Newbie to the board and the 03A3 fun
Hey guys, just signed up (found this great site from google). I've been doing a lot of reading trying to answer many of the questions I have. I just got thrown into the fun times of this great rifle due to a very dear friend of the family. Long story short, the family friend heard about me collecting Mosin Nagants and said that he had a rifle he wanted me to have. I stopped over at his house and he has leaning in the corner a 1903A3 springfield in dusty but incredible shape. After a few hours of cleaning the gun looks almost like new. After researching on your site I found it's almost exactly like the gentleman's gun who started the thread "help with my 03A3" on here. Its green Parkerized and has a production date of 12/43 on the barrel. The one question I have is about the rifling. My friend when he gave it to me told me he bought it from the NRA, had never fired it and it just collected dust. So I ran a patch with Hoppes #9 down it and it came out brown with dust. Next patch came out clean. I put my bore light in the chamber and when I looked down the barrel it was a shiney as a brand new gun.....BUT there was not the rifling that Im used to seeing. In fact i could hardly see any at all. It didnt have the tradional lands and grooves etc. What i saw was basically a spiral line twisting down the barrel. Is this common? Please help!.
*If any of you are interested I can post pics of the gun, or try to take one down the barrel if that helps. Thanks guys.
