M91/30 Sniper

Ivan the Terrible is still awesome after 70 years:

Attachment 42994

The white spot is 2 cm in diameter.
Ivan's sub-MOA intrinsic accuracy plus my PWF is still only just over 1 MOA (center to center). Rifle and ammo are pretty well perfect, the shooter less so. If we can manage this in competition, we'll beat a lot (most?) of the modern plastic stuff.

And before someone asks - yes it was with the original PU scope. At 100 meters. Off a sandsack. And the range scale drum reads a whisker over 1(00). And no, I have not zeroed it, I haven't got the courage (or foolishness?) to fiddle with such a good setup.

Not bad Patrick but I don't see but 4 holes. Did you miss once or is 4 shot groups a German thing?:D

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Originally Posted by vintage hunter

Not bad Patrick but I don't see but 4 holes.

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I had tried it out with a modern short scope on a repro mount beforehand - the results were not as good. Then I decided that if I was going to participate in a competition where I had no chance of a place anyway, I would rather shoot "all-original" and at least show the black plastic merchants that the old equipment can still produce respectable results. Refitted the original mount + PU, but range rules required shooters to prove that the setup is reliably on target at 50 meters before endangering the target trolley wires at 100 meters.

In other words, I simply ran out of ammo!

But the results encourage me to have a serious ammo-production session before next Saturday. That will be the last chance to practise before the competition on the 25th. The placing of the tip of the blade of the scope reticule on the white dot is tricky, as one is not sure exactly where the tip is. So I am trying an aim whereby the spot is obscured to the point that it is about to disappear. If I can achieve a consistent "about to disappear", then the results are as shown. A big "if" to hold throughout a competition target.

Nice shooting, Has the trigger group been polished.?

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Originally Posted by WarPig1976

Has the trigger group been polished.?

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No, it still has the original (felt) mile-long creep until the shot breaks somewhen. The only alteration has been to take off the PU scope and mounting*, replace with a modern scope on a new mounting, discover that the result wasn't so hot, and ruefully put the PU+mounting back again! It is one of those rare rifles where I am afraid that changing anything will make it worse, so the urge to "improve" must be resisted.

*whereby I was very careful to loosen only one of the vertical clamping screws on the mounting - the bottom one - in order to be able to replace the PU without losing the height setting.

I trust you restaked the screw after you got done fiddling. If not it can and most probably will work loose after a few shots resulting in vertical stringing. That would surely cause a cussing fit if it happened during a match.

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Originally Posted by vintage hunter

I trust you restaked the screw after you got done fiddling. If not it can and most probably will work loose after a few shots resulting in vertical stringing.

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Your trust is unfortunately misplaced:o But I do have very good screwdrivers!:madsmile:

Nice shooting!

Since the Hornady #3130s have reached the status of financial "unobtanium" over here, I tried some Sierra 180 gn ProHunter bullets. They are a very good replacement for the (also rare) 174gn original flat-base Enfield bullets.

Attachment 43300

And this time, it's a genuine 5-shot group. 100 meters, not 100 yards. So the touching 1" group is well within 1 MOA. That's obviously about as good as I'm going to get with the PU scope, but it should be good enough that I do not come last next weekend against the black-plastic high-tech shooting machines.

BTW, not wishing to be too historically hidebound, I tried one of these .223" shooting machines as well. Awesomely good!

More after the competition!

SWEET !
Nice shooting Patrick. BEST of LUCK to you at the competition. Go show them that good old fashioned “Wood & Steel” can still get the job done!

Patrick .... 70 years would make it only a tad older than my LE No 5, which I´ve never used with a scope. But even without, a good shot (maybe not me) could get them all in the black at 100 metres ... with iron sights. The old gents at 50 and 100 metres with star wars weaponry and erogenically phallic scopes are always good for a silent laugh. I like watching them spread out their paraphernalia, by which time I´m almost finished. When their targets are pulled back and are often no better´n mine, their scowl is always appreciated.

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Originally Posted by villiers

.... 70 years would make it only a tad older than my LE No 5,

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Well, of course the Mosin Nagant 91/30 is basically just an upgrade of an 1890-ish long rifle, unlike the Lee Enfield No. 5, which is, of course, an upgrade of..........er...umm........ an 1890-ish long rifle?

Saturday's competition (limited to rifle models introduced before 1965, so the real black-plastic wunderwaffen were excluded) was won by a Finnish Mosin Nagant. What a bore - the guy scored 100/100. But not, I hasten to add, with anything like an original scope.

Ivan came 37th in a field of 58. Not brilliant, but no-one else was shooting an original PU3.5, or indeed an original military issue scope of any kind as far as I could see. As the round progressed, the problem was not the scope itself, but a serious loss of aiming stability through the mirage effect of the hot barrel making the target image dance around. It would not be fair to judge Ivan on that - those rifles were not intended for quasi-continuous precision fire. I think a bit of experimentation with a "cooler" charge is called for. And a touch of self-discipline to make better use of the time.

Patrick, you need to hold the NEXT competition in Sept. – Oct. cold of Stalingrad! Targets should be replica WWII German helmets with stencils. Scoring is: 0 for a miss, 5 for hitting the helmet, and 10 for hitting the stencil. Also targets are presented (on a 5 second pop-up view timer) at random range of 100 to 300 meters.
Vasily Grigoryevich Zaytsev

This was Ivan's best group at the competition.

Attachment 43566

Rifle and ammo are perfect. It's just me as the limiting factor. The "0" is the kind of thing that really irritates me. You just can't score enough bulls to make up for that. And the worst is, I just have no explanation, other than I need a new set of eyeballs. Or more practice, maybe???

Hi Patrick, could you speack about ammo you shoot? i reload with sierra 174 hpbt and vihtavuory n140. what you use? What kind of primer is best for conic case?

I use the published loading data from the Vihtavuori reloading book for N140, with a 180gn Sierra spitzer.

Thanks. Have you ever shot 174 HPBT Match kings?

Ballistically, they should be fairly close up to about 300 yards. I.e. not identical, but in the sort of everyday correction range* for light, wind etc. that is easy to handle. A possible problem is that the throat of the MN is deep enough that the boat tail is coming free of the cartridge neck before the bullet is engaging the lands. This can actually lead to a worse internal ballistic performance and group size than with flat-base projectiles, as the gas blow-by on the bullet can cause it to be engraved with a slight skew**. Check the absolute maximum OAL you can use (with the bullet touching the lands) and if, in this position, the start of the boat tail is out of the case, stick to flat-base. That is precisely the situation with my 91/30. So the direct answer to your question is: yes I have tried HPBT, but the flat-base round-nose or spitzer types fly better in my rifle!

*Get the Sierra book for detailed trajectory values.

**I suggest that you get out your pocket calculator and work out how much skew over the length of the parallel section of an HPBT corresponds to 1 MOA. It is very, very, small.

Using the old rule of thumb:

1 MOA corresponds to 1" at 100 yds.
so
1 MOA is 1/1000" at 1/10 yd or 3.6"
and over half an inch (the approx. length of the parallel section on an HPBT)
1MOA is 1/1000" divided by 3.6 x2 or 7.2

About 1.4 tenths of a thousandth of an inch. Small enough for you?

So now it is clear why the bench-rest boys measure things like bullet run-out in the case.
And why they try to get the "slop" of the neck in the chamber down to well-nigh zero.
And why neck sizing your fired case, leaving an ever-so-tiny unsized ring at the bottom of the neck that provides automatic centering of the neck in the chamber improves accuracy.

It's not just nit-picky fiddling around - it really can make a difference - if you and your rifle are good enough.