What's the dumbest thing you've ever done with a Mosin

[Gsragtop]

notexaclu the dumbest but the most costly, buying the first one. Wow has that one move cost me a ton of coin. Lol

[gurn]

Sanded, stained and Tung oiled a stock on one of my first ones. Yeah, just one. Then I learned. At least it wasn't any thing special. Few years later found a replacement stock.

[fintowin]

A guy at a gunshow invited me out to look at some rifles in the back of his car. I picked up the first one and looked it over. After a short inspection I opened the bolt, and out flung a loaded cartridge. Treat every weapon as if its loaded. Cant be too strict on that rule. I felt stupid for not checking it first thing, but not as stupid as the owner.

[Sirex]

Dumbest Mosin thing I've done? Sell.

[rayjd2]

I've used the hated red grease on mine before, my oiler came full of the arsenal grease. Looked like Red n Tacky #2 grease.

It worked fine though.

[joelvca]

.308 shouldn't even be able to fire in a mosin, and if it somehow did the escaping gas around the case into the action should be significant I'd think.

Actually, the cases are surprisingly close in length and diameter at the outside of the shoulder, and 7.62x51 & .308 will often (usually?) headspace adequately on the rear of the shoulder in a 54R chamber. With the difference in shoulder angles, the front of the .308 shoulder has ~0.8mm of clearance and the neck is ~1.7mm shorter (I'm looking at metric dimensions in Wikipedia right now). The most significant difference is in case head/base diameter, and you can see that in the expansion shown in the photo of the fired case in this instance (54R is 0.4mm fatter). In 'Nam, we would sometimes test fire Mosins with 7.62 Nato if there wasn't any 54R ammo handy. I was a small arms repairman and was asked to do this a few times, but I didn't have the cartridge specifications available, so I went cautious and pulled the bullets to fire the cartridges as blanks - they always went off and the necks consistently sealed adequately. I never heard of any problems with this practice other than extraction, but NATO brass is thicker and tougher than some types of commercial .308, so I can't say whether or not there could be head splits with .308.

Regards,
Joel
p.s. GAD, do I now wish I had gotten one of those (Hungarian?) PUs to bring back!!!!!!!!!!

[Junk Yard Dog]

My Hungarian PU was captured in what I was given the extremely strong impression was a Very Bad Place over there. Probably better to have come home alive with no PU and just spend a few grand to buy one 45 years later.

[kamakazi339]

Well ive done it a few times... but firing some of my new purchases as soon as i got them without checking a small think like head space etc.

But the worst this is I joined this forum and met BuckeyeSgt. That man has cost me so much money........ worth it tho... made a really good friend in him and yall.

[etprescottazusa91]

Dumbest things ever.....sold one.