to hear a sustained high note with no buzzing. If not, I chisel out the epoxy and start over. The reason I pre compress the pillars in the diagram, [with a round nut in the rear and a washer in the front] is to get the pillars cast perfectly flush with the bottom of the receiver for the lowest possible compliance. Those pillars are not just hack sawed off a length of tubing, the ends are squared with the lathe.

Experimenting with multiple stocks bedded and not bedded for the same action, glass bedding or pillar bedding if done right can give a tiny improvement to hard recoiling rifles with heavy stocks. But the bedding if done wrong can put a bind on the rifle that changes as the rifle heats up. That can cause the very inaccurate stringing of shots. Tupperware [injection molded] stocks require so much bedding, that they are heavier than their wooded counterparts to achieve the same accuracy. This would be the terrible ATI Mosin Nagant stock, from the same people offering the economical and effective Mosin Nagant scope mount.

 

[tobnpr]

No question that a "bad" bedding job can be worse than no bedding at all.

The key is not to induce stress into the action in the process, by doing things like overtightening studs, if used (I use surgical tubing for this reason) they will create stress point loads on the receiver which then become integral to the epoxy bedding.

I've posted this link before, but it never gets old:

http://www.accurateshooter.com/technical-articles/stress-free-pillar-bedding/

 

[Clark]

That link is for pillar bedding cheap round receivers.
The Mosin Nagant has an expensive flat bottom.

Many factory rifles come with contoured (radiused) pillars, and many gunsmiths prefer to use these. The idea is that the contour provides a better fit with the bottom of round actions. Richard has tried contoured pillars and doesn’t recommend them. He explains: “Most of the contoured pillars don’t really match the contour of the action anyway. And every action is slightly different.

That is if you buy store bought pillars.
For cheap round Rem 700 or Sav 110 receivers, I make my own pillars with a radius that matches.

Here is a pic of me cutting the pillar radius to match a Rem700 receiver.
I am using a boring head, and I have it adjusted to within .001" of matching.

Here is another pic of me checking the pillar and receiver for fit.

 

[tobnpr]

Round vs. radius...
G-10 vs. aluminum...
Hair-splitting on pillars is no different than discussing barrel break-in and cleaning.

The MN action isn't "tight" enough on tolerances to make any of this relevant, anyway. JMO...

 

[Clark]

tobnpr,
Are you the big gorilla?

I bet with one of your stocks, one of your bolts, a ATI mount, a take off benchrest barrel rechambered for 6mmBR, and any old Mosin Nagant action.... I bet I could shoot a 5 shot group at 100 yards with all holes touching.

I have done it with a 1917 Sav 99.

I bet I could put a custom 7mmRemMag barrel on a MN and hit a 12" target 5 times in a row at 500 yards.

I have done it with a surplus VZ24.

 

[tobnpr]

tobnpr,
Are you the big gorilla?

LOL...yeah, Clark, that's me...been called worse

No doubt, you could.
I'm not "dissing" the MN action, my "sporters" are better than minute of angle with the factory (cut/crowned) barrels. Put a decent barrel on them, and results would improve accordingly.

Just saying they're not a Surgeon, BAT, nor even a 700...

 

[DPris]

And, dropping too much time, effort & money into a Mosin can quite easily & quite quickly reach the point where it would have been much easier & probably cheaper to go with an already-set-up gun in the first place.

The things you CAN do to severely fiddle with this old rifle fall into "project" more than "practical" once you get to a certain level.
Nothing wrong with a project, my Mosin sporter was a project with little practical value for me, but I could afford it as a total toy & ZR doesn't have the extra cash to throw around.
Denis