Mosin Nagant in the Ardennes

Somewhere to share your tales, anecdotes and memories from past days.

Moderator: dromia

Forum rules
Please remember to respect the copyright of the author. Please do not post content from this section elsewhere without the specific permission of the author.
Message
Author
User avatar
meles meles
Site Supporter Since 2020
Posts: 6333
Joined: Mon Jun 06, 2011 8:17 pm
Home club or Range: HBSA
Location: Underground
Contact:

Re: Mosin Nagant in the Ardennes

#11 Post by meles meles »

The Germans certainly made use of a lot of captured equipment to arm their second echelon and garrison troops, and for a variety of reasons. Strange as it may seem, German industry didn't gear up for total war until very late ("Blitzkrieg" was expected to deliver a quick victory) and so the Wehrmacht were often short of equipment. Later in the war elements such as manganese and cobalt were in short supply and ordnance grade steels hard to produce. Re-using captured weapons allowed the precious high quality steel to be saved for artillery and armour. In addition, some German snipers favoured the Mosina over the K98. It had a longer barrel and sight base, had decent optics in sniper versions, and could be quite accurate with a little fettling*. It was also very effective in low temperatures - something that matters to snipers. It's quite possible therefore that a Mosina found its way to the Ardennes. Were any units that fought there pulled from the Russian front ? Or maybe second echelon troops were thrown into the fray to try and exploit initial successes? Either might explain the presence of a few Mosina



* Someone once said, "The Mosin Nagant isn't a sniper rifle. It's a sniper's rifle, " meaning it takes care and attention to fettle it, and it needs fettling because each one is different with a bewildering array of tolerances and build quality to be overcome, but it repays that effort. Correctly tuned it performs very well, more so than many of its better made contemporaries, because a dedicated armourer has worked on it.
Badger
CEO (Chief Excavatin' Officer)
Badger Korporashun



Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur.
"Quelle style, so British"
User avatar
snayperskaya
Past Supporter
Posts: 7234
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 6:43 pm
Home club or Range: West Bank of the Volga.....
Location: West of The Urals
Contact:

Re: Mosin Nagant in the Ardennes

#12 Post by snayperskaya »

meles meles wrote:
* Someone once said, "The Mosin Nagant isn't a sniper rifle. It's a sniper's rifle, " meaning it takes care and attention to fettle it, and it needs fettling because each one is different with a bewildering array of tolerances and build quality to be overcome, but it repays that effort. Correctly tuned it performs very well, more so than many of its better made contemporaries, because a dedicated armourer has worked on it.
Very true Mr B......with a simple trigger job,a shimmed action, relieved barrel channel and an oiled canvas wrap on the barrel even a fairly rough Russian Mosin can become a fine shooter.The Soviets produced an armourers guide to accurizing Mosina's that used some of the tricks also used by the Finns.

I carried out the same mods, using old techniques and materials, to both my '39 Izhevsk M91/30 and '26 Izhevsk ex-Dragoon and reduced the group size of both rifles considerably, the biggest gain coming from the '39 which has....errr...."a less than pefect bore!".It took a bit of time and patience but was well worth the effort.The trickiest bit was positioning the oiled canvas wrap on the barrel, shooting it, and repositioning it then shooting it again to find the "sweet spot" where it was in the optimum position to dampen the harmonics of the barrel as the vast majority of Mosins don't like a fully floating barrel.
"The only real power comes out of a long rifle." - Joseph Stalin

Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank.....give a man a bank and he can rob the world!.

More than a vested interest in 7.62x54r!
User avatar
meles meles
Site Supporter Since 2020
Posts: 6333
Joined: Mon Jun 06, 2011 8:17 pm
Home club or Range: HBSA
Location: Underground
Contact:

Re: Mosin Nagant in the Ardennes

#13 Post by meles meles »

Oh indeed so, snayperskaya. We had our (already quite decent) Tula Mosina fettled by Paul at Thames Valley Guns and a splendiferous job he made of it too with a bit of 32 thou brass shim and some thin cork. It now shoots almost as well as our Suomi M28/76.

http://thamesvalleyguns.co.uk/page25.html
Badger
CEO (Chief Excavatin' Officer)
Badger Korporashun



Quidquid latine dictum sit altum viditur.
"Quelle style, so British"
User avatar
snayperskaya
Past Supporter
Posts: 7234
Joined: Fri Oct 04, 2013 6:43 pm
Home club or Range: West Bank of the Volga.....
Location: West of The Urals
Contact:

Re: Mosin Nagant in the Ardennes

#14 Post by snayperskaya »

meles meles wrote:Oh indeed so, snayperskaya. We had our (already quite decent) Tula Mosina fettled by Paul at Thames Valley Guns and a splendiferous job he made of it too with a bit of 32 thou brass shim and some thin cork. It now shoots almost as well as our Suomi M28/76.

http://thamesvalleyguns.co.uk/page25.html
What year is your Tula?.....I fancy a Tula next as both mine are from Izhevsk, that said the Simonov is a Tula.

I did try cork on mine, in the area just forward of the recoil lug, but found a square of very lightly oiled canvas was more consistent when tightening down the action in the stock.After a while the cork seemed to go brittle, possibly due to heat......or it could have been inferior cork.

I know folks sing the praises of the Finnish Mosins over their Russian counterparts but I would say the difference is academic at -30 when aiming centre mass at 200-300m ;-)
"The only real power comes out of a long rifle." - Joseph Stalin

Give a man a gun and he can rob a bank.....give a man a bank and he can rob the world!.

More than a vested interest in 7.62x54r!
Post Reply

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 15 guests