rustvyper

The other deer was a doe he had killed about an hour earlier at first light. He pretty much killed the buck because he shot the doe first. He forgot his headlamp & couldn't find his climber in the dark & he said he was busting deer left & right around him & getting madder & madder so he just laid down on the ground in the middle of the woods. I texted him right after first light & he had just texted back (the only reason he didn't have his eyes closed he said) when he noticed the doe about 50 yards from him. Shot her through the heart & she kicked once, then he looked up & realized his stand was 20 feet from him. He climbed up & the wind kicked up real bad. He said the first he realized the buck was there was when the deer was 5 yards from him. He got buck fever real bad & couldn't find him in his scope (because he had it dialed up to 8x power from killing the doe). The buck was totally locked on the dead doe, just staring it down & trying to get her wind (ain't the rut grand!?) He shoots & totally misses (buck fever!) & the buck runs. He shoots at him on the run & misses. The buck then stops & looks back at the doe again. At this point he dials down his scope to 3x & fires his last round. The buck runs off & he thinks he missed it clean. He climbs down since he's out of ammo & starts texting me to tell me he missed. Then he notices a drop of blood, then a LOT of blood. The deer didn't go 30 feet... We had a crazy morning since it was both our last day of leave. We caped him out & took him to the taxidermist. His first good buck that wasn't a 1.5yo 4 point!

...when it's been blooded! Brother dropped this nice 10 monday with the 270. My little girl was pretty proud of her uncle. I doubt I'll ever make her a gunsmith, but a deer hunter, yes! She kept telling my wife all day after I took her "scouting", "see these scratches right here? They were made by big bucks!"

So the stars finally aligned & I got both the time & the wantto to finish up my 308 project I've been working on for almost a year. So, since the bug had bitten me, I figured - heck, why not do 2? So out came my most pitted action to restart life as a 270. the 308 - Action is a VZ24 which at some point was accepted into the wehrmacht, then sold as a capture weapon to the israelis who rebarrelled it to 7.62 NATO. They were kind enough to modify the feed ramp & put in a metal spacer in the magazine, as well as shorten the follower so a lot of the internal work had been done for me. I sandblasted the whole thing, tapped for a one-piece Leupold & then fit a A&B barrel to it. Next I filled in the locking screw holes on the trigger guard & replaced the military screws with the B Square allen heads. Finally the whole shebang got a mirrored bluing followed by a turtle wax coat. I also replaced the trigger with a bold w/side safety & put a FN style shroud on it. Then I replaced the handle & jeweled the bolt. Finally, a semi-fancy richards microfit stock in montecarlo style came. Boy was it rough!!! the inletting was ok, but the mill obviously needed the cutter sharpened because there were DEEP chatter marks all along the stock. So deep in fact that I really couldn't get them all out without changing the shape of the stock. Fortuantly, those were down on the underside near the recoil pad so they aren't TOO noticable. Most came out with a lot of 150 grit power sanding. about 12 coats of Tru-oil later & she's starting to look real nice! Next out of my box of actions came a german mod 98. This also had been an israeli rebarrel & it had seen some ROUGH days. It was my most pitted action, however it passed a hardness test & the inside was still whole. The israeli's hadn't even bothered to obliterate the wehrmacht marks, they'd simply stamped a HUGE "7.62" & a crappy-looking half star of David - practical folks those israelis! Anyway, there was massive pitting & they horrid looking 7.62 mark so after a good sandblasting I filled the pits & stamps with JB weld then sanded down smooth; filled, sanded, filled, sanded...you get the idea. Again a A&B barrel in 270 win fit the bill & the whole thing was ready for duracoat. Tanglewood, who also did the bolt for me, gave me a good idea. I had ordered gun blue, however, it is REALLY blue. He suggested a mix formula. I didn't have all the blacks he had used, but I did have combat black, so I mixed a solution of 50/50 gun blue & combat black. I had to order bottom metal for this one & file out the insides so that it would accept 150gr rounds. Duracoated the entire thing & then dropped it into a ready made boyds FT thumbhole in laminate nutmeg. I REALLY like this stock. I either got lucky, or boyds has really improved their QC since I last ordered from them. The stock fit like a glove. All I had to do was cut a bolt notch. By now tanglewood's bolt had arrived, so I headspaced the rifle to the bolt & then teardropped the ball. I duracoated the handle, fitted a FN style shroud & bold trigger again, & topped with a 2 piece Leupold for this one. This was a good month of work - but well worth it! Final step...took them to the range today. the 308 right out of the box was dead-on at 100 yards. First time it ever happened to me with just a bore-sight. I know these groups will tighten up, because I discovered the rear of the receiver was slightly loose while shooting at the range. I plan to bed both these rifles so I'll address that then. The 270 wasn't as lucky on it's boresight. In fact, it was well off the paper & these 3 were after I had adjusted once. Forgive the last one - it was my flinch & it produced a nice flyer. Nothing like getting back into building again. Now I already have other projects perculating in my mind!!!

Namely the Winchester xp3's: http://www.winchester.com/Products/rifle-ammunition/supreme-elite/xp3/Pages/SXP270S.aspx I'm building a 270 & I've always wanted to try one of the detachable mags but I was curious how they advertise how they fit 30-06, 270 & 25-06 length bullets when you normally need to lengthen the mag well. Anyone have any experience with this?

well - the rim goes all the way to the breech face now - I wasn't kidding - it was a really good game. I think I'll sit this one in my project locker until I get my lathe back. Thanks for the imput guys. 300win actually sounds like a good choice.

Ok, the barrel itself isn't ruined, it's a brand-new A&B barrel that I over bored while finish reaming it. I mean waaaay over bored it! Never watch a football game that you care about while doing smith work of any kind! Is there a way to salvage the barrel to another caliber?

If anyone has a forged or sporterized 98 bolt laying around, I'd be willing to take it off their hands for a reasonable price. Last second down & dirty build for my brother before deer season. 98 in a 270 - duracoat in a repurposed cast off sporter stock I got at a yard sale. I have all the pieces, minus the bolt. It can be stripped & rough. Thanks!

Well I drew my brother-in-law for our annual Chistmas draw & I've been chomping to get another build going, so I thought to myself, "can I do it?" well that remains to be seen, but I'm gonna try. I just PCS'd to Las Vegas, so I'm in the midst of setting up a new workshop, unpacking boxes & missing obvious things. However, the cold weather has got me raring to try & my brother just got back from Iraq. I know he has no idea, I simply texted him & asked him if he could have any rifle caliber what would it be? Like any good army puke - 308. Well the good thing about moving is that it makes you inventory all the parts you've squirreled away around the house & shop. So I was in luck! I had a A&B barrel in 308 that I got from a guy who was no longer building. I also had a 24/47 that the bolt was already done for me with a butter knife bolt handle by weaver77. I actually built a similar rifle a few years ago for another buddy - just so happened it was 308 too: It turned out real nice & I'm doing something similar. So... Here we go. I couldn't for the life of me find any of my 6-48 taps so I had to order more (waiting on those) & I had to get a 308 reamer from the co-op. Mike & Brad (who had the go gauges) were kind enough to priority those to me so the adventure has begun. I figure I need to ship it by NLT the 20th to get it to NC by Christmas. I started by getting all my parts together: I had pretty much everything already minus the stock. Richards had a bargin bin 48 on sale for $79, it was supposed to come with studs & a declerator pad, but no studs although the pad is nice. It is ROUGH though & I think it'll be the majority of work on the gun. Step 1: Grind the hump off & drill for weaver #45's & 46's. I'll have to wait on tapping it until I get my taps in the mail. Here's What I have left to do in order: - Chamber the gun - Sandblast all the parts - recrown the barrel with a 11 degree crown - sand off the parts numbers on the floor plate & take it to be engraved with my brother's last name - sand out all the dings in the trigger guard & action - fit a shim inside the mag-well to better accomidate the shorter 308 round - fit the bolt shroud to the bolt & get everything working outside the stock - fit the action to the stock & inlet the barrel channel & stock for the optima side-safety trigger - blue the action, the barrel, the trigger guard & the floorplate - polish the bolt - I'm undecided whether it should all be polished silver or if I should blue the bolt shroud. - finish the non-showing metal with a ceramic based paint (like inside & outside the mag-well) - sand & truoil the stock. It's a walnut fancy grade with a rose-wood cap so it should turn out REAL pretty. - fit it all together & get her cycling right. - shoot it. Holy Smokes that's a lot in 10 days. I should get most of it done this weekend, which is good because that stock is gonna take some elbow GREASE! I'll post pictures randomly until I get this thing done or go crazy!

Inspired by you, I just got my bargain bin'er today. One word: rough! But I think there is a diamond under here. How did you finish out the barrel channel? Mine is tiny.

Can anyone point me at a specific lathe they use? I'm looking for something under a G if possible.

...about my dumb luck! Went to a gun auction this weekend with 1261 items! talk about a good (but expensive) time. 400+ of the guns were from an estate collection, & he apparently was a huge WWII collector. I bought a savage 720 without inspecting it because it was an insanely good deal, ended up getting it for $188 after 17% buyer’s fee & taxes. Got it home & realized that it had US ordinance flying bomb & P proofs. Looked it up & come to find out I got myself a Savage M720 purchased for MP's & aerial gunnery practice during WWII. Most were given to municipal police departments after the war so there are few originals left. Starting asking price for a fair condition all-original? $700, could fetch as high as $1100 for a nice condition one like mine. Coulda knocked me over with a feather! Anyway, guessing it was part of the guy's WWII collection & someone didn't do their due diligence! There were tons of good deals flowing across the stage. Coulda made a lot of $ if I had around $5k to spend. Some really stupid deals too. Saw a m48a sold as a "german WWII mauser" for $250 final bid (+17% premium & tax!) Also saw a beauuuutiful sporterized mauser in 224 clark go for $725 & another 1895 in 257 imperial for $1000. Some nice sporterized springfield 1903's too. One in banjo wood stock that only went for $200 b/c the auctioneer didn't know what caliber it was. Had to bite my hand on that one as I had already spent a grand!

So I have several - ok like 30 Mosin Nagant Barreled actions sitting in a box in the workshop. They are all early 50's M44's with no stock or bolt but nicely done, machining wise. I know it's insane, but I'm gonna do it. Why? I dunno. I'm gonna change the caliber on one of these babys & I'm soliciting a little advice. Here's the plan. Lothar is fairly local & will do custom barrel for a nice price with military discount included. I know 30-06 is an option, but I'm looking for something that may feed a little smoother without too much modification to the rails & lips of the action itself. I know I'll have to heavily modify the bolthead, it's something I intend to learn on. Here's the plan: -rebarrel into a new caliber. -restock into a wooden stock with a blind-bottom magazine (2-3 shot capacity?) -move new bolt handle to behind 2nd pillar. -fill in clip slot & bolt handle slot -drill & tap for some traditional weaver mounts -iron sites? maybe -install new timney trigger -reshape cocking piece to something more pleasing. Yes I know this will be the project of all pointless projects. But some day, someone will look at the beautiful piece of hardware I plan to create, scratch their head, & say, "dang! what was that GUY thinking!?!?!" So...advice on new caliber. Since I envision the bolt head/extractor will be the majority of the work, I'd like to keep it to a more common caliber. Thanks guys!

From the PA lady at Timney - they are coming out with a Mosin Trigger with a side safety. I emailed back in September, & she said it would be released late fall, so obviosuly they've run into some snags. I'll try to dig up the email when i get access to my work email.

Shoot, you get bad performance out of the 7.62x54R if you don't have a good load. Someone at one point gave me 40 rounds of 203gr bernauls & we tried them this weekend. At 75 yds we were getting a 9" drop from where we were impacting with russian surplus FMJ's. My brother shot 2 deer with them. Both did the job, but one fragmented before exitting, & the other never expanded. That being said, after building 6 sporterized mosins now, changing the calibur has always been something that has been at the back on my mind. I think bannerman was on the right track when he converted remingington surplus to 30-06. His mistake was to take off too much barrel material so they could simply rebore the same barrels. Some day, if I can get a good price on a bannerman I may make the attempt. Most of the legwork would be done, all you'd have to do is remove the offending barrel & get someone like Lothar to make you a mosin barrle shortchambered for 30-06. It'd be a unique gun! One day...

Brazilian 1908's for $39.97 & VZ24s for $59.87. As with most of century's u-fix-ems, probably won't get a bolt & no telling what you'll get...I ordered 2 of each. We'll see. Oh, also 1894 Brazilians for $9.97 each. Not sure what you'd do with it...

My fault! I typed that from memory. The actual address is .com Here it is. In reply to your other questions... I've duracoated both parked & unparked steel & parkerizing is defintely the prefered method. I've found if I parkerize I can even duracoat "high-wear" areas like the lugs, bolt & internals on the "sloppier" actions like the mosin & the mauser. If you choose not to parkerize, I'd suggest at least sandblasting as the paint needs something to adhere to. As long as you are doing low-wear areas like barrels & receivers I think you'll be fine. for my set-up I purchased a outdoor propane 2 burner set from harbor freight. I also go the gas regulator there (it just hooks up to your standard grill propane tank) cotton gloves, protective goggles, gloves & apron. stainless steel thermometer came from walmart & the tank came from brownells. their SS tank is $150. I bought the $50 steel tank & then sprayed the inside with cermaic based grill paint. It works, but you have to keep reapplying a new coat of paint after every use so I know I'll eventually wish I'd sprung for the SS tank. Hope that answers your questions.

Oh yeah...we were planning some elaborate gunsmithing to try to mount a bold mauser trigger with side safety to this mosin, but after emailing timney the nice PR lady informed me they are due out any time with a custom adjustable mosin nagant trigger with side safety. So, long story short, it's still got the mil trigger on it & he's using the safety method called "don't load the gun".

I've been promising my younger brother in law (BIL) for a while that we'd build a rifle together & he finally scraped up the $ & parts. My future brother in law (FBIL) wanted to get into the act to & when he saw my custom mosin he fell in love with the idea. I took a week of leave & the 2 Sundays we used to build each rifle. The first Sunday we started the mosin. $150 which included shipping got my FBIL one 1942 Ishevsk rifle, a ATI black synthetic stock & a ATI scope mounting kit. another $50 got a modified bolt handle from mosinparts.net. I was worried he'd get a late war model or a shot out bore as I have both types in my project locker, but we lucked out & got a early war model (no overly rough machining marks) & a crisp bore. It had been counter-bored, but it shot nice tight groups. We were pleased. We got to work by disassembling the rifle & then using a carbide blade on a mini chop saw to shorten the barrel to 23". We followed up by cutting a 11 degree crown & then using a power sander to smooth the outer edges of the barrel end to a more pleasing & less sharp edge. The rear sight & base was the most challenging part of the deal. We ruined to punches trying to get out the pins, even with the help of a torch to melt the solder. We eventually took a dremel & carbide blade & cut the offending base at the bottom of the barrel. That took a lot of slow work to make sure we didn't scar the barrel. That's also why we cut at the bottom just in case we did. After we got the rear sight off, we had to grind both the pins & the small square mounting hump down to almost flush with the contour of the barrel. Then it was just careful power sanding & then stoning to get the right shape. Then it was time to get out the jig & the drill press for a little D&T'ing. I have a Forester Jig I got off ebay for $50. I know, that was a steal! it just needed bushing which brownells happily supplied. I've D&T'ed several actions since & I'd never want another jig! This should have been an easy process & it was until the VERY end. On the last hole when we were almost done tapping, the tap broke! I was heartbroken. I've broken a tap only once before & it ruined the receiver. I was very grim on the prospect of recovering this project, but my FBIL didn't despair. Back into the drill press & 2 drill bit's later the tap shattered & we were picking the pieces out of the threads! Back on track... Next major step was to sandblast the parts & while FBIL attended to that, myself & my BIL got the parkerizing solution ready. Soon as each part came out of the sandblaster, it went straight into the tank to be parkerized. Once out of the tank, it went for a rinse & then hung to be immediately airbrushed with stainless steel color duracoat. We had a good line going. The only part we didn't duracoat was the bolt. He preferred to leave that the parkerized black, so it went for several good coats of finishing oil. At this point we discontinued to let the duracoat age a good 24hrs. My FBIL was definitely chomping at the bit. Monday night we took down the pieces & proceeded to assemble. The ATI stock needed a little help from a dremel & sand paper to inlet the barrel channel a bit, but we got it done. a few dabs of super glue on the scope mount screws & we had her together! Turned into a dang fine rifle & with deer season less than a month away, just in time! All in all my FBIL paid out $200 for the rifle of which he recovered $40 by hocking the stock set + the bayonet & other goodies that came from SOG on ebay. I provided the parkerizing & duracoat as leftovers from other projects so he lucked out on that...but not a bad rifle for $160. He topped it with a $220 Nikon so the scope is worth more than the rifle! I'll post the mauser build tomorrow. I did much better taking pics during that process so there will be more visuals.

I 2nd the parking. You can duracoat without it, but you'll need a pretty rough finish for it to bond to.

That's why I love this forum! Always learning new things...Thanks!

Alright, new bro-in-law is a huge fan of mosin sporter. He needs a good rifle for deer season as he's a recent IL transplant & since they are all commies up there they can't hunt with rifles. I told him we'd build one together...nothing fancy, black ATI sporter stock, modified ATI style bolt (welded, not the D&T crap), ATI mount, park it & wait for the timney trigger to come out in a few months. Take us all of a day I figure. Step one...order the parts. So SOG is running a special on 91/30's - $69.95 - so we took a chance & ordered one. Came today & here are the results: this is with a 54R down the throat This is with a S&W 40! Shot out barrel, right? Not so fast! I run my bore light to take a look & it looks nice & crisp, but here the weird part...barreling just slap quits ~1.5 inches from the crown. Never seen anything like it. So I'm gonna take it to the range & see how it works. If it does ok it's no big deal anyway, because we were planning on cutting it to 22in & re-crowning. I've just never seen the like & I have quite a collection of unaltered mosins. Anyone ever seen anything like this?

Here's my 2 cents on the Mosin - it's a tack-driver! My first sporterizing job was on a mosin & in my opinion it's actually a lot easier to sporterize for a first timer like you. I've done a lot of mausers now & there is something easy about the lack of advanced options that come with the mosin. I deer hunt with mine a few times every year, & it's my pig gun of choice. Here's how mine turned out - she started life as a 91/30: Couple thoughts on scope mounting - forget the LR scout mounts or welding the bridge shut & moving the handle. Unless you are really a good welder & have access to a machine shop anyway. I used the ATI kit. Say what you want, it's a quality product mounted to the receiver of the rifle. Rock solid, never had a problem. Couple downsides - you can't change calibers & ammo must be ordered or handloaded. It's a heavy rifle. All in all I love my little mosin!

Anyone know of a good deal on complete bolts for a 98. Need at least 1!

Can you give me some tips on how to forge a bolt like that? Also, is the the orginal military stepped barrel? That's a fine looking rifle!

Duracoat's a non-bake on. It doesn't look near as nice as a mirrored blue finish, but for anything else it's hard to beat. It's tougher than nails & almost impossible to scratch or flake. It applies real easy with a quality hobby airbrush. Well my project is 90% there. I D&T'd the receiver correctly & have fir & finished the action to the new bold trigger. Also installed a commercial sporter shroud I had in my drawer, so tack on another $40 to the final price. Why the heck are those things so expensive?! I still have to duracoat & then fit the action to the choat stock. I was dissapointed at first with the choate. It seemed, well...cheap, cheaper than a ram-line. But the more I mess with it, the more I like it. The receiver & action are all in the white right now & so I can pretty much put it together & see what it's gonna look like. It's going to look real sharp. The inletting on the stock was small. It doesn't even fit & will get worse with a couple coats of duracoat on it. I like that though. Small I can fix, too big I cannot. I'll add some more pics here soon. I expect to have to rifle done by next weekend hopefully.