Mosin-Nagant cocking piece

[Junior1942]

Anybody ever drilled & tapped a Mosin-Nagant cocking piece? I wonder how hard it is?

I'm thinking about putting a peep sight on it.

[singleshotbuff]

Junior,

I'd be interested to know that myself, and if you do it, how it works out. I'd like to try a peep on my beater M44.

SSB

[Catshooter]

Jr,

Touch it with a file. If it skates across & don't leave a mark, drilling it's out. If the file bites into it, you should be good.


Cat

[jdhenry]

I am with SSB, But think I might just take it to my gunsmith...

[Junior1942]

Jr,

Touch it with a file. If it skates across & don't leave a mark, drilling it's out. If the file bites into it, you should be good. CatCatshooter, thanks for the tip. A file easily scratches it. If this works and I write a how-to article about it, you'll get credit.

What I plan to do is use a plain ol' Brownells fillister screw for a rear sight. That's an elevation-adjustable rear sight for ~50 cents. I'll drill and tap the top rear of the cocking piece for maybe a 10-32 screw. Then I'll sight through the screwdriver slot in the screw. Slot widths vary from an 8-32 @ .045" to a 12-28 @ .060". I'll see which works best with the military front sight.

A 10-32 screw will give .031" up or down elevation adjustment with one turn. A half turn gives ~.015".

[Bret4207]

Redfield and Lyman used to make a cocking piece sight for the MN. Saw one mounted on an MN years ago when they were "FREAKS" and I wasn't about to waste my hard earned dollars on something like that. These days I imagine the sight alone would go for $200.00+ on Ebay.

[Larry Gibson]

I've D&T'd a couple MN cocking pieces for the Williams small ramp aperture rear sights (sorry don't recall which model) for a couple guys. Works well but you have to get used to the cocking piece and rear sight movement (down) as the trigger is pulled just before the sear is released. You either need to set the trigger up as a two stage pull (ala the Sako Finn M39) or be really quick at refining your sight picture just before sear release.

Larry Gibson

[Junior1942]

I've changed my mind about drilling & tapping the cocking piece. I'm gonna put a cheap Simmons red dot on the rifle.

I'm making the rifle, an M44, into a rainy day rifle. Without the forearm guard it's about the easiest to take down and dry out rifle I own. If the red dot can't stand a soaking, it's back to plan A.

PS: my fillister head screw sight will work, I'm sure. But I tried holding one against the side of the bolt and sighting through it in dim light at a target in dim light, and the black rear and the black front both disappeared. For my purposes, hunting in rain, I'd need Firesights front and rear.

[Catshooter]

Jr,

If it's a dedicated dim light rifle, would white paint on the both the front and rear (filister screw) help keep them from disapearing?

Cat

[Junior1942]

If it's a dedicated dim light rifle, would white paint on the both the front and rear (filister screw) help keep them from disapearing?
Probably. However, I worried about a vine or limb hitting the rear fillister screw and knocking off the white paint. The screw would be sticking up wide open for damage. That fact made me change my mind.

Looks like the $28.60 Simmons red dot will work. The parallax is about 2" @ 50 yards, and all the knobs have o-rings. And lo and behold this left eye dominant but right hand shooter can aim the 1x sight and keep BOTH eyes open!

Weird thing about the parallax of this sight--it's ~2" to the left, the right, and up, but down it's about 12". But the dot starts getting elongated as the eye moves down behind the sight making the parallax no prolem.