eldeguello

Speaking of bedding, I have a Mosin-Nagant M91-30 that I acquired last summer. As it was, it would not hit the side of a barn with any ammo I tried in it, and it seemed to me that the inletting around the receiver ringand tang was somewhat on the "generous" side. So I took the stock off, drilled two 3/8" holes into the flat that supports the bottom of the receiver ring and filled them with Acraglas Gel.I then bedded the receiver ring, the rear two inches of the barrel, and the tang, with the Acraglas Gel. The rest of the barrel was left free-floating, and the handguard was relieved so it does not touch the barrel anywhere. When I put it back together I put a thick shim under the barrel to apply upward pressure at the last 1" of the tip of the stock.

Two weeks ago, I took it out to test it using a load consisting of .313", 174-grain FN Mauser bullets pulled from some 1974 FN 7.675X53mm ammo, and using the powder charges out of that stuff. (The Graf's 7.62X54R brass holds more powder than the FN 7.65X53mm cases do. So the powder swap is safe.) The first four shots almost went through the same hole, and the rest came very close to that group. When I tried some of the ammo I had loaded earlier with .311" bullets, they shot much better, but were't as good as the rounds with the .313" bullets.

Next time, I'm going to try some of the .312" Hornady 174-grain bullets. This rifle has .300" lands and .314" grooves! (Guess the Russkies made them this way so they wouldn't "shoot out" the barrels too soon!!) But, this makes finding a correct size bullet a problem. Maybe I should switch to cast bullets?? Wonder what bullet diameter the Russians used.........