This is my rifle. There are none like it and this one is mine.

[Love Machine]

I decided to go build a bolty. I don't believe in benchrest shooting, but I do believe in shooting off a crate in the prone position in a snowbank, possibly hitting a deer. So the time had come for a rifle to appear that I could mount a scope on, that would give me <1 MOA and could also take cheap surplus ammo.

Shit, where could I find one? Comrade, this calls for a bottle.

The cheapest ammo is for the Mosin-Nagant and you could barely hit a country with it. Don't get me started on the "sniper" editions that are sold to suckers here by unscrupulous comrades. The only option really left was a Finnish M39. The Finns built match-grade weapons for their soldiers with fantastic sights from leftover czar-era Mosins. They would put a high-quality match hunting barrel on it and use the slightly different 7.62x53R ammo (but still made it capable of firing the shit Soviet ammo).

But even in the M39s, there are different grades. You don't want a used 1941 one, because it's historic and because it's used. I got very lucky to be able to score an unissued 1971 M39.

Wait, what comrade? 1971? Did the Finns keep drinking in their trenches 30 years after WWII ended?

Well, the Finns kept drinking, but they also did a limited 70s run of rifles for officer's match grade competition. So right off the bat this rifle is brand new, accurized by competent gunsmiths with a great trigger (there are metal inserts in the receiver for accurizing) and it's a sporting, not a combat rifle. Shit the only thing missing is a good scope and a recoil pad.

The scope came about when I found out that Rock Solid started manufacturing mounts for the M39. I bought the stiffest one with 4 mounting points that allows a proper, not scout, scope to be installed on the M39 and also had a custom bolt handle manufactured. Then chop the wooden stock to fit the custom handle, put a recoil pad on the back, install a Millett TRS-1 and call it good. I'll take it to the range someday soon.

 

[mac1911]

If you get MOA with surplus , bless you and your rifle.
I have a 91/30 with some reloads I have approached moa just not there yet.
How does the mount fit and how does it attach?

 

[Love Machine]

Not with surplus, that's just not happening. I'll need to handload my own, with heavy hunting bullets.

The mount fits nicely, attached at the sight leaf, two screws on the top of the receiver and one on the left of the rear of the receiver.

 

[warwickben]

Nice .

 

[jasons]

Not much eye relief there. Looks like it's going to hurt.

 

[bfm]

Not much eye relief there. Looks like it's going to hurt.

That was my first thought too.

 

[Love Machine]

Eye relief is ok, I still have to finger**** the rings to get them positioned perfectly. But that will have to happen once I'm on the range and can do some shooting.

 

[Love Machine]

So I took the rifle out shooting and a funny thing happened. I shot 15 rounds of Prvi Partizan. For the first 5 shots I couldn't hit the broad side of the barn. I moved the target from 100 yards to 50. For the next 5, I couldn't either. I moved it to 15 yards. I started patterning shotgun patterns. For real, one large hole, then minor ones around, about 1.5 inches in total. The final of 5 produced a huge shrapnel blast on the target, one of the pieces ricocheted off and hit me in the neck.

I packed up and left, gotta figure out what the hell is going on. The casings showed nothing abnormal, but the last one had black backblast around the neck of the case. I had checked for obstructions by peering down the bore from the back, the bolt locks normally.

 

[Almostelmo]

Twist rate too high for the projectile?

 

[Love Machine]

My suspicion right now is that the bore may be too tight. I'm going to slug it at the casting seminar and see how things progress.

 

[Mountain]

Resurrecting this thread...

Any progress figuring this out? Curious what could be the issue. I picked up a couple M39's recently.

 

[Chevy 2 65]

why ! put a scope on a M39 or a mosin

 

[RoterTeufel]

I gotta hear the rest of this.

 

[SKS Ray]

why ! put a scope on a M39 or a mosin

Because

 

[Mountain]

why ! put a scope on a M39 or a mosin

Vintage sniper class.

 

[Love Machine]

Because it's an awesome accurate rifle? I slugged the bore and its .3105-311, so putting in a bullet bigger than the bore is not the issue. I'm going to take it out again soon with some other ammo.

 

[55_grain]

Lol. Try some crap steel-jacketed lead core surplus. It's not gonna come apart like the Prvi did. Were you shooting SP or FMJ Prvi? Either way, something weird is happening. No obstructions in the bore??

 

[Chevy 2 65]

Because

it does look nice. care to share the mount and scope you used.

 

[SKS Ray]

it does look nice. care to share the mount and scope you used.

The pic I posted is of an original WW2 era PU sniper set up.

 

[mac1911]

Because it's an awesome accurate rifle? I slugged the bore and its .3105-311, so putting in a bullet bigger than the bore is not the issue. I'm going to take it out again soon with some other ammo.

Wait you couldn't even get a decent group at 15 yards.
Just a though have you had any slight clambering issues?
You mention this was a purpose built target gun for the Finns to use in compete with.
Is it possible the bullets on the PPU are jamming into the lands?. You might not feel it when caming over the bolt?

 

[Chevy 2 65]

The pic I posted is of an original WW2 era PU sniper set up.

Thanks

 

[Love Machine]

Wait you couldn't even get a decent group at 15 yards.
Just a though have you had any slight clambering issues?
You mention this was a purpose built target gun for the Finns to use in compete with.
Is it possible the bullets on the PPU are jamming into the lands?. You might not feel it when caming over the bolt?

The factory target paper that the rifle came with places it at less than 1 MOA. So the rifle is definitely capable of being awesome. There is a dark spot in the bore, but it's in the middle of the bore, I'm going to try buffing it out. And yes, I'm gonna try some lighter surplus ammo. It's possible that these later M39s are not meant for the heavy 200gr load, which would explain the .310-.311 bore instead of the .308.

 

[mac1911]

The factory target paper that the rifle came with places it at less than 1 MOA. So the rifle is definitely capable of being awesome. There is a dark spot in the bore, but it's in the middle of the bore, I'm going to try buffing it out. And yes, I'm gonna try some lighter surplus ammo. It's possible that these later M39s are not meant for the heavy 200gr load, which would explain the .310-.311 bore instead of the .308.

Does the target ID the ammo used ?

 

[Love Machine]

It doesn't, which kinda sucks because I wonder if they had specialized competition ammo for this batch of rifles.

 

[mac1911]

Only thing I can add is the ammo you tried , measure some and make sure it's not 308".

 

[Love Machine]

So I cleaned the bore more thoroughly with a brass brush today and the dark spot is gone, go figure.

 

[Love Machine]

I measured the PPU ammo - it's .308 and the surplus ammo is .311, so is the bore. I was shooting too small of a bullet for the rifle.

 

[mac1911]

I don't have the can anymore but I had a tin of surplus that was 308"
The wolf is 308 also I believe.

 

[Love Machine]

I measured the 188 surplus, it's .311. Looks like that's what I will be shooting.

 

[Love Machine]

Shot .311 PPU and 188 surplus from the M39 today, got nice groups of 4 inches. That's not the rifle, that's my shitty aim. I think the problems have been resolved, I just randomly scored ammo that was .308-309 in diameter.