What to do with a lost M39 M. Nagant ??

[KenT7021]

kens have you done anything to the M39 yet?

[Clark]

It isn't about having the tooling, or not,, or the abilitys,,it's usually the idea itself and wether it's safe to do with some cartridges and their high(er) working pressures.

The Mosin, Mauser, Sav 110, Win 70, and Rem 700 all have nearly the exact same cross sectional area in the bolt lugs. Savage is a tiny bit more.

[2152hq]

The Mosin, Mauser, Sav 110, Win 70, and Rem 700 all have nearly the exact same cross sectional area in the bolt lugs. Savage is a tiny bit more.

I realize that,,but the question is wether to do a LINER insert to 7.62x54r.
The liner itself is limited with it's diameter. It has to include the cartridge chamber also. Whatever method is used to bond the liner into the parent bbl needs to be able to withstand the 50K+ psi working pressure of these centerfires and not allow the liner to expand/bulge..

So do you use a 1/2d liner?, 9/16d, 5/8d,,? You need something large enough in dia at the chamber to allow for chambering the fat Russian cartridge and still have material surrounding it. Will the necessary dia needed be too large to be able to be used at the muzzle of the parent bbl?. Probably.
Then you need a stepped liner. Either a custom turned one or as some used to do a two piece sleeve at the chamber end. Neither looked at as a very good method for change when a high pressure round is involved.

Re-bore/re-rifle yes,,,
Use of a liner to orig caliber (7,62Russian) no (IMO).

No question the action itself is strong.

[kens]

kens have you done anything to the M39 yet?

no, in the peak of deer season right now, no gun range shooting as now.

[fatelk]

If it were mine, and not something particularly special to me, I wouldn't even consider any gunsmith work on it. I'd clean the bore best I could, and if it wouldn't shoot decent or the pitted bore just bugged me, I'd put it up for sale then look for another with a good bore.

Odds are the difference in cost between selling and buying would be a lot less than gunsmith charges, and you'd have a rifle that's not messed with. A friend of mine did this some years ago. He had a Remington 700 30-06 that wasn't very accurate anymore. I looked at it for him and could see evidence of years of hunting in the rain, then shoving it back in the closet with a damp bore. It looked like a sewer pipe. He was all set to pay a gunsmith $400 to rebarrel it.

I asked him why, since that's as much or more than the rifle was worth. He said the smith told him it would be a more accurate barrel, but for him that accuracy would be wasted because all he did was hunt so a good factory barrel was more than accurate enough. He ended up selling it to a friend who wanted the action for a custom rifle, then buying a nice almost identical rifle off the used rack at the gun shop cheap after hunting season, for about the same price as I recall.

[kens]

Well, the way you explain it makes more sense to me. It was particularly special to me due to the mint condition of it.

Anybody need a M39 action for a project?

[fatelk]

Being so nice externally, I would expect someone would still want it as is. Bore condition would knock the value down some, but probably not as bad as you might think.

Just how bad is the bore? Some years ago an acquaintance brought me a French MAS 49/56 that had really bad furry rust growing in the bore. It took hours of work and one heck of a lot of elbow grease but I was finally able to chisel all the rust out. When all was said and done it really didn't look too bad and shot fairly well.

I well understand how discouraging it is to find nasty rust in a bore that was previously nice and shiny. Been there, done that, I'm ashamed to say.

[lefty o]

someone will buy it for much more as it is than as just another stripped mosin action.