[kenb]

Hello,

Thought I would cross-post this here in case some interested people don't read the Collector's Forum.

I recently decided that my life would be more fulfilling if I owned an original PU sniper. I ordered one from R-Guns. No special requests were made and it arrived about 3 days later. They ship in a green plastic hard case which fits the rifle well. It comes with a bayonet, ammo pouch and sling. Also leather scope caps. The scope caps had oil paper underneath. This naturally stretched the leather so the caps won't stay on without the paper. I think this happens with all original PU rigs in storage like that.

The rifle is a 1943 Izhevsk. The scope is a 1941. I think it's an SVT scope. Someone will enlighten me shortly I'm sure. It has a thicker area towards the rear of the tube. The elevation turret is marked "CB". I know this means something but I can't remember what. The mount is marked with the Izhevsk logo and is not numbered. There is one Xed out scope number on the barrel shank and the current scope's number marked above it. All parts appear to be Izhevsk, with the possible exception of the scope handle, which may have a Tula star on it. The number stamped on the handle matches the rifle however. Bore is excellent.

I attached the scope and headed to the range. Both elevation screws were stiff as though they were staked. At the range the scope appeared well zeroed to the rifle. Windage is spot on, with the windage turret set at "0" windage is correct and the reticle centered in the scope. Elevation was about 5" low at 100 yards with the elevation drum set at 100. This leads me to believe that the scope was zeroed to the rifle in Soviet service and they weren't just paired at a refurb and never shot together. The photo shows the reticle adjusted for 100 yards. Trigger is a bit heavy and had lots of creep. The rifle shoots very well, I'm not prepared to give an accurate group size report. However, it shows a lot of promise. I was shooting Soviet 70s light ball.

Overall I'm very pleased with this rifle. If someone said that R-Guns is getting down to bottom of the barrel rifles that's not the case.

Thanks for looking,
Ken

 

[mike radford]

Nice gun. Congratulations on a good score. Let us know how it shoots.

 

[Fuhrer]

Real nice rifle you did well ! As far as the trigger goes my Rguns was about the same and i reworked the trigger.

 

[kenb]

It seems odd that these Rguns snipers seem to have lousy triggers. I always hear how the Samco Yugo snipers have great triggers. I wonder if the Yugos reworked the triggers on theirs or the Rguns batch lost their sniper trigger sets in a refurb.

 

[Fuhrer]

The Samco rifles i believe retain there original triggers.There bolts also function smoother.Some of there trigger sear springs also have a dotted line across them.There are also areas on the bolts you will find polished to make the trigger work smoother.Now if the Yugo's did this to them? The Samco i have and re scoped with original scope mount and base also has a floated barrel with brass shim stock.The trigger also has about a 2.5 lb pull off.For bolt function and trigger pull the Rguns does not compare with a nice matching bolt samco.My feelings are the Rguns are rebuilt with mixed and matched parts and regular trigger sear springs.For sake of better words they are minus the custom tweaks the Samco rifles retain or were given by the Yugos?

 

[Joop]

Very nice!

+1 to Fuhrer's comments. I've always thought that any refurb'd rifle's trigger was less than it should be (or probably was, before it was refurbished), but the Samco rifles show evidence of extra attention in several areas. Not to worry, though. You can tune that trigger in just a few minutes and the difference will be night and day.

Looking forward to a range report.

John

 

[Fuhrer]

Yep John you gave me a lesson on tuneing my Rguns and its about a shade less than 4lb with clean break and PU sniper spec is 4.5 or under ! Funny thing is if i put the samco bolt in the Rguns PU it becomes a hair trigger.I mean like less than a 1lb pull.I guess it goes to show the Samco bolt is sniper tweaked

 

[Joop]

Yes. Fuhrer, you already know this, but.....if one compares the cocking piece on the Samco bolts with most others, you'll see where they took down the front corner, where it contacts the sear, just a little bit. This reduces the amount of travel for the sear to disengage. This is a delicate affair, of course, as the difference between a light trigger and one that's unsafe is probably only a thousandth of an inch, or two. Whoever did the mods on the bolts/triggers of the Yugo guns really knew what they were doing.

 

[ilikeguns1970]

Nice score for the money!

 

[kenb]

Has anyone posted a tutorial on how to modify the trigger?

 

[Fuhrer]

Yes there is pics from the Russian sniper manual here some where? I have pics of what i did to mine i will have to find and post them. Ah found them ! I have the pics from the sniper manual to if you want them pm me your email.For some reason they will not post.I do not no why?

 

[mr.precision]

Nice score.
Be very careful trying to improve the trigger on these rifles. My 1943 Izhevsk PU has the smoothest pull and cleanest break of all 9 - 91/30's I have. My 1943 Izhevsk PU has a horrible trigger. I installed a Finn sear and polished the contact points to make it better, however as stated above you can remove too much material EASILY and end up with an unsafe weapon. I have a box of sears and triggers to prove that point.

 

[Joop]

Ken,

I had posted a tutorial of sorts, but can't seem to find it, now. Thankfully, I saved it to a word document and I'll post it here. Hopefully, the pics come up and you can excuse any typos.

John

Edit: Looks like it will work. I may have changed a few processes since I wrote this up, but it's a good starter and the general ideas are there.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Looking at the sear, first, you want to polish it in the following areas, as per the Russian manual:

Note that the second pic from the manual also shows how you can remove material to change the engagement angles of the sear and cocking piece. I wouldn't do that, at least for starters. You can usually get huge improvements by polishing and a slight bend of the spring, so that removing a bunch of metal (and likely creating a safety issue) is not necessary.

There are also ways to change the profile on the inside of the trigger, itself, where the sear makes contact, but it's hard to reach and I've not gone that far with it. I haven't really had the need to and I think it's another of those areas that would be easy to mess up and you increase the chances of getting a trigger that won't properly engage the sear spring and end up flopping around. Here's a pic of what I'm talking about, however:

Next up, is the angle at which the sear spring is bent. You can adjust this, but a little bit goes a long way:

What I usually do, is put the spring in a vise and give it just a little bit of a pull with a pliers. You may be able to slightly bend it by just putting it over a dowel or steel rod and pushing on it. However, this is where I have to warn about the "little goes a long way", again. My general rule, is; if you can notice the bend right away, you've probably already gone too far. Just give it a little bit of a pull, then put the trigger/sear parts back together and test the pull. Get used to taking it apart and putting it back together, because you'll be doing it a lot! Keep doing this until you can feel the difference. I would also suggest that you try to get the bend to happen as close to the tab on the sear as possible. If you bend it towards the middle of the spring, you reduce the contact between the trigger and sear, which is not the intent here. The intent is to move the sear tab down slightly, so that it doesn't have to travel as far to disengage the cocking piece. Bending it too close to the middle will give you a "floppy" trigger.

Now, looking at the cocking piece, you can also polish this, if you feel it's needed. Usually, they're okay, but sometimes you'll find a rough one. The steel that these are made out of is usually much harder than that of the spring, also. So, it may take a little more work to smooth it out. Be careful not to change the shape of the corner on the face of it, which could cause a misfire. Just polish the face, but only if necessary.

I had also mentioned shimming the sear, earlier. Like I said, I'm not a fan of it, as I believe a slight bend works better (or, perhaps, is more subtle and still allows for the proper interaction between the trigger and spring). This is what it looks like, however. Note the thin sheet of metal between the spring and receiver, which I drilled a hole in for the screw.

After performing any single step of any of these procedures, I strongly urge you to do a safety check, to be sure you won't misfire. With the gun unloaded, but the bolt cocked, you can do what they call "the drop test", which is to drop the rifle on it's butt, on a firm (but preferably carpeted) floor and see if it trips. HOWEVER, THIS SHOULD NOT BE THE ONLY CHECK YOU DO!!!! You'll also want to push, pull and pry on the cocking piece to see if it trips, as well. You should also repeatedly test the trigger, itself. You want to make sure that repeated touching of the trigger won't set it off. What I mean by that is, pretend you're setting up for the shot and lightly loading the trigger, but then let off. If the repeated loading/unloading sets it off, you need to polish something some more, as it's still gritty enough to be catching and holding on a microscopic level (I hope that makes sense).

This should get you on your way to a much improved Mosin trigger. But remember that "slower is better" and take your time. You may end up pulling it apart/putting it back together ten times or more before you get it to where you want it AND a safe state.

There are other, slightly more advanced things that I've done, involving the engagement angles of sear and cocking piece, but that's really pushing the safety limits if you haven't done quite a few of them, so I'm not going to post that info and strongly advise against messing with it.

Hope that helps!
John

 

[mad_mardigan]

My first PU sniper from RGUNs had a pretty lousy trigger. First I polished everything which gave a slight improvement. I then bent the sear as John showed us above, this dramatically improved the pull but I still wasn't completely satisfied. So I then filed down the sear as pictured above in the Russian sniper manual, after filing I went ahead and polished everything again. I now have a smooth, light but safe trigger. I would say it breaks at a little under 4#. Still has a long pull before breaking but it's pretty good for what it is. I could swap in a Finn 2 stage trigger to take care of that.

What do you guys use for polishing the trigger/sear? I usually start off with a 600 grit wet/dry, then to a 800 grit, and then finish off with a 1200 grit.

 

[kenb]

Thanks for posting that info! I'll have to give it a try (after ordering spare parts to work on).

 

[r0bb6ub9]

If rguns sells all original pu snipers, why would it have a svt scope on it? Wouldn't that have been done on a refurb or something?

 

[Joop]

If rguns sells all original pu snipers, why would it have a svt scope on it? Wouldn't that have been done on a refurb or something?

When the SVT fell out of favor as a sniper rifle, they used the scopes that they had on 91/30s.

 

[flybywire]

Sir, does the rifle have the electric pencil import markings? That was one of the reasons that has prevented me from purchasing.

 

[mad_mardigan]

If rguns sells all original pu snipers, why would it have a svt scope on it? Wouldn't that have been done on a refurb or something?

I would say the vast majority of all of the RGUNs PU snipers have gone through some sort of refurbishment to some degree. As is the case with the vast majority of all Mosin varieties that came out of the former Soviet Union.

 

[Joop]

If rguns sells all original pu snipers, why would it have a svt scope on it? Wouldn't that have been done on a refurb or something?

Grabbed a couple pics....

I have a few others that are hard to tell, but they look like it. The point being; I don't think that SVT scopes on 91/30s were unusual, at all and there are plenty of photos out there to support that.


John