A Find InThe Basement...

...in my house usually means my wife has found one of my escaped pets (fill in: snake, lizard, frog, mouse, hamster), or that I have found a leak in a pipe, a problem with the toilet, or something else that has gone wrong. Today though, I was rather pleasantly surprised when I looked into a long box in the corner and found this:



No not a bad ind at all. Yes that is a Mosin Nagant M44. Not one with matching serial numbers from what I can tell so far, but one that looks to be complete nonetheless. No it was not left there by the previous owner(s). Yes it is legally mine. I just forgot about having it. If I remember right this was sent to me in lieu of a as credit for sort of an overcharge on a Yugoslavian SKS I had purchased from Inter Ordnance Firearms a few years ago. Actually, I had ordered three SKS's in excellent shape, got 2 in that condition, and 1 in good to very good condition; when I let them know about the foul up, they offered me a credit, or I could pay a few bucks more and get this rifle.
Now I have a job ahead of me, and maybe I'll start tonight. I already had something else to do since I have to prepare for a job interview coming up next weekend, I'm applying for a teaching fellowship and need to write a short lesson for presentation; but my bet is I can fit in both tasks tonight. Well maybe at least part of each, because the Nagant will need a lot of cleaning up and the wood needs to be refinished.


Sorry about the quality of the pics, my digital camera is none to great, and neither am I when I use it. Still, you can see the stock is dinged and scuffed and could use a nice refinish. The metal will just get a good cleaning, once, twice, heck if you know cosmoline then maybe three times before it maybe clean enough to shoot. Then a trip to the range, maybe on a warmer day this month or next.

Oh joy.

All the best,
Glenn B