A $32 Mosin M44 No Kidding!

[Guest jaypee]

There are a lot of poor, bedraggled old Mosin M44's laying around in various states of disrepair, so I thought I would tell a story of how one got turned into a downright presentable little gun, not to mention being a very reliable and capable one. It's a barrel of fun, too. Here's the story.

A couple of years ago a big distributor advertised some Hungarian Mosin M-44's as "gunsmith specials" for the astronomical sum of $32 apiece. Now ordinarily I would run from the room and hide when I hear something like that, so you can imagine my surprise when my best buddy suggested we pick up a few of them to mess around with. I thought the boy had lost his mind. But our contact at the distributors' told us there were some fairly decent ones in the bunch, most of them being parts guns, but at least they were test fired and headspaced parts guns. So while I still thought my bud was nutzo, I figured well, it's a dull winter in East Tennessee, so what the heck - five of us bit, and here's one of the results.

This is a 1953 Hungarian M-44 that was delivered with the bottom of the buttstock broken off, a terrible gouge in the left side of the stock beside the magazine, the top handguard broken, the front sight hood caved in, a horribly scratched up receiver, and the best doggone trigger I've ever seen on a Mosin. The bore is kinda very good......dark grooves but sharp edges.Like all M-44's it is chambered for the Soviet 7.62x54R cartridge.

As promised there were no matching parts anywhere.....anywhere in all five guns!! Whatta jumbled up mess! But all the parts were present and worked well, so we went to work resurrecting them.

Anyway, here's how mine turned out. The story of how we brought it back to life follows the photos.

I reattached the broken-off bottom of the buttstock with epoxy glue and two four inch deck screws followed by hardwood plugs, fixed the handguard with epoxy glue in the break then reinforced it with a beer can strip glued to its underside.

I sanded out the receiver and cold blued it as well as cold bluing the folding bayonet assembly. I pulled the front sight hood roughly back into shape and did my best ice cream stick splice over the terrible gouge on the left side of the stock at the magazine. You can barely see the splice as a light spot in the upper photo.

I sanded out the stock and applied a good coat of Flebing's Leather Dye to hide all the cracks and wierd grain, shot it with four coats of Deft clear lacquer, rubbed it out with 0000 steel wool and went shooting.

It holds all of its rounds into a six inch black at fifty yards from a bench rest with Czech light ball, so I'm happy. It makes one heck of a truck or boat gun and was a mountain of fun to do.

I'd recommend that if one should spring for something like this I would get a guarantee that the gun has had its headspace checked and is within specs, and has been test fired....otherwise if it arrives with incorrect headspace it is dangerous to fire and therefore a waste of your hard earned money.The headspace problem would cost more than the gun is worth to repair.

And as for the license plates in the background, I figure that if I wear my Iowa Hawkeyes sweater and my Tennessee Volunteers jacket, nobody will know I'm a transplanted Californian.

JayPee

[Westwindmike]

Very nice!!!

[Guest BigBoostDSM]

Awesome! Sounds like a great winter project...looks like it turned out damn nice to boot!

[Guest Len]

That's some nice work right there. Cool.

[davej48]

Now that's nice.

[NuTcAsE]

Very well done!! I like it.

If you don't mind, how much did you end up in it?

I thought the Iowa tag was for target practice .

IOWA = I Oughta Went Around.

[Guest jaypee]

Boy Nutcase you got that last part right!! If it wasn't for my wife's dad being up there we'd never go north of the big tree down the street.

How much do I have in it? Well, we bought them on our C&R licenses so there was no background check and they cost $10 each shipping. I had all the other stuff handy because we do a lot of this kind of thing, so the only thing I could really say it cost me was two or three pads of steel wool, eight or ten sheets of sandpaper, and that's about all. So figure $50 at most.

And I'm sure it will shoot better than six inch groups at 50 yards too....I just didn't have a lot of time the day I shot it and wasn't as careful with shot placement as usual. We're going to keep it up at a relatives place near here. He drives around his property in a golf cart and has had some occasional bear problems, so we're picking up some heavy softpoint loads and he'll throw it on the cart just in case. Like I said, it's one heck of a utility rifle. Thanks to you all for your kind comments.

JayPee

PS - My nutzo bud sold his for $150, the shameless sot!

Edited March 6, 2008 by jaypee

[Bigiron]

That is one dang good restoration. Old milsurps are a blast to tinker with.

[Magiccarpetrides]

If I tinkered with something like that it would only be a blast (no really it would probably blow up in my hands).

[DWARREN123]

Turned out right nice!

[Guest jackdog]

Man that looks awesome, nice work

[Guest GUTTERbOY]

Looks awesome! Do you have any 'before' photos for comparison?

[Guest jaypee]

No sir, I didn't take any "before" photos.....it was so bad that when I opened the box I thought all I could ever make out of it was a canoe paddle or wall hanger and figured photographing it would be a waste of time. I got the idea that the Hungarians, when the Iron Curtain fell, needed all the cash they could get and scrounged up every busted or rusted part they had and made "parts rifles" out of them....which is pretty accurate.

Thank all of you guys for your most kind comments.

JayPee

[Guest GUTTERbOY]

Just so you know,you've awakened my interest in battle rifles again. I swear upon all that is holy that I will get a Garand soon...

On a related note I was looking at CMP's site and I see that they now consider a carry permit to be proof of a marksmanship-related activity. That wasn't the case the last time I was lusting after M1s..

*cackle*

[Guest jaypee]

The Garand is a great rifle in every way and I'm sure you'll really enjoy it. I used it through 16 weeks of basic and advanced infrantry training in '61 and thought it was the neatest thing since sliced bread and color movies!

Let's see if we can whet your appetite for battle rifles even more with a really nice Mosin 91/30 I'm going to do a post on in the next week or so. It's a wartime "Tula" deactivated sniper with a brand new stock and arsenal reblue. Shoots well too. I refinished the stock like the M44.

Now you know what destitute retirees do with their free time.

JayPee

[Guest GUTTERbOY]

Hey, I can identify with buying stuff on the cheap and putting some elbow grease in... heck, I drive a $450 truck and have a deer rifle that I handed the clerk thirty-three cents for. Seriously. Granted, that was after I cashed in $80 worth of gift cards, but it was still a NIB Savage 110. I'm a deal-hunting SOB!

[Smith]

Beautiful rifle!

[Guest 70below]

Nice job! Thats one of the sharpest M44's I've seen!

[Guest Tuco]

No sir, I didn't take any "before" photos.....it was so bad that when I opened the box I thought all I could ever make out of it was a canoe paddle or wall hanger and figured photographing it would be a waste of time. I got the idea that the Hungarians, when the Iron Curtain fell, needed all the cash they could get and scrounged up every busted or rusted part they had and made "parts rifles" out of them....which is pretty accurate.

Thank all of you guys for your most kind comments.

JayPee

These came out of Romania. Romania was a storage depot and most of the Polish, Hungarian, and Romanian M44's came from these stocks. This is why you can see such a mix of parts on these.

[Guest jaypee]

Thanks for the information, Tuco. Tell me something....I'm not too fond of the quality of recent Romanian offerings, but how were their M-44's? I've never seen one. Does it equal the other countries' M-44's?

JayPee

[K191145]

I bought mine several years ago, it was a Polish made M-44, it had the smoothest metal I've seen in a Mosin. I refinished the stock and cleaned the metal and hit it with some cold bluing. I had sticky bolt syndrom but I read in another forum about scrubbing the cosmoline(spelling?) out of the chamber so I took a .45 brush and a drill, and some Hopps solvent and scrubbed the chamber, I haven't shot it since I did that. Hope it solves the problem. I made the sling from an old leather shoulder holster.

[Guest Tuco]

Thanks for the information, Tuco. Tell me something....I'm not too fond of the quality of recent Romanian offerings, but how were their M-44's? I've never seen one. Does it equal the other countries' M-44's?

JayPee

Yes that is if you find a nice one. Same for the Hungarian carbines. They might not be as nice as the Poles but will be in line with the Soviet carbines. The problem is finding a nice one as many more of these show hard use compared to the Poles.

[Guest beefcakeb0]

i have a romo m44 its very nice, shoots very well, however im no marksmen and have nowhere near enough to be a marksman to practice, so i dont know about the moa of it but its dead on.

beautiful stock.... buti t has a bunch of spots with a little bit of surface rust that i need to take care of...... all matching parts, mirror looking rifling, but the first inch of he bayo around the fat part has some weird metal like it might have been welded or something

il post some pics if yall can help me figure i out. is the steel wool for refinishing the metal? i need to spend some time on the actioon parts theyr starting to turn colors to a light rusty color

sorry im a rambler

[Guest beefcakeb0]

i just realized this is a year old thread\

[Westwindmike]

Bringing back to life a 16 month old thread. May be a new record.