No.4 barrel support vs sporter?

For what it's worth, I made up a "budget" No.4 sporter and shortened the previously cut barrel down to 20 inches. It's free-floated and shoots very well.

Just out of interest, the guy who played with a Mosin, has turned his findings into written report form, for his thesis, and a quick search will find it.

Effect of Barrel Length on the Muzzle Velocity and Report
from a Mosin-Nagant 7.62x54R Rifle

Brandon Louis Clark


Honors College
University of South Florida
Tampa, Florida USA

I hope you find it as interesting as I did, plus there's all kinds of interesting stuff at varmint Al's, who makes a barrel tuner to change the barrel harmonic's, and achieve greater accuracy.
Experiments with pieces of lead wire clamped to the barrel end should have a similar effect, for the sake of experimentation and then something, that occupies the same position and has the same mass should work, something that's not so ugly.

I have a sportered (cut barrel one) No4. I was my first firearm. The bedding around the action, particularly the draws, was so worn out that I devcon bedded it. I know, rebuilding the draws the correct way would have been better. However, with standard iron sights it will shoot a 2-3" group at 100 yards (Winchester Super X 180gr ammo). That is more then adequate for a pushing bush hunting rifle, which is how it is used.

@ crazy4. After I bedded the action I tried putting pressure at the tip of the cut down stock. Nothing I did changed the grouping.

P.S. I can't speak for everyone else, but I have not seen any Mk7 for sale for about 2 years. That was a private seller with about 250 rounds.

Where are all you guys finding MK7? Or do all of you have it stockpiled from the 80's

I have one of the worst bubba sporterized #4 rifles ever. It appears to have been FTRed twice. It has a #2 bolt head. The bolt body serial does not match.
The barrel and receiver have fairly heavy rust pitting on the outside of the receiver and barrel. The machining on the outside of the barrel is the sorriest workmanship I have ever seen on any military rifle. The tool bit dug in .030 in several places and the the cuts miss match about .015 at the location of the steady rest. The inside of the bore has some bad scars from a poor clean rod. I paid $25 for it about 20 years ago because it had reasonably good lands in the 5 groove barrel. Later I thru the really crummy beat up wood in the trash and put on some less crummy wood. I did nothing to the less crummy wood but put it on.
I also found one of the rare Redfield receiver sights that attaches with the existing ejector screw and rear sight cross pin holes. I put that on and loaded some 174 grn Hornady RN bullets with IMR4895. The groups were 1.5" to 2.0" at 100 meters....
No the .312 diameter 174 Hornady bullet is not a long range bullet, but it also is excellent in the 7.65 Mausers both 1891 and 1898/09 rifles.
With all that said one of these days I will try the Speer .313 RN someday. I have 400 of those squirreled away. They were discontinued in the 1970s I think.

Do/did the Parkerhale "sportsters" have cut down ex-mil barrels or PH's own shorter, thicker and hence stiffer barrel? Also many late fully wooded no4 target guns from PH have a centre bedded barrel. The bedding is about 5inch forward of the re-enforce, so the properly made sportster could potentially shoot as well as a fully wooded gun if it has been bedded there. Apart from PH I'd suggest that most of the others (ones I have seen) are "nasty" sporterised no4s that have a fully floating mil barrel (I have one) and guess what it shoots like crap.

The L39 and L42's shoot very well, even home made versions do, they have a heavy barreland a shortened forestock.

So its in the execution I'd suggest.

Im currently setting up such a test of different setups to try out for my self btw. So a proper front loaded barrel, centre bedded and sporterised unbedded.



regards