I love in indiana and I am looking for an indiana legal deer rifle. I read that .45 long colt will feed through a mosin nagant. I am thinking about buying a barrel blank for the 45 to put on the mosin. Has anyone done this before? I also read about people doing this with 44 mag but they didnt feed properly unless you put a block in the mag or shortened the action. Could I do this in 44 or 357 mag? What is the approximate cost for the whole procedure(not including the price of the mosin) Please don't try and tell me to just buy a handi rifle or something, I am looking for a cheaper repeating rifle than the judge(had one, accuracy was terrible) or a ruger 77(too expensive)
Mosin nagant rechamber
- Thread starter nch_2018
- Start date
It would be cheaper in the long run to buy a Ruger 77/44 or 77/357 if you want everything done in time to hunt with this year. Plus your biggest problem is going to find a Gunsmith that will invest his time into your Mosin. This will be a very time consuming build for any gunsmith so why would he want to tackle your Mosin when he can crank out several rifles for other customers unless you're willing to make it worth his while.
Rifle barrel in a pistol caliber $100-400+ with Green Mountain being the cheapest uncontoured blank.
Barrel work such as chamber, thread, contour, cut to length and crown the barrel. $300-500 depending on smith used. If you square the bolt face, receiver, and lap the lugs then add around another $150.
I doubt the Mosin bolt will work with the rim on the .357, maybe with a .44 Mag the diameter is closer to the 54R case. I doubt either feed from the magazine without modifications. Plus you'll probably have to modify the feed rails and ramps to make the pistol cartridge work. So you're looking at $25-50 per hour of labor to make it all work properly from a magazine. Who knows how long that would take, I'd figure at least a minimum of 10 hours labor so I'm guessing $250-500.
Then if you want to run a scope you'll need to modify the bolt handle that will probably cost you a minimum of $100 plus parts to have the gunsmith do it. A good scope mount like Rock Solid will cost you another $100 plus $15-25 per hole for a gunsmith to drill and tap the receiver.
Then are you going to want to use original military stock or get a replacement? ATI would be the cheapest synthetic around $80 then you can get a Boyd's around $100. You're going to have to modify the barrel channel on both unless you had the whoever contoured your new barrel match the military contour.
So your "to expensive" Ruger would probably wind up saving you several hundred dollars in gunsmithing expense and headaches. Luckily for you there are a bunch of Cottage industries in Indiana willing to build you a repeater bolt action rifle in an Indiana legal cartridge. Buy yourself a Ruger American, Marlin XS7, or Savage 10/Axis rifle and have them slap a barrel on. Buy a Lee Classic reloading kit and dies for your Indiana legal cartridge and go slay deer for the same price as a Ruger 77/44 or 357 and have a more powerful cartridge to boot.
Rifle barrel in a pistol caliber $100-400+ with Green Mountain being the cheapest uncontoured blank.
Barrel work such as chamber, thread, contour, cut to length and crown the barrel. $300-500 depending on smith used. If you square the bolt face, receiver, and lap the lugs then add around another $150.
I doubt the Mosin bolt will work with the rim on the .357, maybe with a .44 Mag the diameter is closer to the 54R case. I doubt either feed from the magazine without modifications. Plus you'll probably have to modify the feed rails and ramps to make the pistol cartridge work. So you're looking at $25-50 per hour of labor to make it all work properly from a magazine. Who knows how long that would take, I'd figure at least a minimum of 10 hours labor so I'm guessing $250-500.
Then if you want to run a scope you'll need to modify the bolt handle that will probably cost you a minimum of $100 plus parts to have the gunsmith do it. A good scope mount like Rock Solid will cost you another $100 plus $15-25 per hole for a gunsmith to drill and tap the receiver.
Then are you going to want to use original military stock or get a replacement? ATI would be the cheapest synthetic around $80 then you can get a Boyd's around $100. You're going to have to modify the barrel channel on both unless you had the whoever contoured your new barrel match the military contour.
So your "to expensive" Ruger would probably wind up saving you several hundred dollars in gunsmithing expense and headaches. Luckily for you there are a bunch of Cottage industries in Indiana willing to build you a repeater bolt action rifle in an Indiana legal cartridge. Buy yourself a Ruger American, Marlin XS7, or Savage 10/Axis rifle and have them slap a barrel on. Buy a Lee Classic reloading kit and dies for your Indiana legal cartridge and go slay deer for the same price as a Ruger 77/44 or 357 and have a more powerful cartridge to boot.
Willie Lowman
New member
Mosins are junk. Modifying them into anything other than scrap is counter productive. Leave the Mosin as is and shoot 54r through it. Get a pistol caliber lever or bolt gun to hunt with.
Jim Watson
New member
It would be an interesting DIY if you had the tools and skills and a reliable source of information on how to go about it.
Pay a gunsmith for all that work? Nuts.
Pay a gunsmith for all that work? Nuts.
Yeah but no matter what is done to a Mosin it's still a Mosin.
Around here one can hardly give away a Mosin.
If one puts more than pruchase price into a Mosin the money will never
come back.
That's o.k. if you don't mind that. Doing what you want just because you want to is perfectly fine.
I had 2 Mosins. Shot good factory ammo, good handloads, WWII mil-surp ammo.
Niether suited my definition of a decent bolt gun so down the road they went & good ridance.
There are far better mil surp rifles that outperform the Mosin.
I'd by a proper rifle in the caliber you seek to hunt wiht.
Just my opinion but you did ask for advice.
Around here one can hardly give away a Mosin.
If one puts more than pruchase price into a Mosin the money will never
come back.
That's o.k. if you don't mind that. Doing what you want just because you want to is perfectly fine.
I had 2 Mosins. Shot good factory ammo, good handloads, WWII mil-surp ammo.
Niether suited my definition of a decent bolt gun so down the road they went & good ridance.
There are far better mil surp rifles that outperform the Mosin.
I'd by a proper rifle in the caliber you seek to hunt wiht.
Just my opinion but you did ask for advice.
Mosin-Marauder
New member
Get out. Trolls such as yourself are nothing but disgraceful. Calling a rifle that uses the longest serving cartridge in military history and has the Most Confirmed kills out of any other Cartridge in the world, junk. So yeah, knock Mosins more, there are 13,000,000 of the "pieces of junk" in the world. Gonna take more than your trolling to stop people from buying them.
As mentioned on another forum, you'd be building almost an entirely new rifle, and it'd cost you more than the price of a new one.
If you want to shoot a repeating .45 Colt, there are leverguns from at least three makers that will allow you to do it out of the box for less money.
The Mosin re-build is totally impractical, and a sizable waste of money even if it could be made to work reliably.
Denis
If you want to shoot a repeating .45 Colt, there are leverguns from at least three makers that will allow you to do it out of the box for less money.
The Mosin re-build is totally impractical, and a sizable waste of money even if it could be made to work reliably.
Denis
Willie Lowman
New member
Marauder, I didn't say anything bad about the 7.62x54r. I expressed my opinion, that I am fully entitled to, that Mosins are junk.
I don't care how many they made. I think it has been an inferior design since the end of the first world war. I have noting good to say about those rifles except they shoot a decent cartridge. If you would re-read my first post you would notice that I told the OP to leave his Mosin in the original caliber. The only thing Mosins have going for them these days is a low price tag. Were there worse rifles from that era than the Mosin? Yes. Flame me all you want for not liking those junk rifles as well.
As others have pointed out, it is not worth the time money and trouble to rebarrel a Mosin unless it is a personal project to simply say that you did it.
McDonalds used to put up on their signs how many millions of their sandwiches they had sold. That didn't make them good sandwiches, it just meant they had sold a lot of them. Thirteen million Mosins doesn't mean that the design was anywhere as good as the 98 Mauser, it just means that the Russians wouldn't stop making the Mosin. Great news for people like you, right?
Also, I would advise against calling fellow members "Trolls" I got in quite a bit of trouble for it once myself.
Last edited:
Mosin-Marauder
New member
So a gun that works every time you shoot it is an inferior design? A gun that has an action comparable to the Mauser action? A rifle that was so well designed they made 13,000,000 of them and are used them in countries all over the world? Mosins are well designed. This has been proved time and time again. I'm curious as to why you hate such a fine rifle so much?
Mosin-Marauder
New member
Its his opinion that it's a junk rifle. It's my opinion it's a fine battle rifle. As he said we have a right to our opinions. I respect that. Sorry.
tahunua001
New member
alright well I will tell you right now, it's going to cost more than a M77 and the judge would still end up being the finer piece when you are done.
mosin rebarreling is not a handy dandy buy a special wrench and you're done type of gig, it takes a lot of labor and a lot of custom CNC work to make a mosin nagant barrel. once you're done with that. you'd need a new extractor claw made for the bolt body which is another custom job. 45 colt has a very long jump from the magazine to the chamber so you are likely goign to see the same problems as 357 or 44 mag without custom feed lips and a mag plug, regardless of what you've read.
then after all of that is said and done, you still have to figure out sights, if you scope and mount that's another $200 worth of gunsmithing work for the bent bolt and mount plus another $200 for a scope and rings. if you want Iron sights you'd probably pay about $200 and be done after that.
it was true two weeks ago and it is true now, any amount of rechamber work on a mosin nagant is just NOT WORTH IT FINANCIALLY!
if you were a gunsmith looking for stuff to do I would tell you to work your little heart out but since your goal is to build a custom rifle, essentially from scratch because the the current stock of rifles in that caliber are too expensive for you? no buy the M77, it's a nicer rifle, will cost half as much and won't take you 2 years to assemble.
mosin rebarreling is not a handy dandy buy a special wrench and you're done type of gig, it takes a lot of labor and a lot of custom CNC work to make a mosin nagant barrel. once you're done with that. you'd need a new extractor claw made for the bolt body which is another custom job. 45 colt has a very long jump from the magazine to the chamber so you are likely goign to see the same problems as 357 or 44 mag without custom feed lips and a mag plug, regardless of what you've read.
then after all of that is said and done, you still have to figure out sights, if you scope and mount that's another $200 worth of gunsmithing work for the bent bolt and mount plus another $200 for a scope and rings. if you want Iron sights you'd probably pay about $200 and be done after that.
it was true two weeks ago and it is true now, any amount of rechamber work on a mosin nagant is just NOT WORTH IT FINANCIALLY!
if you were a gunsmith looking for stuff to do I would tell you to work your little heart out but since your goal is to build a custom rifle, essentially from scratch because the the current stock of rifles in that caliber are too expensive for you? no buy the M77, it's a nicer rifle, will cost half as much and won't take you 2 years to assemble.
I submit that saying a gun is "an inferior design since..." is not valid. An inferior design is inferior and was from day one. It does not become inferior as of some date or other.
Military rifles were seldom "cheap" or "junk" when they were adopted. A nation will issue to its troops the best arms it can make or afford since, literally, the fate of the nation will depend on that choice. True, better rifles may come along and a weapon that was a good choice when it was adopted will become obsolete, but that does not make it either a poor design or junk.
Russia, like the British Empire, had a large army, and the country adopted a bolt action rifle fairly early on. But then, economic conditions and two World Wars prevented them from replacing the rifle with something more modern, so if the M-N is "junk", so is the Lee-Enfield.
Further, of course, Russia always depended for victory on manpower, not weapons superiority. No one would deny that in the Great Patriotic War, Germany had the more efficient small arms, but Russia imposed a severe defeat on the vaunted Wehrmacht.
Jim
Military rifles were seldom "cheap" or "junk" when they were adopted. A nation will issue to its troops the best arms it can make or afford since, literally, the fate of the nation will depend on that choice. True, better rifles may come along and a weapon that was a good choice when it was adopted will become obsolete, but that does not make it either a poor design or junk.
Russia, like the British Empire, had a large army, and the country adopted a bolt action rifle fairly early on. But then, economic conditions and two World Wars prevented them from replacing the rifle with something more modern, so if the M-N is "junk", so is the Lee-Enfield.
Further, of course, Russia always depended for victory on manpower, not weapons superiority. No one would deny that in the Great Patriotic War, Germany had the more efficient small arms, but Russia imposed a severe defeat on the vaunted Wehrmacht.
Jim
Mo,
The truth lies somewhere in between you & Willie.
The Mosins are not "junk", and they're not "fine rifles".
The action is not comparable to the Mauser action, except very loosely.
They were relatively crude in design, relatively simple to manufacture, quite rugged, far less refined than their contemporaries, and have been maintained in Good to Lousy condition since de-mobbed as a group decades ago.
I know you love yours, but there's plenty of room for differing opinion.
Denis
The truth lies somewhere in between you & Willie.
The Mosins are not "junk", and they're not "fine rifles".
The action is not comparable to the Mauser action, except very loosely.
They were relatively crude in design, relatively simple to manufacture, quite rugged, far less refined than their contemporaries, and have been maintained in Good to Lousy condition since de-mobbed as a group decades ago.
I know you love yours, but there's plenty of room for differing opinion.
Denis
I have converted Mosin Nagants to 45/70 and 30-30 in single shot.
I have converted Mosin Nagants to 7mmRemMag and 300WinMag as repeaters.
I had to add a button to the action to unload unfired cartridges of the 30-06 length 3.34".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZp6R2sim7k
I plan on converting a Mosin Nagant to 25 Krag Ackley improved 40 degree. The reamer just arrived.
I have thought about converting a Mosin Nagant to 45 Colt.
I have converted a 1903 Turkish Mauser to 45acp, and that rifle has been popular to shoot at the 100 yard range.
If the 45 Colt Mosin got as much attention, it would feel like a success for me.
I have converted Mosin Nagants to 7mmRemMag and 300WinMag as repeaters.
I had to add a button to the action to unload unfired cartridges of the 30-06 length 3.34".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZp6R2sim7k
I plan on converting a Mosin Nagant to 25 Krag Ackley improved 40 degree. The reamer just arrived.
I have thought about converting a Mosin Nagant to 45 Colt.
I have converted a 1903 Turkish Mauser to 45acp, and that rifle has been popular to shoot at the 100 yard range.
If the 45 Colt Mosin got as much attention, it would feel like a success for me.
How much did your mosin projects cost you or did you do the machining yourself?
From a rifle builder's point of view:
* No, Mosin Nagants were not junk when they were adopted, but now they are cheap surplus and get no respect. Same with Enfields, Arisakas, MAS, Berthiers, Steyrs, and Carcanos 30 years ago. Mausers have been held in pretty high regard for well over a century, so they don't count.
* Aftermarket goodies are expensive when building a rifle.
* For building a custom anything, you want a design that is adaptable to components available. There are few (but increasing) accessories for the MN.
* The MN has a split bridge, which limits your options for mounting a scope (again, there are a few).
* The trigger on the MN is rugged but awful. There are a few aftermarket options.
* The options as far as cartridges to rechamber a MN are limited if you want a repeater, but a single shot will digest most anything. Of course, you could pay me to modify your mag so it will feed, but at my regular shop rate of $90/hr (not $25-30/hr).
* All in all, there are better options cost-wise than building a MN custom rifle, but who said you had to be cost-effective? I see people take a $200 MN, slap it in a $300 Archangel stock, put $200 into adding a scope mount, bend the bolt for $100, add a $100 trigger, then take it out and shoot it and start crying that it won't shoot well. Used to see the same thing 30 years ago with Mausers and Springfields. Same story, different names. So anyway you look at it, you will be $1000 into the rifle before you know if it will shoot. If you're OK with that, go for it. If not, go to WalMart and buy a Savage or a Remington and go shooting.
* No, Mosin Nagants were not junk when they were adopted, but now they are cheap surplus and get no respect. Same with Enfields, Arisakas, MAS, Berthiers, Steyrs, and Carcanos 30 years ago. Mausers have been held in pretty high regard for well over a century, so they don't count.
* Aftermarket goodies are expensive when building a rifle.
* For building a custom anything, you want a design that is adaptable to components available. There are few (but increasing) accessories for the MN.
* The MN has a split bridge, which limits your options for mounting a scope (again, there are a few).
* The trigger on the MN is rugged but awful. There are a few aftermarket options.
* The options as far as cartridges to rechamber a MN are limited if you want a repeater, but a single shot will digest most anything. Of course, you could pay me to modify your mag so it will feed, but at my regular shop rate of $90/hr (not $25-30/hr).
* All in all, there are better options cost-wise than building a MN custom rifle, but who said you had to be cost-effective? I see people take a $200 MN, slap it in a $300 Archangel stock, put $200 into adding a scope mount, bend the bolt for $100, add a $100 trigger, then take it out and shoot it and start crying that it won't shoot well. Used to see the same thing 30 years ago with Mausers and Springfields. Same story, different names. So anyway you look at it, you will be $1000 into the rifle before you know if it will shoot. If you're OK with that, go for it. If not, go to WalMart and buy a Savage or a Remington and go shooting.
The MacFarland books do a great job of explaining sporterizing.
I look down on almost all gun writers, but not MacFarland nor De Haas. I look UP to those two writers.
MacFarland says in "Gunsmithing Simplified" page 105 "It is highly impractical to try to converting them to any other caliber."
In "introduction to Modern Gunsmithing" page 109 he writes " Crude, clumsy, and soft.... Caliber conversions are impractical".
De Haas "Bolt Actions 4th edition" page 159 he complains about the trigger pull, the safety, scope mounting, bolt handle, and magazine bulging out the bottom. "I certainly advise against rebarreling this action..."
But even if those men were smarter than me, knew more than me, and had better judgement, they have passed on and some things have changed.
I have made a video about the many scope mount possibilities
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEyS9Q_u10I
I have made a video about sorting through the many approaches to MN trigger modification
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPn8IdNJ_SE
In 1962 the other little boys on the playground were talking about sporterizing Mausers and Springfields. There were good books to guide their fathers. Now 50 years later, we are the pioneers of sporterized Mosin Nagants.
I look down on almost all gun writers, but not MacFarland nor De Haas. I look UP to those two writers.
MacFarland says in "Gunsmithing Simplified" page 105 "It is highly impractical to try to converting them to any other caliber."
In "introduction to Modern Gunsmithing" page 109 he writes " Crude, clumsy, and soft.... Caliber conversions are impractical".
De Haas "Bolt Actions 4th edition" page 159 he complains about the trigger pull, the safety, scope mounting, bolt handle, and magazine bulging out the bottom. "I certainly advise against rebarreling this action..."
But even if those men were smarter than me, knew more than me, and had better judgement, they have passed on and some things have changed.
I have made a video about the many scope mount possibilities
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEyS9Q_u10I
I have made a video about sorting through the many approaches to MN trigger modification
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DPn8IdNJ_SE
In 1962 the other little boys on the playground were talking about sporterizing Mausers and Springfields. There were good books to guide their fathers. Now 50 years later, we are the pioneers of sporterized Mosin Nagants.