I gave my Mosin a serious deep cleaning today. A serious one, I say. Now the bore is very bright, after wearing out--yeah, I wore it out--phosphore bronze brush. The rifling looks a lot deeper than it did, that's for sure, and sharper. I made sure a clean, dry patch came out clean and dry as well--I don't think I could get it any cleaner.
But now that I've managed to remove the copper fouling--which I think was in the tube since WWII, surprisingly on an arsenal reworked gun, there appeared something i haven't seen in my bore before--a plethora of tiny pits. I don't think that they are affecting accuracy all that much, but I hadn't seen them before. (This is after putting about 200-250 rounds through him, and "normal cleaning" afterwords). Happytrgrfingr and I went down Saturday and put about 60 rnds a piece through our Mosins, and that was the occasion for me to do the deep clean thing. I hope for comments and suggestions.
The other things is, the upper hand guard on my Mosin drifts forward when you fire, and this gets more pronounced when the gun is hot. ( I was seeing how rapidly I could put rounds, aimed, down range--just to see, you see, and the gun got very hot.) Any suggestions for a fix to this? The rear barrel band slides forward over it's retaining spring, and the wood slides forward under the front barrel band.
Finally, the Chinese stripper clip question: some of them worked OK, some just didn't work at all.
Comments and suggestions on these issues most welcome.
I had the handguard problem with my '43 Izzy. all i did was slide the top handguard all the way back, then slide the barrel band back to its positon. Then I just took a finishing nail and tapped the little post on the retaining spring to push it out some. Before, my handguard always slid forward after 20 or so rounds. Now I've put close to 400 through it without any movement in it. I don't know if that would always help with sliding handguards, but it's worth a try.
Thats a good fix.
Look fellas, these rifles are rather crudely built and are very old so there are allways going to be issues like this that need attention. You are paying more attention to that particular gun than any human has ever before. They made these by the millions, issued them by the millions. there are going to be little quirks and issues with each one.
Obviously, nothing you can do about the pitting in the barrel...
Copper fouling? Perhaps, but I can't imagine how many rounds it would take to get any appreciable amount of copper fouling from surplus ammo- the bullets aren't copper jacketed.
A "bi-metal" jacket is copper "washed", meaning the copper is about .005 thick- not much to speak of. It's basically a steel jacketed bullet that's given that very very thin coating of copper to ward off corrosion.
The steel-jacketed bullets are the main reason I don't shoot surplus from my Mosins...might get flamed for this, but a steel projectile cutting it's way through the rifling (steel on steel) doesn't seem like a good combination for longevity.
Anyway, it might be an interesting experiment, if you're so inclined (much cheaper if you can handload, natch) to run real copper jacketed bullets through the bore. I'd bet the pitting would fill up with the copper, and might even improve accuracy...
I have the hand guard issue as well...but it seems to make my guns more accurate? Kind of odd. My guess would be to, ever so slightly, over bend the retaining spring (with the bands off) so when it rebounds once you put the bands back on further/stiffer. It's worth a shot I guess, but the problem never really bothers me much. If it thinks it needs to go there, I guess it should go there, .
__________________ Vetroue in God en die Mauser Next generation shooter and a young 2nd amendment supporter!
I have had decent results by steaming the cosmoline out of the barrel band spring inlet and hole and stuffing little bits of paper down the hole with a punch to make the barrel band spring sit higher, to the point I have to use channel locks to compress the spring so I can use a block of wood to tap the barrel band loose. Handguard hasn't moved from recoil since I did that.
Next time you have the barrel bands off take a flat tip screw driver and raise the retaining springs up a little. Seems to me that should stop the sliding forward if the barrel band cannot get over the retainer.
??? Just food for thought........
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