Yes, I recently wrote about the Mosin Nagant 91/30 here and here. Yes, I am about to talk about the Mosin Nagant 91/30 again but this time there is a difference. This time I am writing about my Mosin Nagant 91/30. I finally got around to disassembling it, cleaning it, and reassembling it tonight. I have to tell you that I had forgotten what a joy it is to work on these rifles. They are of simple design for sure, and therefore are easy to disassemble and reassemble. That makes for ease of a detailed cleaning, and probably also makes for ease of replacing parts if worn or broken. I only have the one other Mosin Nagant rifle, the M44 (both pictured, the 91/30 at bottom). I have not taken the M44 down for a detailed cleaning lately - working on getting the bore cleaned on that one was chore enough as I described in another recent post but that was not the fault of the rifle or its design. I ordered a 91/30 from R-Guns on August 10. They shipped it on August 10. You do not get quicker service than that these days, heck you did not get it quicker than that not even in the old days. It arrived a few days later. I liked the look of it when I took it out of the box. It seemed to have been wrapped well in bubble wrap and shipped in a single cardboard box (some dealers ship rifles in double boxes). It had some cosmoline like preservative on it but was really pretty clean overall so when i finally cleaned it tonight it only took me about 30 to 45 minutes to do it all; that included reading the instructions for how to do it and do it right. (See this site, SurplusRifle.com for instructions on how to disassemble and reassemble many surplus rifles.) Everything inside the rifle looked okay to me. The only thing that even showed any really noticeable tooling marks was the ejector. It may be a replacement, but if it works - who cares. The only difficulty I had was removing then reinstalling the ejector spring. Man that was a tough nut, but I got it. I'll probably never remove it again, or if I do so it will be years between attempts. Everything else was easy as pie and if you have ever baked an apple pie it sure is easy - almost as easy as eating it. I am guessing that disassembling and reassembling the Mosin Nagant 91/30 will have proved to be almost as easy as shooting it.
All the parts show typical wear for a rifle this old. The bolt looks very good, the magazine had some surface rust barely noticeable until I wiped it down with an oil soaked cloth. There was no hidden rust on metal parts under the wood. The trigger assembly, a very simple one at that, seemed fine to excellent. The rear sight seems to be in great working order. The front sight is another story. Well, I should say the front sight hood is another story. It is dented out of round, but it does not appear that the sight itself was damaged. This was its condition upon coming out of the shipping box. I only noticed it a day or two after first looking at it, but since it did not take any falls once I took it out of the box it had to ship that way. No complaints from me so long as the front sight is right on. If I can find a replacement I will replace it. It not, and if I can get it off of the rifle, and apart from the front sight, I will try to fix it. Otherwise it stays just as I found it. The wood has something to be desired. There are some portions that were scraped when refinished or not finished properly in the first place but that is no big deal. I will probably strip the wood and refinish it with boiled linseed oil or something along those lines. I'd like to get the wood to look like that of my M44 as in the pic.
The bore, of the 91/30, while shiny has somewhat weak looking grooves but that too should be okay as they look to me to be more than good enough for a few thousand rounds more of shooting fun. Shooting a few thousand rounds through this beast will prove no easy task. Yes, I know I just said shooting it should be easier even than cleaning it turned out but I was talking about maybe 20 or 40 rounds per session and I'll probably shoot it about 6 times per year at most. Shooting thousands of rounds through this will take years for me if only because I value what I have left of my shoulders and figure 20 rounds is good enough for one session - then I'll switch to the 22 rifle in my collection or to the SKS. If this proves to be anything like the M44 it will have some good amount of kick. Not terrible mind you, but enough to make me respect it.
Obviously, I have not shot it yet. I am waiting on a shipment of 240 rounds of Silver Bear ammo for it. That should arrive in the next day or two. If I get lucky and it arrives before noon tomorrow - a day before its scheduled arrival time - I may be able to take it to the range with me tomorrow for my first range outing with it. If not tomorrow then maybe I can go to the range with it this weekend. I may as well also bring along the Mosin Nagant M44 since it shoots the same ammo. I'll let you know how it works out.
All the best,
Glenn B
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