In order to participate in the GunBroker Member forums, you must be logged in with your GunBroker.com account. Click the sign-in button at the top right of the forums page to get connected.
Mosin Nagant Barrel
Atyre5
Member Posts: 287 ✭✭✭
My Mosin Nagant barrel swallows a whole bullet down to the neck of the case. It shoots just fine...what I would expect out of an old military rifle. I am beginning to think that it might be counter-bored or something, but I do not know what I am looking at, so is there anything really wrong with it or is the a reason for this?
Comments
Many of the Mosin Nagants are counter-bored.
"Counter-bored" is sort of the poor-mans barrel recrowning.
Rough handling, and especially rough cleaning with steel rods and no muzzle protector would wear out the rifling at the muzzle, leading to poor accuracy.
In an ideal world, the rifling would be restored by recrowning the rifle, that is chopping off a teeny part of the barrel at the muzzle, and polishing the end.
But doing that requires skill, and with a Mosin, it may require removing the front sight, recutting the front sight dovetail, and moving the sight back, which is also labor-intensive.
The counterbore gives the same effect, but is far simpler and faster, working by just by boring out the end of the barrel with a large drill.
If you want to see the counter-bore, just look for rifling at the bore. One way to get a nice good look is to take out the bolt (make sure gun is empty, open bolt, pull back on bolt, then pull trigger to free it), then shine a bright light through the breech end and inspect the muzzle end.
This picture shows it pretty well:
Counterbored muzzle (left)........................Ordinary muzzle with rifling(right).
Anyway, lots of the Mosin's were counter-bored, and most will still shoot fine.