In addition to the 8mm Mauser I just wrote about I got to shoot my new 500 S&W mag Mosin Nagant today. That thing is good for a lot of giggles! I took a plain old 91/30 and fitted a Green Mountain blank, turned to heavy palma taper. Chambered with Dave Manson's 500 S&W rifle barrel reamer, cut to 20 inches. Had to cut the stock in half just behind the rear band since the barrel is bigger than the stock was. I put a single Weaver base on the receiver, epoxy bedded it and attached with red Loctite and mounted an Ultradot sight on it. Painted the barrel with black Cerakote, so now I have a big bore Bubba special that will knock the stuffing out of anything within 200 yards.
Boolit is the Lee 440gr. with the gascheck shank removed, sized to .492" (bore size for Green Mountain) and patched with 15# paper, sized in a Lee .501 sizer for a finished diameter of .502". Perfect for this barrel's throat. Loads were a compressed charge of Nobelsport TU-2000 (about like IMR4198), 35gr. WW296 + 1.0cc coffee grounds, 2.2cc VV 10B101 + 1.0cc coffee, and a compressed load of IMR4227 + a .030" card wad. Velocities were from 1500 fps for the 10B101 load up to 1850 fps for the 4227 load.
This rifle is about as forgiving as anything I have shot with paper patched boolits. All loads shot with equal accuracy - one hole at 25 yards, about an inch at 50 yards, and easily held inside an 8 inch gong at 200 yards. Not too bad for a red dot sight with no magnification. The only rub is, since the cases are about .030" shorter than the chamber, I was getting paper rings on every shot. Not a big deal, I could reach in with a cleaning rod and snag it out. The chamber's big enough it's easy to see what you are doing! I wondered if the single scope base would hold on, and the zero didn't change all day so evidently it will be OK. I kept expecting the scope to go flying over my shoulder but it never happened. The plan is, if that breaks I'll make a picatinny rail that screws to the barrel and set it up scout style. Maybe some day, but this works for now.
Recoil isn't bad, about like a stout loaded 45-70 (rifle weighs 8.6 lbs.) and not painful. I had thought I'd need a recoil pad but I am glad I didn't add one. I like the rough and tough look of the military stock - this is going to be a hunting rifle and not something pretty. Looks like I have a winner here, going to play around with loads to see if anything will stop the paper rings but likely I'll just live with it. All in all a worthwile conversion, especially since brass for this is still easily available and the rimmed Russian stuff has gotten really rare.
Next will be to collect a bunch of milk jugs and see what it takes to stop one of these boolits. It should be interesting to see how many jugs they make it through...
-Nobade
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Sounds plausible though.
Originally Posted by Nobade
