One of the great joys of working in a gun store with a fully equipped and staffed gunsmithing shop is you get to see—and sometimes assist in—all kinds of cool customization projects on old firearms that otherwise would have seen the last of their useful days.
For example, way back at the turn of the millennium, one of our suppliers had some surplus Turkish Mausers at the almost-too-good-to-be-true price of 25 bucks whole- sale. At that price, I figured it’d be worth it to take a flyer on a couple. If they weren’t too awful, we could order a dozen or so for the budget racks in the middle of the sales floor.
Friend, they were too awful.
Still, rather than going through the ordeal of sending them back, I figured a solid Oberndorf-made Mauser 98 action for $25 would be worth something as a project gun, so I bought one for myself.
I went to run an errand that afternoon and came back to find that a co-worker who wanted to hone his gunsmithing skills had already stripped my tired old Turk, yanked the barrel and was busily hand-lapping the lugs. Feeling like Tom Sawyer with a bucket of whitewash, I could tell this project had legs.
I shook down other co-workers for excess gun-project stuff they had lying around and came up with four boxes of Cor-Bon .300 Whisper ammunition, a walnut Mauser stock from Boyd’s and a .30-cal., 24-inch Lilja barrel with the approximate diameter of a truck axle. Over the course of the next year or so, I used employee discounts, good-buddy deals and nearly $2,000 of my own money to turn a $25 rifle into a $1,000 rifle.
Other projects aren’t as fun. We had a customer with a beautiful Argentine M1909 carbine who wanted to mount a scope on it, for which the bolt handle would need to be cut and a downturned, bent bolt handle welded in place.
I did my best to talk the customer out of it. I offered to trade him one of my less-desirable South American Mauser carbines plus cash. I offered to straight-up buy the Argie right out from under him for market value. Alas, nothing would deter him from his intended path. On the fated day, Gunsmith Bob dropped the sawn-off bolt handle knob on my desk. It’s still among the detritus on my desk 20 years later, where I can see it as I type this.
There is, however, a particular variety of the urge to hot-rod old military-surplus rifles that popped up shortly after the collapse of the Iron Curtain that has never really gone away.
There was a time, in those pre-Y2K years, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise of sanctions against former East Bloc countries, where you could get old, bolt-action Mosin-Nagant rifles for almost embarrassingly tiny sums of money.
It was not uncommon to find people on internet prepper or survivalist forums discussing the advisability of purchasing a crate or two of Cosmoline-entombed Mosins and a couple of sealed “spam cans” of 7.62x54R ammunition so that when the lights went out at 00:01 on Jan. 1, 2000, they could arm their neighbors and set themselves up as the militia captain of the block.
Of course, Y2K came and went without any such apocalypse actually happening, but the idea of being able to buy enough rifles and ammunition to equip an infantry squad had an undying allure for that particularly imaginative demographic of enthusiasts.
At the same time, aftermarket accessories and modifications for the tired old Russian M1891 rifles were proliferating, and their inexpensive price kept them the first experience many young novice firearm enthusiasts in those days had with centerfire long guns.
When you’re stuck making only corner-drugstore-clerk wages and wanting to buy a long gun to keep you safe through the hypothetical end of the world, a bolt-action rifle like the one you’d used in a first-person shooter set in World War II that cost less than a movie date on a Saturday night must have been awfully attractive.
The number of modifications was staggering, too. Magazines that doubled the capacity to 10 rounds, synthetic stocks, optic mounts that replaced the rear sight and therefore obviated the need for drilling and tapping, etc. There were even bullpup stocks, and what could be cooler than a bullpup?
The thing is, the Mosin-Nagant was already outdated going into the Great War. Russia was poor and the upheavals of the communist revolution kept it from being replaced for the Second World War. It worked, but it was far from ideal—and that was way back in the 1940s.
The low initial-purchase price in the 1990s and 2000s caused it to retain a certain siren’s song, but by then there were already inexpensive bolt-action rifles from companies like Savage and Remington that were available from Walmart or your local big sporting-goods chain, often with an optic already mounted.
As surplus supplies dried up, Mosin costs climbed, and the price-to-value equation got harder and harder to rationalize, especially once the difficulty of mounting quality optics entered the picture. It took a good gunsmith to drill and tap a Mosin-Nagant, plus you probably had to figure out a way to get a bent bolt handle in there, while the inexpensive Ruger American was a turnkey kit and a 1-MOA shooter right out of the box.
The final argument—the Ultima Ratio Russkie, if you will—was the price of 7.62x54R versus the commercial Western calibers for which the modern Rugers and Savages were and are chambered.
That advantage, however, evaporated with the Russian invasion of Crimea and then the rest of Ukraine. As the walls of sanctions rose around Russia, as did the demand of Ukraine for war matériel, the days of cheap 7.62x54R rifle ammunition ended.
The thing is, this particular argument was always a red herring. Unlike pistols that can rack up five-digit round counts before any serious parts replacement is required, throat erosion and rifling wear means that a bolt-action rifle used for precision work needs a barrel replacement after far fewer rounds than most people might think.
Fortunately, Mosin prices having entered collector territory silences this line of thinking. Mostly. You’d think $400 to $500 price tags would have put an end to this debate.
Back in 2016, before 7.62x54R prices ballooned, but after M1891 Mosin-Nagant prices had, I saw a guy pointing out that the difference between a comparably equipped Mosin and a Ruger American was $700, but taking the long view, the difference in ammunition between the two was $0.19 per round—so checkmate, Ruger fans!
Except that at 19 cents a round, you’d need to shoot more than 3,000 rounds through your rifle to realize the cost savings and—well, no, you won’t shoot that much. Your Mosin’s barrel is probably already mostly shot out, what with corrosive ammo and indifferent cleaning by conscripts.
If you want to modify your Mosin for the fun of it, knock yourself out! I can guarantee it will be more pragmatic than my .300 Whisper Turkish Mauser, and it can be a lot of fun. You just need to come clean and be honest with yourself about why you are doing it.
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