With our editor’s continued blessing, I’ll be presenting reviews and profiles of exceptionally affordable yet dependable firearms. Aesthetically-challenged guns that will never command a collector’s premium. Guns that were often made by the tens of millions, in countries that either no longer exist or whose names cannot be pronounced by Western tongues. Guns that attract sneers and looking-down-the-nose condescension from the bespoke shotgun crowd at your shooting range. Guns, in other words, for Cheap Bastards. Or, in this case, paranoid cheap bastards.
If you find entertainment in marginally informed but strongly-held opinions, you’ll never be bored with sports bars, talk radio and firearms bulletin boards. After interminable discussions of “the best carry gun ever” and “is my AK clone 922(r) compliant?” you’ll be regaled ad nauseum on the subject of gun for SHTF (Shit Hits The Fan) or WROL (Without the Rule Of Law).
When SHTF and society is WROL, it is opined, you’ll want a handy and reliable rifle at your side, as you try to survive or escape the ensuing Hobbesian jungle where life is “nasty, brutish and short.” Where anarchy provides liberty only to the strong and ruthless.
Let’s add IMHO to this theoretical search for a SHTF WROL firearm that you can stash away for a very rainy day, along with several hundred rounds of ammo and a can of dessicant, for two or three Benjamins. I recommend the Mosin-Nagant rifle as your new GBFF (Gun Best Friend Forever).
History
The Mosin-Nagant rifle fought the enemies of the Russian and Soviet Rodina from the 1890s until the early 1960s. The weapon’s history is a 70-year lesson in what life is like when you don’t get on well with your neighbors. The Russians used their Mosin-Nagants against the Japanese, the Germans, their fellow Russians, neighboring Finns and, finally, more Germans and more Japanese.
The Mosin-Nagant earns no great distinction in having been used and abused by millions of illiterate peasant soldiers and Soviet conscripts. It wasn’t the best all-around infantry rifle of its time. Truth to tell, the Mauser 98 and the Lee-Enfield would be superior SHTF rifles in almost every category—except reliability and price. Nothing holds a candle to the Mosin-Nagant when it comes to price and reliability.
It’s not just a beer-budget blunderbuss. During World War Two, the Mosin-Nagant was the weapon of choice (and necessity) of Soviet and Finnish snipers. These grim reapers of the eastern front used the Mosin-Nagant to single-handedly kill entire companies of enemy soldiers.
Sniper Vasiliy Zaytsev, fictionalized in “Enemy At The Gates,” used scoped Mosin-Nagants to snuff 242 Wehrmacht Soldaten in four months. His sniper girlfriend, Tania Chenaya, (who may or may not have looked anything like Rachel Weisz) gave at least 80 Germans a dirt nap with her own Mosin-Nagants. Lyudmilla Pavlichenko was even more effective: she and her Mosin-Nagants had 309 confirmed kills.
Even these Russian die-hards couldn’t keep up with Finnish sniper Simo “White Death” Hayha. He killed 505 Soviet soldiers in just 100 days during the Winter War of 1939-40, using only his Finnish-made Mosin and its iron sights. Gangsta!
It may be ugly and antiquated, but a Mosin-Nagant in the right hands (and a target-rich environment) is a nine-pound weapon of mass destruction.
Today, Mosin-Nagants are the Mother of All Budget-Minded SHTF WROL WTF is that rifles. With perhaps 50 million weapons rattling around worldwide, they’re cheap as chips. Big 5 will sell you a Mosin-Nagant for $120 ($89 if you wait for their biweekly ‘sales’). Prices are even better at gun shows and gun stores. My own M44 carbine, IIRC, cost a whopping $65 in 2008. Your mileage may vary.
The Trick to Training a Dog?
Buy the right dog. Not every Mosin-Nagant is worthy of your zombie panic-room. Triggers run from good to hideous, as do their bores. It’s important to buy a [relatively] good one from a rack full of candidates, if only because you can.
If you go Mosin-Nagant shopping at a gun show, you’ll have to convince the dealer to snip the zip-tie so you can check the trigger and barrel. If it’s a busy gun show, he’ll have other, more profitable sales to chase. Don’t be surprised if you’re SHTF gun elicits a TILI (Take It or Leave It). in that case, get thee to a gun store. Preferably on a slow day.
There’s nothing magic about picking a good Mosin-Nagant. Find one with a nice bright bore that doesn’t look too beat-up and locks up tightly. Test for a decent trigger pull. Mosin-Nagants have so few moving parts—there’s not too much else that can go wrong. As a bonus, many of them have been arsenal-refinished. Don’t worry about “collector value.” Unscoped Russian Mosin-Nagants have less collector value than remaindered Stephen King paperbacks.
Now what?
As we’re asking a new (70 year-old) Mosin-Nagant to perform SHTF duty, you’ll need to function-test it and sight it in before you oil it up and put it in storage with maybe a thousand rounds of ammo. And hope you’ll never need it.
Where’s the fun in that? Once the Big Brown Truck drops off your crate of ammo, go ahead, make it pay. Blast holes in paper targets, tin cans and big game (void where prohibited by law). If you’re using steel-core ammo, have a go at any metal plate less than .5″ thick. [NB: If you've loaded you Zombie Plague rifle with steel-core bullets, keep in mind steel core bullets don't expand. Hint: aim for the head.]
7.62x54R ammo is cheap. Russia and Eastern Europe produce hundreds of millions of rounds each year. An online bulk retailer will ship you a sealed 440 round ‘spam can’ for as little as $82.50 plus shipping. Compare that to the cost of commercial .30-06, and you’ll notice that your Communist rifle has a strong Capitalist charm.
This cheap ammo is no slouch, either. Depending on barrel length, the Mosin-Nagant typically drives a 147-grain bullet at a velocity of 2600-2900 fps. Some of the cartridges feature a mild-steel bullet core. It’s banned from some shooting ranges, it’ll punch holes in almost anything. CBs (Cheap Bastards) note: surplus 7.62x54R ammo is made with steel cases and Berdan-type corrosive primers. No reloading for you.
Another crucial tip: corrosive primers require you to give the rifle a quick cleaning with Windex or another ammonia-based cleaner promptly after shooting, followed by a regular cleaning with your favorite gun cleaner like CLP or Hoppe’s No. 9.
Cleaning a Mosin-Nagant isn’t difficult or terribly time-consuming. But failure to do it even once can ruin the bore and trash the gun. Alternatively, you can buy non-corrosive, non-reloadable ammo from Wolf and Privi Partisan starting at $8.60 per 20-round box plus shipping, which is still a hell of a deal for full-powered rifle ammo.
Ergonomics? We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Ergonomics!
When it comes to shooting comfort and ergonomic controls, the Mosin-Nagant’s got nothing. The nicest thing you can say about the club-like stock is that you’re not likely to break it by accident. It features a straight grip, a dismally short length of pull and a contusion-inducing steel buttplate.
The short pull length was meant to allow a proper hold while wearing incredibly bulky Russian winter uniforms. What’s good for Igor the Soviet Conscript sucks for you. If you’re taller than 5’6″ or if you’re wearing normal clothing, you’ll have the bolt cocking piece nearly in your eye socket—unless you attach a thick recoil pad.
The butt end of the Mosin-Nagant resembles a steel-clad cudgel, destructible only by fire or chainsaw. If Barry Bonds tried to snap one over his knee like a misbehaving Louisville Slugger, he’d be carried off the field with a shattered and protruding femur.
Like most of its contemporaries, the Mosin-Nagant sports a clumsy bolt handle that sticks straight out from the receiver at 3 o’clock, instead of bending gracefully downward. It’s ugly and awkward; doing exactly nothing to improve the slightly balky cock-on-opening action.
The Mosin-Nagant isn’t buttery-smooth like a Lee-Enfield, or a masterpiece of clockwork German engineering like a Mauser. It is what it is: strong, ugly, cheap and functional.
I Spit on Your Safety!
TheMosin-Nagant’s ’safety’ mechanism isn’t just clumsy; it’s a useless failure. Engaging it requires griping a small, slippery cocking piece on the rear of the bolt and pulling it back with 20 to 30 pounds of force while twisting it counterclockwise.
Disengaging it requires the same knuckle-crushing manipulation in reverse. This is challenging for iron-fingered rock climbers, difficult for mortal men and completely impossible for those with arthritis, gloves or cold fingers. Unless you go aftermarket, a Mosin’s only ‘safety’ mechanism is an empty chamber, or removing the bolt and carrying it in your pocket.
Hindsight is 20/20
Mosin-Nagants don’t do too badly in the sighting department. Its robust open sights are optimistically calibrated out to 1.5 or 2.5 kilometers. The carbine models (M38 and M44) are more challenging to shoot well because of their shorter sight radii, but benefit from much quicker handling. Aperture sights? Nyet. Scope attachment? Nyet. But M44s do come with a permanently attached side-folding bayonet which can stab your left middle finger if you grip the stock the wrong way.
Recoil
Perceived recoil depends on the type of Mosin you’re shooting. Without a recoil pad, carbine-length M38s and M44s kick like a short barreled 12-guage shooting 3″ rifled slugs. Or maybe like a featherweight .35 Whelen. Either way, the undersized stock and the steel buttplate don’t help things. You’ll want a beefy recoil pad which adds perhaps an inch of pull to the stock. Long-barreled 91/30s are heavier and the mass soaks up the recoil, but they will still fit you better if you add a thick recoil pad.
Accuracy
I’ve fired many hundreds of rounds through various Russian Mosin-Nagants, long and short, with iron sights and scout scopes. Not all of them were guns I would have bought; some had horrid triggers and some had rough bores.
A good Mosin can shoot 3″ groups at 100 yards with surplus ammo—if you’ve got better eyes than mine. A bad one won’t keep five shots on a Domino’s pizza box. Family size. My own M44 with a scout scope will shoot 3″-4″ groups all day long, or at least until my pounding headache starts to impair my shooting.
The Mosin-Nagant isn’t a tack-driver. Buut it handles quickly and points instinctively and hits what you aim it at (if your target’s big enough). I’d like to spend more range time with a scoped 91/30 and its longer barrel (and its reduced muzzle blast) to really see what a Mosin-Nagant can do from the bench with optics. But then . . . reliable, accurate or cheap. You’ve already chosen two.
Reliability
You will not find a more rugged or reliable firearm on earth. Other than poor triggers and mistreated barrels, which you’ll discover before purchasing, the only common functional flaw is difficult extraction once the gun heats up. This is usually caused by baked-in cosmoline in the chamber. A thorough cleaning while the gun is hot and you’re G2G.
The 7.62x54R is a rimmed cartridge; that’s what the “R” stands for. While the rim provides extremely positive extraction of spent cases, it requires special attention when loading. Each inserted cartridge must be pushed fully to the rear of the magazine before another is inserted on top of it. This makes reloading slower if you’re not using stripper clips.
Your Hurt Your WHAT?
The Mosin-Nagant is a ‘blast’ to shoot, on two levels. It’s all kinds of fun to go trigger-happy with a powerful rifle knowing you’re only spending $1 each time you empty the five-round magazine. The short-barreled Mosin variants (M38 and M44) are also amongst the loudest small arms ever built.
DO NOT fire them without hearing protection, even once, unless your life depends on it. I won’t fire mine without double hearing protection: plugs and muffs. Failure to double up sentences me to a splitting headache, which lasts for hours.
Surplus 7.62x54R ammo is optimized for light machineguns and Dragunov SVD sniper rifles, not for 20″ carbine barrels. When those bullets leave the muzzle of a 20″ barrel, they’ve still got burning powder behind them which blows out of the barrel and produces a dazzling blossom of flame, anywhere from six inches to three feet in diameter. It also subjects you and your fellow shooters to a grenade-like concussion.
Accessories and Modifications
The Mosin-Nagant has frugal charms and ergonomic flaws. It’s only a matter of time before you’ll start to wonder how you might be able to improve it a little bit. Maybe you could improve the trigger pull a little, or give it a functional safety mechanism, or replace the stock,or add a scope, or . . . whatever.
Don’t go there. I know the above video (and many more like it) show enthusiasts firing modified Mosin-Nagant’s at—and occasionally hitting—targets that are eight billion yards away. [ED: I blame Zaytsev.] But the Mosin-Nagant should be first and foremost a cheap gun.
The Mosin-Nagant aftermarket is thriving; you can transform your $89 STFU gun into a modern scoped hunting rifle or a tricked-out’Tacticool’ scout-sniper. You’ll end up dropping $400-$500 on a 70-year old gun that’s only cosmetically different from the $89 beater you bought. If you want a modern scoped rifle for $400-$500, there are plenty of better choices out there.
That said, some of the Mosin’s flaws can be addressed fairly cheaply. The safety, the bolt handle and the trigger can be collectively upgraded for about $120. These three modifications will make your Mosin a more accurate, comfortable and safe gun without compromising its character or reliability.
Safety and Bolt Modifications
Various third-party vendors offer Mosin cocking pieces with a steel ring welded to the safety knob, after the style of Swiss Schmidt-Rubin rifles, for around $25 plus shipping. This photo of a friend’s rifle also shows a $60 professional bent bolt modification. Steer clear of DIY bent bolt kits. Bolt handles are subjected to enormous stresses, which can shear the tiny machine screws that secure DIY bolt handles to the body.
Trigger Modifications
Mosin-Nagant triggers are all over the place in terms of creep, weight, overtravel and grittiness. You should have selected a good trigger when you cherry-picked your rifle. If you didn’t, you can drop in a Timney match-grade trigger group for less than $100. Or you can get a $55 ball-bearing trigger modification from Huber. [ED: Next time, pay attention in class.]
Optics
Mounting a scope on a Mosin is tricky. A gunsmith can drill and tap the receiver for specific Weaver-style bases, but you’ll need a bent bolt to clear the scope. This combination of parts and projects can easily cost $200, so . .. stop already.
To avoid the expense of a bent bolt, you can opt for a long eye relief ‘scout’ scope mount. There are many cheap ‘no-gunsmith’ mounts, costing less than $50, which attach to the rear sight base. Most are too flimsy to withstand the recoil or hold their zero. S&K makes the onlyhigh quality no-gunsmith scout mount for the Mosin-Nagant, for about $90.
My own DAIS NAID (Do As I Say, Not As I Do) M44 wears an S&K mount. It’s proven to be durable and reliable through 300+ rounds fired. Degreasing it thoroughly and applying blue Loctite to all screws during assembly was crucial to holding zero.
Muzzle Brakes
Don’t be tempted to bolt an AK-style muzzle brake on your M38 or M44, even if the recoil beats the stuffing out of you. First off, they make these guns even louder. They also attach rather weakly to the front sight post, which is only pressed onto the barrel proper. The violent recoil and muzzle gasses from these guns can either permanently damage the front sight post or physically tear the muzzle brake apart. I have a twisted paperweight that used to be an AK-style muzzle brake on my Mosin-Nagant.
Summary
The Mosin-Nagant isn’t pretty and it’s not the sweetest shooting rifle in the world. It could be pressed into hunting or defensive service, but it’s not the first choice for a hunting rifle and it would make a lousy home defense carbine. For an SHTF WROL OMG you bought THAT? gun it doesn’t get any better—that’s to say, cheaper—than this.
Two-hundred dollars and change buys you a rock-solid rifle—and 440 rounds of ammo. Every time you load it and pull the trigger, it goes BANG and blasts a big hole in whatever it’s pointed at. Works for me.
SPECIFICATIONS:
Caliber: 7.62x54R
Barrel: 20.2″ or 28.7″
Overall Length: 39.9″ or 50.7″
Weight: 7.5 lbs (M38) 8.8 lbs (M91/30) 9.0 lbs (M44)
Action: Magazine-fed bolt-action
Finish: Blue steel, wooden or laminated stock
Capacity: 5 round internal box magazine
Price: $90 to $120
RATINGS (Out of Five)
Style * *
It’s got a rugged and rustic Partisan charm, but has never won and will never win any beauty prizes.
Ergonomics * *
Nobody likes straight stocks or straight bolt handles. Stout recoil and a short length of pull give the carbine models punishing recoil. Add a ring safety and thick recoil pad for 2.5 stars.
Reliability * * * * *
Load, aim, pull trigger, and BOOM. Every time.
Customize This *
Trigger, bolt and safety can be upgraded cheaply, but proper scope mounting is costly. Buyer beware aftermarket muzzle brakes and DIY bolt modifications.
Overall Rating * *
Two stars is still a lot of gun for $89.
I own a Mosin 91/30 and an M44, they shoot as I had expected after reaserching them before purchasing. They are among the easiest to disassemble and clean. I was a Navy Corpsman and served with the Marines and have had the pleasure of shooting some of the most exciting and exotic weapons on the planet earth. The Mosin in comparison is dependable, shoots accurately and I know no matter the elements this gun will shoot – it is a BUG(Big Ugly Gun). I have the most fun at the range with the M44 when I shoot as the people around me are going pop-pop-pop, then I come out and go B A N G -B A N G, damn get the fire extinguisher – people stop and look wondering what I am shooting. All in all the mosin is a reliable fun and affordable gun to have in any collection.
Wow, wonderful blog layout! How lengthy have you been blogging for? you make blogging look easy. The full look of your web site is wonderful, let alone the content material!
I have owned two finn m39′s. a 1970, and vkt 1942. Couldnt hit the inside of a barn with either one of them. Have a 44 tikka 91/30 with the blade front sight that is deadly! Far better rifle for sure. One M/N that suprises me is the 91/59 carbine! Dead on deadly! they took time to get the sights right on these. carol
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Who says Mosins aren’t tack-drivers? With a Mojo ghost-ring sight and Partizan factory ammo, my 1940 Tula long rifle will always put 5 shots in a 1″ group at 100 yards if I hold it straight.
I think Mozzies get a bad rep because of the atrocious milsurp ammo they tend to get fed on and the relatively crude ladder sights. Good modern commercial ammo or handloads plus a decent aftermarket sight (*not* the made-in-a-tractor-factory Soviet issue scope with its massive but unstable iron mounting plate) turn the Mozzie into a contender out to 300 yards.
Yes very much so. I own a Nagant and after a few after market pieces…I have a very accurate and efficient rifle, that I am very pleased with. Very. Its accuracy is astounding for such a big bore.
My mosin is a beast,
It’s a 91/30 and for the longest time I ve fired bulk ammo( 440 rounds for 85 dollars) . I can have a 3-4in grouping, standing up, iron sight, shooting at a foot and a half by foot and a half plate at 115 yards.
Have you ever put the bayonet on a 91/30 ? It’s a shorter javelin. No need to get close and personal with the mosin at all.
I will agree It’s not so good for a massive horde of zombies or a shit load of people coming at you(5 rounds…), but if you want to drop someone with heavy body armor, kill an animal 3 times your size, hit someone from a greater distance, or just want to scare any predator away in a mile radios , the rifle is perfect .
I think $ to gun ratio you can’t find anything better.
I have developed a cam type safety for the 91/30 and make scope mounts with or wihout open sights. The bolt handle must be bent and extended to provide clearance for the scope.
Do you sale your mounts?Pics?
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Some more interesting things. First there are dovetails under the site. Just punch out the two pins to get to them. Then standard .22 scope rings can be used to mount a scout scope (aka Long Eye Relief / LER / hand gun scope)
[IMG]http://i632.photobucket.com/albums/uu47/grapefarmer/scopemount2.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i632.photobucket.com/albums/uu47/grapefarmer/scopemount1.jpg[/IMG]
Also, for the small varmint there is a cheep bore adapter (purchased from sportsman guide) that allows you to shoot 32 S&W Long and 32autos hand gun ammo. It like shooting a .22 – Its a one shot deal, shoot then manually load the adapter again. Its as quite as a .22 too.
[IMG]http://i632.photobucket.com/albums/uu47/grapefarmer/32_adapter.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i632.photobucket.com/albums/uu47/grapefarmer/32_adapter2.jpg[/IMG]
Learned the hard way about the penetration abilities of these beasts. I had been shooting an M-44 (Which btw you want to shoot with the bayonet out, as that does somehow affect accuracy, and will also prevent hand stabbings) at a metal target that swiveled on a rebar axle. Well, after the first 5 rounds I was dismayed as I thought I hadn’t even hit my target, but then I checked it out up close to see that I had hit the target all 5 times, but the rounds simply blew through the steel without causing the target to spin. Not long after the target was rendered usless when one or two rounds cut cut through the rebar axle.
One thing about purchasing a Mosin: if you can, get one with matching serial numbers (receiver, bolt, magazine floor plate, butt plate). The more original the rifle is, the better its components tend to fit together. I have an all-numbers matching M91/30 made in 1942 by Izhevsk. Everything locks up tight and functions like it should. A friend of mine has a franken-Mosin. It’s got parts and bits from several arsenals and years. It works, usually, but it doesn’t function particularly smoothly and the Izzy bolt and Tula receiver aren’t exactly friends. That being said, most Mosin’s have indeed been arsenal refurbished and had their parts forced to match. However, I paid $150 for an original rifle, my friend paid the same for his monster. I got the better deal.
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Have a 1942 built 91/30. Installed the ATI bent bolt/scope mount kit. As I am an Engineer and decent machinist it was not difficult. Would not recommend it for someone with no machine shop experience. Kit works well and greatly improved my ability to hit a target well past 100 yards. With the addition of a “made for Mosin” rubber butt pad, it is a pleasure to shoot. Is my wife’s favorite rifle as well. I used the Mosin for my daughter’s 4H project to show accuracy of different ammo at same range, bench mounted etc. The steel cased ammo was the worst, my hand loaded rounds (150gr Spitzer) was the best. But overal within 1inch at 50yds. Not bad for a $79 rifle and a $50 kit.
Had a difficult time believing this article was referring to my lovely safe queens, as I find them to be the most attractive firearms of the period besides the swiss k31. They have such smooth sexy lines, unlike my clunky looking mauser, 03′ spr, or 1917 and no blocky over complicated magazine like others of their day….just smooth simplistic beauty. Both of my 1943 m1891/30 have excellent finish of metal and wood, they each required some tlc on the ejector spring to make them feed. In the field they performed good, 200yd hits are easy on an 8″ x 10″ steel once the long heavy trigger is mastered.
When it comes to recoil I’ve got a slip over sissy pad and personally I think it is less than my 30-30 marlin …way less than my ’06 savage. It was so mild that all my shooting buddies even the most recoil shy, who were scared off by articles like this, shot it and are pursuing their own as they found it quite mild and very fun. After a day of watching for 22lr bullet splash at 200yds there is no mistaking the authoritative impact of the 54r on a snow covered sand pile.
If every one gets one in the US perhaps one day we may fight off socialism with the rifle that brought it to us.
I had a difficult time believing this article was referring to the safe queens I love. I find them to be the most attractive rifle of the period besides the swiss k31. Not so clunky looking like my mauser, or the 03′spr and 1917, no blocky or funky magazine like others of their time, just sleek smooth sexy lines simplistic and beautiful. Both of mine came with excellent finish of metal and wood with shiny bore.
Accuracy was good an 8 x 10 plate at 200 yd was easy fodder for those that master that long hard trigger pull. With a sissy pad recoil is very mild on the m1891/30, less than my 30/30. All my range comrades, even the most recoil sensitive that have been frightened off by articles like this, enjoyed it so much they anticipate procuring one of their own.
I have two M38 Mosins and a M 91/30 and I think they are great.
I got a turned down bolt body from Rock solid industries for $ 60.00
and it is rock solid, love it. Put it on one of the M 38. Had to notch the stock
but no big deal. Also put recoil pad that adds about an inch to the stock, and
is made of leather that has velcro on it and I can easily change from one Mosin to another. I re finished the stocks without loosing any of the markings and was asked
at the local Gun shop how much I would charge to do a couple for him. I haven’t
come up with a price as of wet.
I bought my Mosin-Nagant from Big-5. Heavily cosmolined, but good bore and action. Cleaned it up using Easy Off Oven Cleaner, hot shower, fine steel wool and boiled linseed oil. Gets lots of attention at the gun range…everyone wants to shoot it.
What are some scopes that work with that S&K mount?
The Mosin rifle is the most fun to shoot,Big Bad-Ass rifle a guy or gal can legally own ! It is super affordable , the ammo is in the 20 cents each range for bulk surplus and they are generally rather accurate . We enjoy busting concrete blocks at 100 yards , making geysers out of 2 liter plastic soda bottles and shooting zombie targets . I brought one to a family gathering recently out at a farm owned one of the family .
All the men and a couple of the gals wanted to shoot it ! Everyone got a chance to pop a couple of rounds ; but I had one big complaint : YOU ONLY BROUGHT 30 ROUNDS OF AMMO ! ! ! ! BRING MORE NEXT TIME !
Michael
I don’t know if you found a scope mount for your Mosin yet, But there is a company called Rock Solid industries that makes a real sweat scope mount and turned down bolt body, for $ 160.00 plus shipping. If you follow their instructions and have access to a drill press you can do it yourself. Look them up. I have the setup on my M38 Mosin and can shoot 2.5″and 3″ at a 100 yds till my shoulder can’t take it any more. I think it is the best mount and bolt body you can get. A friend of mine sold me the scope mount that he got from Rocksolid and never installed on his Mosin. I had to get the bent bolt body from Rocksolid, You can get the parts separately or as a kit the price is the same, $100.00 for the mount and $60.00 for the bolt body. Hope this was some help