Before I dream to much about this or waste too much time, does anyone hear know if you could take a MN Mosin Nagant and convert it to fire 30.06?

yes anything can be done...but

the bolt and mag designs are for rimmed cart.  the BBls are a bitch to get off,  you will have to thread a new one yourself and convert the bolt, and mag

way not worth it. but its been done

By the time you modify the boltface, set the barrel back and chamber it, modify the magazine, and a few other things are done you'll probably have spent as much as you would on a Stevens or Savage .30-06.
If youre looking for a cheap military gun to convert to .30-06 go find a Yugo Mauser and an '06 barrel.

Yes!

And No!

It's been done.  The 54 barrel is unsafe for 06 pressures.  You must have more than a bolt and chamber reamer and possible magazine mods.  You also need a barrel.  Coupling that with the accuracy of the Mosin indicateds a 1903 or a Remington.

Thanks for all of the replies.  I was afraid of what I learned here and suspected as much in the back of my mind.  I was just hoping someone here tried something like that already and did not want to reinvent the wheel.  I talked about something like this a little over a year ago about a modified MN 9130 with a shortened barrel for truck gun length.  

The modification bug hit me again and I am stuck with modding this type of rifle as it is all I really want to spend on the base weapon before modifying it.  Most everyone discouraged me from cutting the barrel to the minimum legal length of 16".  I've thought a little and wondered if 18-20" is a better compromise.  To kill the expected mushroom cloud sized flash, I've looked into getting a .30 cal flash hider to go on the end by threading the barrell.  

Yeah, I know I am limiting myself to five rounds of ammo, but I don't think that there are too many problems I could run into in a SHFT problem that five rounds of 7.62X54 won't solve or at least postpone so I can run away.

.

Nobody mentioned that the Russian 7.62  has a larger bore diameter than the US .30 calibers.  US projectiles wouldn't bite into the rifling in the Russian bore.

Russian 7.62 bore diameter is actually almost identical to the Brit .303  ––- IIRC it is a .311 ––-   I have seen Enfields which have been modified to use 7.62x39.  There used to be a company that offered a kit to make the conversion and use AK mags.

Bren gun barrels make a good starting point for heavy barrel AK conversions.  

Might be easier to go to .308 in the Mauser.   Yugo Mauser is going to have a hard time with the 30-06.   Some magazines won't hold the longer 30-06.   The action is also just a little too short to use stripper clips, so you'll end up putting a notch in the back of the receiver ring if you want to use them.  It's not that big a problem... the Colombians did it to all of their rifles when they converted to 30-06 back in the 50s.



Where in Texas?

16 18 29  matters not with the mushroom cloud....


I have made a few scout rifles out of nagants,, brush guns so to speak.. poeple always ask to buy em so I dont have one right now
I have great money saver on how to make a rail on the old rear sight base that costs under 5 bucks.  let me know if your nterested. no pics but i can explain it.

Its a good cheap toy to practice on, I have taken a few deer with them and norma hunting rounds

i have a trunk junk MN m91/30 cut down to 18" in the original 7.62x54r, and it neither kicks too unpleasently nor handles too poorly. infact it is quite handy despite the cheap quality ATI "monte carlo" stock and the cheapy 4x NcStar scope in this older photo, shown with a MN m38 carbine for comparison. it does suffer a bit of a "mushroom cloud" but it's not to bad, it is loud though..


here's a bunch of trunk junk in a really old photo(didn't even own an AR then). the ATI "steyr scout" stock on the mauser in the bottom is a total piece of crap, as was the scope but it was what i could afford at the time. the mauser is a turkish m24(iirc) in the original 8mm(ok 7.92x57mm, why did someone start calling this 8mm and how has it become generally excepted terminology?), cut back to 16". i wish i had only cut it to 18" like the MN. it throws one hell of a fireball and kicks like a rabbid mule(though not as bad as a ruger #1 rolling block in .375 H&H mag which so far is the stoutest kicking thing i've personally fired).


the old ATI piece o' on the mauser has since been replaced with a fajen poly stock from midway(great stock for the small[actully cheaper than the ATI junk] price tag). and both the mauser and the MN now wear cheapy 2-7x illuminated pistol scopes by NcStar. they are junk optics i admit, but so far are holding their zeros well, are fairly clear and for the money hard to beat, iirc have a lifetime waranty, and when they do crap out i'm not out a lot of cash, besides i still have teh old 4x off the MN, and i plan on buying another spare or two as money permits. i couldn't and can't justify spending good $ on trunk junk guns that i have barely over $200 in each after initisl cost of the rifles, gunsmith work on the cutting and recrowning of the barrels, new stocks, decent shell carrying slings and scout scope bases... i know they're cheapy junker brush guns, but man are they handy and make damn good "handouts" in my opinion. i just need to figure out a quick cheap and easy way to add back up irons...

i love to take these guns, the mauser in particular along when several of my friends an i are off too a day at the range to shoot ARs and other EBRs. whenever one of my buddies or some fudd starts unapologetically dropping hot brass towards me or rather down the side of my face and across my head, or one of the black powder or other assorted fudd gun shooting fudds starts talking about how ARs and AKs have no use and should be banned. i like to outshoot them with ARs and then i'll sometimes run back to the truck and grab these up and 5-10 rounds later i've usually run them off with cuncussion waves, excessive decibals like thundar claps, lighting bolts from my eyes and balls of fire from my arse muzzle...



K.

On the same line of reasoning, I'd love to see someone convert Saiga .308 AK-variants to 7.62x54r.

Nothing like a carbine with a side venting muzzle brake firing full strength military cartridges to drive the people on either side of you away from the range.

Why?  Why would you do this?  The 7.62x54R round is ballistically similar to the 30-06 and it is WAY cheaper.  Perish the thought!

For NOW its cheaper.  When the cheap surplus dries up, its gone.  



I've got a Mauser and I've been strongly considering just selling off what 8mm I have and converting it to 30-06 or .308.  The price of surplus 7.62x54R and 8mm have gone up quite a bit in the past few years.  Yeah, its still relatively cheap today, but its also corrosive, which means if you plan to use it as a hunting rifle in a SHTF situation, you're going to spend a bit more of your cleaning resources cleaning it out after EVERY firing.



Another thing to think about is that its not too outrageous to think we might see a ban on foreign ammo.  I've seen American made 8mm, and the prices are outrageous.  I don't even want to think what US 7.62X54R would cost.  I guess if you reload its not as much of an issue.