Posted: 7/25/2003 5:39:43 PM EDT
| Well, I picked up the Finnish M39 tonight. It's a 1944 VKT. What a beauty! The bore is perfect. One question, though...the bolt seems harder to throw than most bolt guns I've dealt with. Is this normal for MN's? It takes alot more effort to unlock smoothly. |
Pzactly. And you'll screw it up once. And you'll say things like "Jesus fucking tap-dancing Christ on a three-wheeler. Why'd I fucking do that?" as you turn the rifle over to drop the magazine floorplate to dump them all out. Then, you will very likely never do it again. |
Do stripper clips prevent this or will this be an issue with them as well? |
Real men don't use stripper clips.  You can use them, and they'll work for you. Personally though, I don't see the point in bothering with the extra step. A bit of awareness is all you really need. |
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Look on the underside of the receiver. If you see an armorer's marking that is a hammer in a circle (very small, generally, and the hammer looks like a 'T'), then the receiver is Tula pre-1917. Basically, after 1917, the Tula factory stopped using that marking. However, since your gun was either sold or captured, then converted, re-arsenaled, and god knows what else for the past 80+ years, the bottom of the receiver is the only likely place to find that mark. My Tula M91/30 has it. |
Here's a brief history. The rifle has been around since the first Dragoon rifle, the M1891 Mosin-Nagant. There was flirtation with a carbine variant in 1907. A few Mosins were fabricated by contract by Remington during WWI (you'll occasionally see them as converted M91/30s) and a number of them ended up in the hands of the U.S. Forestry service - some of these were even converted to 30-06 and are a shredded shrapnel-laden face waiting to happen - don't ever EVER EVER fire a M-N that is chambered for 30-06. The rifle was last updated as the M91/30 in 1930 - a number of these were converted Dragoon rifles since it was easier to update existing stuff than make new stuff. The first true carbine variant came as the M38 in 1938. Six years later, the M44 debuted. There is another carbine, the M91/59, but no one can decide if they are Russian or Bulgarian. Again, a lot of the carbines used to be rifles. Now, nearly all of the old Soviet Bloc countries made their own variants. So did China. Finland bought a bunch as well, and picked a number of them off of dead Russians in the Winter War. As far as accuracy goes, if you are going to get a carbine, get a Finnish model. They are, hand-down, the best and most accurate - as a group - of all the other carbine. The full-sized rifles of any origin are about on par with the Finns from what I've read, but they are VERY long and very heavy. Of course, they also don't kick as bad as the carbines.
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| I dug up some interesting info on the "rim jamming" commonly associated with Mosins. Apparently, the Finns implemented a design change in the model prior to the M39 (the M28/30). They incorporated dimples in the magazine to better align the cartridges with the disruptor so as to prevent jams. |