Acknowledgements: big thank you to a lot of members on another forum: RKG, 50BMG, Slowdive and EddieCoyle on awesome insight and ideas for this little adventure, also to (<>) crew.
greeting comrades. Some time ago, never mind how long, I came across problem of slugging many barrels of most glorious Mosin rifle. It is true that you should slug your Mosin barrel as many vary anywhere mostly from .310 to .315. Thus, selecting ammo to fit rifle will provide you with accuracy. Sniper rifles were selected for two parameter: one is how straight the bore was, the other was how close it was to factory ammo (since no sniper ammo existed during WWII)
Before you hunt me down and cut my hands off, keep in mind:
1. These are not ... some of ... my barrels
2. I did not mutilate these most glorious rifles made in defense of motherland
3. They will all be restored to most awesome glory and fire many cartridge of ammo in future!
Anyway, many barrels, very long time to slug all. Thus I made this machine and call it "Slug-o-Tron" Basically, this machine could slug a barrel in 15 sec and provide more information on which I elaborate later.
Here is my original setup, it is a 110V wench that drags steel cable with slug attached to it.
To make slugs, I cut up a bunch of #8 bolts. You can probably make that from a threaded rod, but at my HD the rod was as expensive and I need to have good threads one end.
Before casting, I screw the threaded piece into a 1/4 brass rod:
The mold body is made from scrap aluminum and three drill bits. I drill 1/4 hole all the way through. Then start with 5/16 and round leading edges on another to finish drilling:
The brass plug is inserted into mold like this:
and we are almost ready