their weekly ads for mosin nagant, yugo/romanian 98 mauser and sometime garands, always catch my eye. Are these good guns? Has anyone here purchased, liked it/disliked, why?

I have gotten a couple of 48's, turk mausers, enfields VZ-24's from them , the big advantage is they will let you pick through and high grade. There prices are usually cheaper than having an FFL order one and you get to see what your buying ! The guns come from century arms who supplies the majority of the surplus rifles yo see in Shotgun News.

I've gotten 2 91/30 Mosin-Nagants from them.

One I completely refinished, shortened the barrel by 2", retapered and recrowned it, mounted a scope and bipod to it, and fit it into a new stock.
The other one was a project to see if I could build it into a short folding carbine. I reshaped a folding stock from an SKS, fashioned a new front and rear sight, shortened the barrel to about 16.5", and I'm in the process of making a muzzle brake for it. I got the idea for this one while I was building my first one.

I've yet to fire either of them, but they will see range time in the near future.

Something to know about these rifles is that they are completely covered in cosmoline under the stocks. It took me forever just to take all the crap off of them before even thinking about refinishing the steel. Also you probably won't find a Mosin at Big-5 with any #s matching. They're pieced together from miscelaneous parts.

For $50 each, though, how could I [b]not[/b] buy them???

I've seen a couple nice Garands there, too, but I've passed on them so far.

Uh, you're supposed to [i]clean[/i] the wood??[;)]

I just left the wood as-is, and left the stocks on a shelf in the garage since one was replaced with an ATI composite stock, and one was replaced with an SKS folding stock.

I took a Mosin and put on a composite stock with an extended eye relief scope. Made  a dandy little scout carbine, for not a lot of money.  

I just bought a Yugo 24/47 from them monday, it was in really good shape, and came with a Bayo, sling, cleaning kit, and blank fire adapter.  Haven't shot it yet, have to wait for a gun show to buy some ammo.  

I spent 6 hours cleaning off the damn cosmo, and there is still some stuck in corners, but there is no rust or pitting anywhere.  

Warm water and dish soap works great to get the crap off, might have to change the water a couple times though.

Big 5 has/had the Yugo Mauser 98 for $139.
I bought one back in Jan as a plinker.
First time I took it out shooting I was grouping 1 1/2 groups on a sand bag at 100 yards dead on.
I let a friend shoot it, 100 yards kneeling, I used my spotting scope to guide him, he was hitting the bull after 3 shots.

Mine has all matching numbers.

I used a can of Gun Scrubber to clean the entire gun, then I used Hoppes #9 to clean the bore and action, then I used CLP to lube it up.
I used Old English spray polish to seal the wood up.

A couple of guys swear by Easy Off oven cleaner for the entire gun, wood included.

I ended up stripping the entire gun after a couple range sessions, it's AMAZING how much cosmoline there is in that gun. I used up another can of Gun Scrubber on it! I'll bet that when you finally clean it up it weighs 1 pound less!

I bought surplus 1954 Ecudorian 8mm ammo from Eric the Ammoman [url]www.ammoman.com[/url] great stuff!
I have shot almost 400 rounds of it with NO FTF's.
It is corrosive, I run an amonia/water mix through the barrel and the chamber to nutralize the corrosive stuff, and it's the first gun I clean when I get home.

GEF