Mosin Nagant Safety

Found this cool video, and thought I’d share:

As much as I love to collect and shoot Mosin Nagant rifles, I do NOT keep them around as practical rifles. This may be selling some of my workhorse guns rather short, as they are reasonably accurate rifles, plenty powerful, and while a bit of an oddball caliber in America, soft point hunting ammunition can be found with little trouble.

Still they’re clunky rifles compared to other more elegant guns, and as the above video shows the safeties are ugly to operate. Furthermore on one of the few occasions I was fiddling with the safety on my Mosin, I had the entire bolt disassemble in my hand. Dunno if this was a fluke, but it turned me off on ever using the gun like any other rifle. I think if I was ever in need to lug one of my Mosins in the woods I’d simply load the magazine with 4 rounds, and simply ride the bolt over the magazine and close it on an empty chamber, and take my chances racking a round into the chamber before I fire.

That being said the mod jobs listed in the video seem like good ideas if that’s what you’re going to do, all the best if you don’t end up damaging the original parts of the gun. The best mods on military guns are ones where you can quickly return the gun to stock configuration.

Also somebody in the comments mentions Timney Triggers which appears to solve two major problems of the Mosin Nagant rifle. The silly safety (by adding a cross-bolt safety) and the ugly trigger pull. And it appears that no modifications are necessary, so the gun isn’t devalued in the upgrade!

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0 Responses to Mosin Nagant Safety

  1. 45er says:

    And with the Timney trigger, it doubles the value of the rifle! 🙂

  2. DaddyBear says:

    I just put Microclick sights on my 91/30, so maybe the next thing I put on is a Timney Trigger. Thanks for the link!

  3. Is rifle, comrade. Is for to shoot enemies of the State. Is not for to be on safety. In Soviet Russia, rifle put YOU on safety.

  4. Dave_H says:

    Well, I’ve never ran in to the bolt spontaneously coming apart issue you had once. Without parts breakage I can’t quite suss out how that would happen given how the bolt goes together. As for the safety I’ve seen a pull ring modified cocking piece/safety for the Mosin offered for sale. I live in a state that restricts hunting to shotgun and pistol calibers, so I had no need to upgrade the safety on mine, but those looked like the way to go to make the safety easier to manipulate. As is, you are correct it is actually faster to carry four and work the bolt than it is to manipulate the safety. Still a nice old gun though. Odd and clunky looking though it may appear next to a SMLE or a Mauser.
    Prices on them are still low, so anyone with a paycheck can get themselves a good cheap powerful rifle. Plenty good enough for deer I would guess, and I’d have to guess that because of that peculiar law in my state. They also make a cheap pseudo scout rifle for the folks that like to put a rifle in the configuration together.

    • Weerd Beard says:

      Plenty Good enough for Deer? Winchester makes a White-box 200 grain soft point load that I wouldn’t feel bad at all taking a Bull Moose, let alone whoever else makes a more purpose-built hunting load.

      Yeah I agree they’re very bare-bones and primitive compared to the other Bolties of the early 20th (I’d even include the Krag in that lineup of more impressive mechanically guns than the Mosin), even my Enfield 2A I have which is totally the lowest-bidder SMLE I’ve ever seen.

      That being said, they are super-fun rifles to shoot because they WORK! And something can certainly be said about that.

      • Dave_H says:

        I phrased it that way because my particular Mosin hasn’t shot at anything with a hearbeat since the 1940’s. Thanks to the peculiar law of my state I can’t offer first hand experience on how suitable it is for hunting anything.
        I agree about the capability of the round. It is quite capable of taking down big game. As I understand it, it was alleged to be the defacto big game cartridge through the areas dominated by the communist bloc. Even against the biggest bears.

        • Weerd Beard says:

          Yep, as a defensive shooter I have yet to have a reason to shoot anything with a heartbeat, so I can offer nothing as far as direct experience. Still I personally know people who have harvested Moose with .30-06s which is about the power-level of the 7.62x54R, and certainly a 200 grain soft-point is going to hit whatever is downrange HARD, so I can’t imagine Moose or even Brown bear being able to shrug off that sort of stump-pulling power.

          And heck I’ve read about people harvesting African Elephant with a .303 Brit which is less powerful than that. Granted the Ele-kills were brain-shots.

          Still if you know what you’re doing its more than enough gun by my running of the numbers.

  5. DanielS says:

    And it appears that no modifications are necessary, so the gun isn’t devalued in the upgrade!

    Because, you know, it’d be a shame to devalue your $90 rifle when you install a $100 trigger upgrade.

    *snerk*

  6. Dave_H says:

    There used to be a seemingly infinite supply of cheap Mausers, Short magazine Lee Enfields and whatever old surplus bolt action you care to name. Even though the Russians made millions of them the tit will eventually run dry on the Mosin Nagant at some point. There isn’t anything screwy about the idea of preserving some of those rifles in their original condition just because they are cheap and and easy to find at the moment.

    • Weerd Beard says:

      That’s what I always say. They aren’t making any more of them, and people decide that since it’s a dirt-cheap rifle that it ok to mod them.

      Hey just look at the M44s. I bought one of mine for $80 at a gun shop, and a few years later I got one for about $100 with all matching numbers with my FFL, and now they’re going for $200 plus just because its supplies are drying up. That’ll happen to 91/30s if you wait long enugh. The M1891s are apriciating like crazy.

      Any guns with a history they aren’t making anymore will eventually apriceate.

  7. Axess Denyd says:

    Too bad the M44s are going up so much. My wife just got me an M91/30 a few weeks ago and I love it, I was thiking about picking up an M44 to sorta complete the set, but I think for $200 I can find a better use for my $$. Like ammo.

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