Progress on the Mosin Nagants

Cleaning up the second rifle today.
To my surprise, the recoil pads arrived. I just ordered them this past Wednesday.
-got them at www.tickbitesupply.com  AKA David's Collectibles.
The fit the stock well and feel good when I seat the butt in my shoulder.  We'll see before too long how they perform under live fire. ;)

I had some help today.  She operates a screwdriver surprisingly well.
Scooter, my oldest granddaughter.  Future Gunny.

Currently I'm pretending to be a restaurant patron.  Scooter is the waitress.

How to accumulate tools

Projects.

Home projects require at minimum two trips to the hardware store.
Automotive repairs / projects require at least two trips to the auto parts store.
Sometimes they require deep googling and impatient waiting on a UPS delivery of a part or hard to find special tool.

I'll be doing some polishing on the cam surfaces of my Mosin bolt this weekend. The file marks are so bad I can see them without my glasses on.

I ran my Dremel to destruction a while back cutting out a small bolt in a tight space on the Sonnage's Jeep.

It seems I'm now in need of a new Dremel tool. :-)

The bonus is that Scooter, my oldest granddaughter is coming to stay with us over the long weekend.
Scooter, her younger sister and my daughter stopped by to visit Belle the other day.  Scooter was very interested in the table set up at the back of the family room.
"What's all the stuff for?"
"Paw Paw is cleaning the rifles we just got"
"Oooh."

The Paw Paw / Scooter project for the weekend is going to be field stripping, and cleaning the other Mosin Nagant.

Every well bred, well educated young lady should know how to field strip a Mosin, IMHO.

damnit stop helping

The last post left me famished so I'm online trying to order a pizza from Dominos and they've re-vamped their website to make it "more user friendly" I'm sure.

Now I'm confused, and what would have been a rote muscle memory exercise is going to require actual attention to detail.

do not try to help. if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

This is how it starts, isn't it...

I mean the WWII rifle jones.

I've had the good fortune to shoot Mosin Nagants and an M1 at past blogshoots, and of course Belles's Tokorev SVT40 anytime I get the hankering. Others as well I'm sure I'm forgetting.
I thought they were cool to shoot. The M1 almost seemed to not need my participation to put a round on target. But, I had somewhat of a "meh" reaction nonetheless.

Now that I've torn down one of the Mosin's Belle brought back from her trip up yonder, something existential has changed in my mind.
In the process of field stripping I came to know how the rifle was put together. In the process of cleaning I came to know how the moving parts worked, the Mosin bolt I found the most interesting.
Simple solution to a complex problem.

I find I'm searching for ways to make the Mosin bolt work better. (woe is me)
 I've already ordered two recoil pads that fit up in place of the steel butt plate on the stock.*

I've yet to break down the other Mosin Nagant and clean it up.  I'm saving it for this coming weekend, because my brain tells me that I know myself and I will want another rifle to break down and fondle.

The bad / good/ bad? thing is all of the sudden I really, really want an M1 Garand of my own.**
There's also this little niggling spark of a thought in the back of my mind about an Enfield.
must
sit
down
and
grit
my
teeth.
resist urges.








Do not look at me like that!  It's a Mosin Nagant for crikey sake. At $139 it's hardly WWII collector's item.  It's more like buying a rusted out 1968 VW bug with a seized engine. Ripe for a resto-mod.
 I could put on a  buffalo hide coat and a big fur hat I suppose, to damp down the recoil, but I'm pretty sure I'd pass out before I got through twenty rounds in this heat down heah.

** OOh! and a BAR too! what a tall cool drink of water whoopass that would be.  Make a good banner pic for the blog, dontcha think?

Some Chicks Like Big Guns

Belle finally got around to getting her Tokorev taken care of.  There was some mild pucker factor around the BAR Corp. HQ. for a few days as the gunsmith working on her beloved SVT 40 had misplaced the mag. This is the original mag issued with the rifle.  While that was going on I went online looking for some additional mags and bought two.
All is well that ends well.  The original mag was located and the day Belle went by to pick it up she took "Natasha" to the range and ran a few rounds through her.

She texted the image below to me at work.  (mumble, grumble)
Looks like the tango is down to me.




Belle noted that the "new" mags would not fit in the Tok.
The original is in the center.  The two recent additions are to the left and right.*



Belle said it seemed to be the square nubs on the back of the mags. while not clear in the pic, the nubs are slightly taller than the original mag.
Not sure what I'm going to do, return the mags or take a file to the nubs.
I haven't personally inspected, nor tried to insert the mags into the Tok yet. So I'll do my own test fit before I make a decision.
To my own credit and sometimes detriment, I've not much fear of  modding things.
I'm no Redneck Engineer, but you know, Fools tread where angels fear to go.
















* Yes, bed wetters, the "mag clip thing that goes up" on the right is in fact "loaded".
I bet if I dropped it on the floor in front of you, I could get a brown note out of you.

.

What to do about Syria?

Nothing.

The U.S. has no vested interest and certainly no ally in the Syrian Civil War.
Doing nothing is the perfect course of action.  The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
In this case, no.  The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy.  Let them sort it out.  We've shed enough blood in the middle east.


Note the deafening silence from the anti-war protesters?  Code Pink? Hello?
Crickets.

Cleaning the Mosin

De-Cosmolining actually.
Today was 9 hours of working on the Austin project interspersed by periodically going out to the garage to jiggle the pan of Mosin parts soaking in mineral spirits.  That, and re-position the lawn sprinkler.*

Man, that rifle is simplicity defined.








Time to extract the parts from soaking and start brushing, wiping down, and oiling.

Prepare for the Doctor's secret handshake.

Still more cleaning to do on the barrel and stock, which will give me something mindless to do in the evenings over the next few days.  And, I have a whole 'nuther Mosin to strip down and clean.  :-)

Wish I had a ginormous ultrasonic cleaner. I saw on youtube where some guys have bungied an electric sander to the side of a rubbermade tub to agitate the cleaning solution for auto parts. Years ago I had the  idea to attach an audio speaker to a metal tub for the same purpose.  Never tried it though. Certainly not ultrasonic, but some agitation is better than none.





* We had a 68% chance of rain today. I was certain if I started to water the grass, it would rain.
Nary a drop.

.

And speed limits keep people from speeding toooo!

Seattle Mayor encourages businesses to post "gun free" zone signs to deter criminals.

snort, snicker, pbffft.

SRSLY?

Maybe you should just pass a municipal law banning criminals in general.

What became of Aretae?

I've not visited his blog in a while. I just noticed my blog roll shows his most recent post 2 months ago.
So I clicked it and got this:

I've not been invited to the party, so says the error message.

His n Hers

Latest addition to the toy box.
Arriving home with Belle tomorrow.

Terrible pic.