I have a 1939 Tula 91/30 and was unable to get my bayonet on. I grabbed my calipers and took some outside measurement and got these figures

At Crown - 14.73mm

25mm from crown - 14.84mm

50mm from crown - 15.19mm

75mm from crown - 15.38mm

Front end of top handguard - 15.43mm

Any ideas what could have caused this? Hot loads by previous owner?

Out of the couple dozen 91/30s and 91/30 bayonets I have owned, only 2 or 3 fit onto the rifle without using a mallet. The rifle is probably fine and you are just seeing the rough machining common on Mosins. I have heard of some folks getting a rifle with a bulged barrel caused by the rifle firing with an obstruction in the bore, but I don't think thats the case with your rifle.

And what is the problem? The barrels are tapered. Probably just a mismatched bayonet.

The mosin's barrel is gently tapered as they were usually turned on screw machines.



Bayonets were file fitted to each barrel and then serial'd to match that gun. If your bayonet numbers don't match your gun, it was never fitted to your gun, and you will need to break out the round file to fit it yourself.



Also some bayonets numbered to guns during arsenal servicing before they were crated up were never fitted to the gun they were paired with. If you have such a non-fitted matching set, you can thank lazy Ivan for leaving that task for you.

Awesome, Thank guys. I figured it was nothing, but wanted to get some other opinions.