M91/30 musings and the Nu-Judge slug

[Buckshot]

...............This rifle is one of the 2 Big 5 $89 rilfes I'd bought during the year (M44's currently on sale for $89). This one is a 1938 Tula produced action and barre,l as are most the other parts. However they're re-arsenaled so there is a mixmaster of the other 2 arsenals there also.

Good looking rifle, clean strong lands and some peppering in the grooves but in my experience no reason it shouldn't be a great shooter. I had had it out only a couple other times and was a bit disappointed as I expected much better. However there was NO leading at any time with anything I shot.

I had cast up a sh*tpot full (like 30 lbs) of the Nu-Judge 'Fat-fat30' going 193grs, .307 on the nose and .318" on the drive bands. I made myself a .316" lube-size die and used LAR's Carnauba Red lube. PURDY BOOLITS These went into the cases with casemouths crimped in to the top lube groove. At this length the turn of the ogive is 'just' marked by all 4 lands. Happy day, couldn't be better.

Previous tries were the Lyman 314299 sized .314" which did NOT engrave at all.

I'd loaded 50 rounds, being 10ea for 5 different loads. The loads were:

10.0 Unique
16.0 2400
21.0 surp SR4759
23.0 IMR 4227 (old)
25.0 T2K (Nobel Tubal 2000) Just like 4198

I didn't use any fullers as I normally would have, starting with the 2400. I fired them last Tuesday at the range at 50 yards off the bench. The day was beautiful to where you just might have needed a flannel shirt over a T shirt, bright sun. I fired each load of 10 rounds with them all being stripped from the magazine. Two 10 round groups durng each 20 minute fire period so the 2nd 10 rounds produced a warmish barrel.

This time the rifle shot MUCH better, but still not as well as I would have liked. Best group was with the Unique with all 10 rounds in 1.75". All the groups were round with no wild out of bounds 1 or 2 shots. Most would clump 4-7 shots in a inch or a bit more with the 'outers' being just out of the clan.

At home I cleaned it only to see if there was any leading (hadn't been any before) and there was none. The bore remained dark during the shooting.

I got to wondering about that long slender forend. The improvement I had seen with my P-17 decided me to check this rifle. The P-17 had had a floated barrel and wasn't real consistant so so me card shims at the forend tip for pressure was tired and VOILA' an outsatanding shooter it became.

I pulled the 2 bands and the handguard and you could see the metal cap on the forend tip drop down away from the barrel maybe 3/16". Checking further, the wood was not inletted as far on the right side, so if you pinched the barrel and forend together the forend moved up and left. I removed the barreled action and the action looked well bedded. Tightening up the front and rear action screws alternately the barrel did not raise or lower indicating the action wasn't rocking.

With the action laid lightly in the stock, the barrel ran straight down the stock inletting. So with that, I used a scraper to scrap away some wood from the right side of the barrel channel at the nose. Now when you pinch the 2 together the forend top comes straight up. The handguard doesn't touch the barrel at all.

So now I'll try it again with the same 5 loads to see if it closes the groups up any. If not, or there isn't much improvement I guess I'll try the shims under the barrel deal to see what that does. The forend is so skinny I doubet it'd exert much pressure on the barrel so maybe I'll have to move the shims back to a heavier part of the stock.

....................Buckshot

[Carteach0]

I have refinished the stock on one of my 91/30's. A 1944 Tula ex-sniper in rearsonaled laminate furniture. While doing so I looked closely at the barrel channel.
It had spotty contact and a decided lean to the side. I think this is mostly from long storage under slight pressure.

I used a barrel channel bedding tool to open the channel a bit all the way
to the end. This gave me a clean slate, andthe rifle responded nicely by loosing
all traces of stringing. It used to vertically string just slightly with surplus ammunition.

Once I settle on a decent cast bullet load I will then experiment with some upward
pressure at the tip. I think this laminate wood will respond better to that and stay a bit more consistant.

Right now it is shooting just over an inch at 50 yards with a .313" Lee 186 grain
gas checked bullet. But..... thats only judging by one group, which is little to go by.

I have LOTS of experimenting to do on all my Mosins and my 7.62x54 loading. My sizing die is too tight, I am not happy with these Graf cases, and all three of my Mosins have different bore diameters, from .312" to .315".

Oh..... I discovered last night that I am down to my last .5 pounds of IMR4895 which I was using for load development in this caliber. Being a cheap old SOB I will probably start over with 3031 or 4198 as I have a fair bit of that. I have a LOT of Red Dot, but have yet to have a rifle shoot decently with it.