My $32 Mosin....honest!!

A couple of years ago a big distributor advertised some Hungarian Mosin M-44's as "gunsmith specials" for the astronomical sum of $32 apiece. Our contact at the distributors told us there were some pretty decent ones in the bunch, most of them being parts guns, but test fired and headspaced parts guns. Well, it was a dull winter so what the heck - five of us bit, and here's one of the results.

This is a 1953 Hungarian M-44 that was delivered with the bottom of the buttstock broken off, the top handguard broken, the front sight hood caved in, a horribly scratched up receiver, and the best doggone trigger I've ever seen on a Mosin. The bore is very good......dark grooves but sharp edges. As promised, there were no matching parts anywhere.......anywhere in all five guns put together!! Whatta jumbled up mess!!

Anyway, here's how mine turned out.



I reattached the broken-off bottom of the buttstock with epoxy glue and two four inch deck screws followed by hardwood plugs, fixed the handguard with epoxy glue in the break then reinforced it with a beer can strip glued to the bottom side. I sanded out the receiver and cold blued it as well as the folding bayonet assembly. I pulled the front sight hood roughly back into shape and did my best ice cream stick splice over a terrible gouge on the left side of the stock at the magazine. I sanded out the stock and applied a good coat of Flebing's Leather Dye to hide all the cracks and wierd grain, shot it with four coats of Deft clear lacquer, rubbed it out with 0000 steel wool and went shooting. It holds all of its rounds into a three inch black at fifty yards from a bench rest with Czech light ball, so I'm happy. It makes one heck of a truck or boat gun and was a mountain of fun to do.

JayPee

JayPee,

You sure do some nice work on those MN. I appreciate your pic's too. Where do you find the time to do all that, now that I'm retired I don't know how I had time to work everyday.....

Your post reminds me of a few years back and a gun show dealer was getting out of gun shows and going into realestate and was selling off his stuff at a show and I bought six of his 91/30 hex receiver MN at $55 ea and they all came with matching # bayonets and the usual ammo pouches and slings and oilers. They were all in VG condition so I left them in their original rearsenaled condition, still have two of them, a '24 and '28, sold the other 4 about a year ago along with a MN model 1915 Finn capture that was a New England Westinghouse, still have one of them left too. I sure do admire your work on you MN's, thanks for sharing with us.

Looks mighty pretty! Great job.....You can make a silk purse from a sows ear.

Reminds me of an "internet only" sale AIM Surplus had about 9-10 years ago. They had Laminated Russian M44's for $28 each! Dumb me...I only ordered two of them! I got two all stamped matching (not electropencilled) laminated M44's for $38 each shipped! They were sold out in less than ten minutes. Then once I got five Century FAIR conditioned 91/30's for $100 shipped! You don't see deals like that these days!

Great rifle Jaypee, always good to see your stuff.

Excellent, great job