Milsurp After Hours

It just arrived here:

http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/7047/r ... o53rt1.jpg[/pic]

Mismatched but complete. The cleaning rod must have been put in by the importer, it is the lenght for finnish M28 oder M27, will be replaced with a correct lengh rod.

Bore in a littel worn, but good crown(polished in the white).

Interesting part:

The reciever is a New Englang Westinghouse recycled to built that dragoon on 1929.

<-E mark on receiver flat, not tang date, two barrel alinement marks. Eagle on top scrubbed.

There is also a sheet metal shim in the stock, much like in finnisch rifles.

Tomorrow it will come with me to the rage :-)

Chris

Good looking rifle. Just being ignorant about the fine points of any weapon group I went looking to see what I could find were the differences between Dragoons and 91/30's.

Dragoons should have an unhooded front sight. Dragoons should have the same kind of rear sight as the M91. The Dragoon should have a 465 mm hand guard where the 91/30 would have a 455mm handguard. The Dragoon should weigh 8.75 lbs. and the 91/30 8.7lbs. The overall length of the Dragoon should be 48.75 inches and the 91/30 should be 48.5 inches. The barrel length on the Dragoon should be 28.8 and the 91/30 28.7.

Don't know about the length and weight and hand guard length but yours looks to have the 91/30's sights front and rear. The receiver shows the earlier date and no doubt was created before the 91/30 production start as well as having mixed parts that predate 1930. As it is discribed as Ex-dragoon I don't fault the discription...just find the mixmaster of parts most often found in Nagants continues to amaze and often confuse me.

Basicaly a M91/30 is a Dragoon with updated sights. There are several variations of the Dragoon handguard, the last variation is identical to the later M91/30 handguard.

Somewhen after WW2(it is not certain, if the conversion started before or in WW2, but I doubt that) the Dragoons ins stock were updated to M91/30 configuration by updating the sights and often new stocks.

I do not know the exact year since when the rearsight bases were pinned not soldered anymore at Ishevsk arsenal. As far as I can remember all teh updated Dragoons have pinned sightbases.

I only have a 1937 Ishevsk M91/30 to compare, it still has the soldeerd sightbase.

There are also some sowjet Dragoons made after 1917 with finnisch [SA] Stamp, a clear hint, that the Dragoons stayed in service unmodified.

Chris

Never paid much attention to pinned or soldered sight before. If I'm looking at what you are calling pinned then I have a 1939 Izhvsk 91/30,also a Finn restock, that is not pinned and a 1941 Izhvsk that is. Also have two other 91/30's, Izhvsk 1935 and 1943, and both have the pins. The 1935 dated one has a hex receiver too..a real Heinz 57...although in factory rebuild condition seems like.

Yes, that is it!

I can recall a thread at gunboards, where the issue of pinned vs soldered bases was discussed, but I did not save it.

I f I remember corectly, Ishevsk started to use pins and Tula continued with soldering quite some time.

Habe to check my 1944 Tula Sniper if solderes or pinned.

It is relatively hard to place teh switch to an exact year, because of the arsenal refurbishment of the rifles.

Only chance is to use finn captured M91/30 as a reference, they where restockedm, but never messed with the sight bases.

Even if bases with the pinholes were used to built Tikka M91/30s, they were soldres on, not pinned.

First range session was not that good, noticed, that the frontsight got loose, when the barrel got hotter.

I will load some 150 and 180grn flat base bullets next time and report back.

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The silvertips look promising Chris, is that 100m you were shooting at?

Joe

Yes, 100m, everything under that is bayonett range