New Finnish Mosin

No_0ne · January 16, 2018

Since I've already posted about this rifle on a couple of the collector forums I frequent I might as well add it here too. For those of you who are not "into" Finnish Mosin Nagants, the M28/30 was the last iteration of the pre-war Finnish Civil Guard's attempts to update and modernize their rifles. It's predecessor was the M28, which gained a reputation for very good accuracy, the M28/30 added to that reputation by it's use in the World Shooting Championships of 1937. Many of the features of the M28/30 were later incorporated into the M39 rifle which was adopted jointly by the Civil Guard and the Finnish army just before the "Winter War" between Finland and the USSR. Production of the M28/30 officially ended in 1940, but some rifles were built during later dates, primarily as the M28/57 and M28/76 marksmanship (or sniper if you prefer) rifles. It is commonly believed that the "late date" M28/30's were made for officer training in marksmanship in the period 1968-1970. Few examples are known today.

This is my post from the other forums:

" Picked this one up during the holidays, thought it would be a good Christmas present to myself. The rifle was advertised on one of the common listing sites of arms as a "1970 M39". The picture clearly showed it to be in an M28/30 stock although little else could be determined from it. Intrigued, I took the chance and bought it over the phone.
The rifle turned out to be a 1970 M28/30, in a post-war (what else) stock. It has a 2-stage trigger, shimmed action, but no barrel sleeve as my other M28/30 does. The tang date shows the receiver to be a 1913 Izhevsk, with the normal mix of various manufacturers stamps on the remaining parts. I knew from other references these late date M28/30's existed, but this is the first one I've come across. Although most of my collecting interest is in WWII and earlier rifles, I like this one a lot."