Going to keep with it.

That's the spirit. Good for you!

I wouldn't do anything right now but to establish a performance baseline of the rifle. Listen to what folks suggest. Put shots on paper first at 25 yards, then 100 yards. Then you start doing one thing at a time. There are few obvious areas you can work on on first order. I'm sure folks here are more than willing to help when you are ready.

-TL
 
STOP calling yourself an idiot!
You are not.
The Mosin is a difficult rifle to master, IF it can be mastered at all.
It's a poor design, might be poorly built.
Understand the Russians placed little value on the individual soldier.
It mattered not if the rifles were well built, soldiers were easily replaced.
In the beginning years of WWII Russian soldiers wers still taught volley fire.
The soliders would line up and all fire volleys of bullets in an area hoping to inflict damage on the enemy. Individual marksmanship was left to snipers.
You can practice all you want with that Mosin but you'd be better served if you got hold of a better built rifle in a caliber easier to master.\
The Mosin battle rifle isn't a precision instrument by any stretch & mil surp ammo is plain junk. (Russian bulk steel cased stuff that might be corrosive)
You'd be better served with a .22 rimfire & ammo, then learn to shoot the Mosin.
 
I concur, messing with too many variables at once is just a recipe for confusion and more irritation later on. if you are working on your own marksmanship and trying to accurize your gun at the same time and all of a sudden you are shooting much better, not only do you not know what affected accuracy and how but should it ever stop shooting accurately again then you have no way of telling what changed.

right now, work on trigger control and sight picture that will give you a solid idea of how accurate you are with the gun now. since you are having trouble keeping it on paper at 50 yards, that's the distance I suggest working on. try shooting off of sandbags, either on a shooting table or from prone to give you the most stable platform and removing the most outside stimuli from the test.

then once you have a good baseline established. work on trigger control. dry firing(firing with no live ammunition present) is the best and cheapest way to do this. practice how smoothly you can press the trigger without jerking, pulling or squeezing it. one drill that works well is pointing the gun at a target on the wall like you were really about to shoot it(again, NO ammo present) and balancing a quarter on the front sight(it might be easiest to have a friend or parent balance it for you. then try dry firing without the quarter falling off, this will help you work on trigger control and stability control.

THEN, take it back out for another base line to determine how accuracy is.


THEN experiment with a number of different brands of ammo to see if any one type functions better than the others. that ammo that performs the best should be what you use for all future accuracy tests.

only after you know for certain what you are capable of, what the rifle is capable of and what the ammo is capable of should you start messing with the rifle itself.
 
Your Mosin is certainly capable of hitting man sized targets to 300 yards and beyond. My grandfather hunted Colorado mulies with a stock mosin for years. Listen to Kraig any work on you fundamentals of marksmanship and you will grow with your rifle.
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+1

The mosin was not a bad design.

It was an excellent design for it's purpose. It is rugged and reliable and as dependable as gravity. If the bore is not a corroded ruin and the crown is good and the stock is tight, it's likely that it'll shoot better than most any shooter can hold to .....

It's not a benchrest gun, but properly tuned, fed and cared for, will shoot better from field positions than 90% of all the keyboard snipers on the interwebz can appreciate.
 
You have put the work into I'd say leave it as is.you need to learn to master the basics before you can be accurate with any distance..there is nothing wrong with shooting at short range targets to start..I suggest you start at 50 yards and keep it there once you can put shots in tight groups with ease move It out to 100..remember you are young the longer you shoot the better you will get but learning the basics is by far the single most important thing you can do
 
leave it as is, you want to change variables slowly, one at a time, rather than close together or several at once so that you know what is affecting what and in what fashion.
 
you can buy a 100$ boyds drop in stock.

no mods and it wont over cost as a new rifle

also will improve your groups as a more stable stock system

and they have military stock systems


otherwise i can suggest a break that low cost or wrap around scope mounting system (no mods)


heres a stock variation for 113$ total

works nicely for accurizing but a break really fixes the issue

attachment.php
 
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After a little back in time search. A quote from from a previous Mosin-Marauder thread.

My dad and I really love shooting. We mainly shoot (rifles), bolt action at that. """"
Click to expand...

Are you asking your Father for help in answering the questions you have concerning your rifle. Since your threading question after question very pointed questions about your rifle and its battle field ammo including where to buy stripper clips. After some thought knowing you commented that you are only 14 years old. Frankly speaking. These days with what's happening in school after school young man I'm a bit leery. So I being a stranger I think at this time it may not be appropriate of me to offer any further advice to your threads concerning this surplus battle field rifle. Other TFLF Members who feel differently. Do as you please.
 
interesting, but he could be looking this up for his father?

some older shooter are not as tech savy as there children and could rely on him to get advice through the forum on this issue?
 
Don't do anything to the rifle yet.

Find someone who can shoot. Let them try it. I'll be willing to bet, as is it will shoot 3.5 MOA without any modifications.

So got to the range, watch people shoot. Find one who is shooting well and ask him to try your rifle.

I'm betting it isn't the rifle. I had a guy show up at one of my CMP Clinics/Matches with a mosin and surplus ammo he picked up the night before at Cabalas for $119, and won the match.

Had a lady shoot one that couldn't hit the barn from the inside. 30 minutes of coaching she was keeping them in the black of the 200 yard NRA target.

The problem with modifying vintage military rifles is you get hooked on them and at some point will decide to shoot vintage military rifle matches and will find out you can't because you're modified rifle wont comply with the rules.

First you need to determine the zero. I don't care if you shoot 1 moa or washtube size groups, you can still determine the zero.

Lets say you group is 18 inches at 100 yards. Not good but we don't care now.

Get a target and put it in the center of a 4x4 sheet of cardboard. Shoot your 18 inch group. Now draw a line down the center of the target, from 12 to 6 o'clock. Draw another line from 9 to 3 oclock. Count the hits in each quarter. if there isn't the same number of hits per quarter, you're rifle isn't zeroed.

Cant do this with 3 rounds you need a min of 10, 20 would be better.

When you get to where you keep the qual number of shots per quarter, your rifle is zeroed.

Now work on your fundamentals to that that 18 inch group down.

I know I keep harping on this, but you cant beat a CMP GSM Clinic taught by CMP master instructors to get you shooting your vintage military rifle.

No body here can tell you want you are doing wrong by what we read here.

You need someone to set down and watch you shoot. Then make what needed corrections.

I love it when someone post a comment about their rifle is doing X and want to know how to corrected. We cant know without watching you shoot.

Yet we supply pages of post trying to get your rifle to stop doing X. There make be several reasons. All answers may be correct for one of those reasons but may not fix the problem.

We talk a half dozen or so pieces of advice and change our procedure but the rifle is still doing X.

If you are going to change something only change one thing at a time. If that doesn't fix the problem, Un-fix it and try something else.

Still you need someone who can shoot try your rifle, then you need someone who can coach and watch you shoot.

Can't fix something if you don't know what's broke.
 
I know we've all discussed the cork bedding thing at length a few days ago- but I just can't warm up to that idea. My suggestion still stands to watch a few videos on action (receiver) bedding, get a small tube of JB Weld, modeling clay, Johnson's paste wax or black Kiwi Boot Polish as a release agent, and a dremmel tool to relieve a bit of wood- and bed the action first. I don't know why, but something in the back of my head just seems to think a hard bedding is the way to go.

And I also agree to continue with shooting .22lr and reading anything the AMU and David Tubb ever wrote (a little Ernest Tubb never hurts either). Also shooting round bullseyes and dotting the "I" (putting the round target on top of the front post).

The more you get frustrated with the whole shebang- that's just more crud you have to work past.

EDIT: +1 STOP CALLING YOURSELF STUPID, ETC! If you were stupid, you'd be sitting on a couch cheering on the Michael Moore's of this country instead of squaring up on a firing lane.
 
Okay. So need to know. Remove the cork and find out how the rifle is shooting as is? I'm going to an apple seed next weekend so I kinda need to prepare and know what I need to do to the rifle.
 
yes de-cork the rifle

also try to clean and properly lube it as that could also be an issue. but the mosins caliber is effectively

308 7.62x54r 30 06

situated smack dam between these caliber is rating of performance

i would not recommend a young shooter to use these rifles as they can be hard to handle for inexperienced shooters


if your going to continue to shoot it against some of our warning i can only suggest to get a bipod or a bench system to test it correctly
 
Apple seed requires rapid fire.

You could use the Mosin but it takes hours of practice to load quickly with stripper clips and proper bolt handling.

You're not going to be able to use the 260, unless it has iron sights and clip slots and again you need to practice using stripper clips.

Of the rifles you listed the Carbine is you best shot. The carbine has three disadvantages in Apple Seed shoots. The sling doesn't set up like shooting slings should. And the Carbine doesn't hold the bolt open after the last shot is fired.

Both can be over come, by learning to use a hasty sling, and you can count your shots, changing mags after you fire 4, leaving the 5th round in the chamber while you reload. Saves a bolt operation.

Now to the third and biggest disadvantage of the Carbine. The lowest setting on the carbine sight is 100 yards (assuming the sights haven't been modified, most shoot high because GIs screwed with them).

Appleseed shoots are normal 25 yards. If you set the rifle on its lowest setting, its going to shoot 2 moa high. That's 1/2 inch at 25 yards. 1/2 inch hi at the little bity targets used in Appleseed means misses. You need to take that into account when you get your sight picture.
 
I'd leave it original for now.
Are you using eye & ear protection?
If not then DO!
The M.N. rifle (all centerfires) are LOUD & will cause hearing loss so at least get some soft foam ear plugs.
 
The problem in this story is whoever made you think you could hit anything at 300 yards without zeroing the rifle yourself first. If that was you , you need to find someone who shoots at that range who can guide you. If not you you need to not listen to whoever gave you the idea.

I zero a rifle first at 10 or 25 yards depending on the range I am at. I then move to 50 yards. Then 100 yards.
I'm not sure how many rounds I fired out of rifles before trying longer shots. Out of 22s it must have been well over 1000. At least a few hundred out of center-fires. I'm nowhere near the skill of many shooters on this board. I rarely shoot beyond 100.

I don't recommend you buy another centerfire rifle if you want to learn to shoot at 300 yards plus. I recommend you buy a 22lr. I have a Marlin 891. It was a great rifle to start, but I have worn some of the components out in less than 10k rounds. That is more than most of them will see in several lifetimes and I have saved thousands over firing all those rounds out of centerfire guns. I think it is about the cheapest target rifle on the market. Like almost all the rifles I own I ditched the stock sights and bought a wiliams aperture sight. I will probably replace it with a CZ.

If you want a centerfire the above offered suggestions are great ideas. If you want on that is military surplus there is only on suggestion I have. The Swiss K31. The price tag is above your MN, but probably well below the cost of accurizing your MN. The surplus ammo, GP11, is about 50 cents a round. That probably sounds expensive, but it is true match ammunition. You won't find match grade ammunition for any cartridge cheaper. Feed GP11 through a good K31 and the material won't be the limiting factor.

I will again recommend an Appleseed clinic over a CMP clinic. I shot in a CMP shoot weekly for a while. I wold go back if not for my work schedule. The shooters there were the most friendly,welcoming, and helpful of the competitive groups I have shot with, but the clinic I attended was not marksmanship centered. It would be a great place to go shoot weekly after completing the Appleseed though. That is advice based on one CMP group, one clinic, and one Appleseed. Others experiences may be different.

At any level the required rifle, sights/scope, custom stock, bedding, truing, and all modifications required are CHEAP compared to the ammunition it takes to get there and stay there. Don't hamstring yourself by trying to force a rifle to work.
Don't sell the MN though. It is a great solid rifle that, with minimum care, will be here long after a Ruger American stock has fallen apart. Once you learn to shoot at 300 yards with an accurate rifle, with a decent trigger you can lear to shoot the MN at those ranges more easily.
 
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