Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Forgot to mention, at the range Monday?

It was BUSY. People shooting and buying. LOTS of people. Nice thing to see. And a very nice mix; men, women, black, white, latino, all looking at boomsticks or shooting them(I guess the women and non-white guys hadn't heard that only white bigots like guns). One guy had a Desert Eagle in .50AE; that's one big damn pistol, and I got to fire it. The owner was a big guy, hands looked like mine when I'm wearing gloves, and he likes it; personally, once was enough.

Also, tried some of the 7.62x54r practice loads, the 180-grain Lee bullet over 16.0 grains of 2400, in a Mosin Nagant 91/30, and it shot very well. Some of these rifles are capable of fine accuracy, this one made it easy to put offhand shots into a 3" bull at 30 yards. And like almost every rifle I've tried these and similar loads in, it took the sights at 500 to put it dead-on.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Mosin Nagant, one of the poorest designs of a battle rifle ever, is much more capable of accuracy, if it can be made to fire, than some give it credit for.

I had a Peter The Great M91 some while back which I intended to make into a floor lamp as there were only vestiges of rifling remaining in the bore, the rest of the rifle being assembled from junk box parts including a Remington marked, badly splintered stock.

I foolishly took it to the range with two 20 round packets of Bulgarian ammo. The bullets were visibly crooked in the case necks, which themselves were uneven and unevenly crimped. At fifty yards I fired five rounds with the battle sights set at 100 arshins. Five holes miraculously apeared in the top half of the 6" bull. I patched the holes, and took the target to 100 yards. I fired five more, which again by some unknown force of nature made three holes in the 6" bull and two very near it. All would have been center mass hits on a man sized silhouette.

Several guys asked if they could shoot it, so I let 'em use up my thirty remaing cartridges. One of them offered me $125.00 for it. As I had gotten it in a five for $50, free shipping, U-fix'em deal from Century Arms I sold it. Still don't have my artsy fartsy floor lamp.

I do however have a 1943 dated Ishevsk M91-30 which does have rifling and does shoot well. four or five rounds in quick succession, though and a hardwood bat is required to operate the bolt. I would really hate to have to use this gatepost in battle as it is an indifferently made example of a bad design. When I got it, it was arsenal new and unfired.

I call the M91-30 the Yugo of rifles, a bad design poorly done.

The old M-91's are a bad design very well made.

Gerry N.

Firehand said...

Snork. Yeah, I've heard the "Use 2x4 to open bolt" before, and the actions of some I've worked were stiff as hell even without ammo.