New to me 1944 M44, non force matched numbers.

[pshelton]

J&G had their sale going last week, and I paid $189 for it, before transfer (no C&R yet). She's in great shape with a perfect bore, good bluing, and even though she's not that rare, I'm digging the non-force matched numbers. I may just fix the nics and scratches on her, and call it good, although I was thinking I would refinish the stock completely. My beat to hell T53 is next to it.

[WeldonHunter]

Welcome to the forum. Nice rifles and the M44 is force matched though it probably doesn't appear to be. Just the nature of the refurb program. You may want to rethink repairing the nicks and scratches. It will lower the value of the rifles. Refinishing will definitely do this also and is not something we recommend doing at all as well as being against the rules here.

J&G had their sale going last week, and I paid $189 for it, before transfer (no C&R yet). She's in great shape with a perfect bore, good bluing, and even though she's not that rare, I'm digging the non-force matched numbers. I may just fix the nics and scratches on her, and call it good, although I was thinking I would refinish the stock completely. My beat to hell T53 is next to it.

[pshelton]

Oh, I didn't know that, I'll just clean off the cosmo then, and shoot her. Thanks for the reply. I have a 91/30 that's force matched (the old sn's are scratched out). This M44 doesn't have any scratched out sn's, so how can you tell?

[WeldonHunter]

Oh, I didn't know that, I'll just clean off the cosmo then, and shoot her. Thanks for the reply. I have a 91/30 that's force matched (the old sn's are scratched out). This M44 doesn't have any scratched out sn's, so how can you tell?

It's a refurbished rifle. All of them are force matched and made from parts of many other rifles. It's easy to think these rifles are not forced matched because in some cases like yours where they didn't line the old numbers out it's hard to tell they've been renumbered but they all were. During refurb the rifles were completely disassembled and the parts were sent to be checked/refurbished along with the parts from thousands of other rifles. They didn't keep the numbered parts for any one rifle together during this process. They mixed them all together with other similar parts. The numbers were lined out or scrubbed then renumbered to the barrel the new rifle was being assembled on. Sometimes the scrubbing of the old numbers is so good there's no evidence of the them. Sometimes you can still see remnants of them. The lined out numbers are obvious. Compare the fonts of the barrel to those of the other numbered parts. In most cases some of them are obviously different and on some the new numbers are missing the Cyrillic prefixes but now all. Also look at the parts on the rifle. You'll find arsenal stamps from many different factories in some cases but usually at least both Tula and Izhevsk. That's also a trait of refurbed rifles and is perfectly acceptable, correct and expected.

[pshelton]

Ah, I see, great info, thanks for sharing it.

[Junk Yard Dog]

Nice

[pshelton]

Thanks!

[desdem12]

Nice stock Don't refinish and leave the scratches and dings cause they are character marks. Like Weldon says it will kill the value of it also.

[bunkysdad]

I like it. It looks just like my M44, same color, same amounts of light scratches in the shellac. The T53 you have looks like a good one too. If you have a good imagination, try and picture what that rifle has been through and where it's been. It earned that best to hell look and that look is as good as it gets on a milsurp in my opinion.

[pshelton]

Nice stock Don't refinish and leave the scratches and dings cause they are character marks. Like Weldon says it will kill the value of it also.

I will leave it alone, just a good cleaning and an appropriate sling and I'm going to call it good.

[pshelton]

I like it. It looks just like my M44, same color, same amounts of light scratches in the shellac. The T53 you have looks like a good one too. If you have a good imagination, try and picture what that rifle has been through and where it's been. It earned that best to hell look and that look is as good as it gets on a milsurp in my opinion.

I'd love to see a pic of your M44 The T53 was really used hard and put away wet There were slight rust patches on the outsize of the internal magazine, and then when I pulled the top handguard off, some pitting on the top of the barrel :( I did what I could to get it out and then neutralized it, cleaned everything up, and put it back together. She shoots great though, and the pitting was only surface, not any depth.