The Russian Mosin Nagant Forum

Congrats on the first firing and sand pit. Very cool!

I thought about shooting mine with a string before I got it checked out but I think I am going to play it safe. haha

The string is how we did it in the old days before we had the internet to make finding headspace gauges easy We are much better now

The dumb ones used a really short string.... ;)

I knew one or two like that !

I don't want to sound like a kill joy BUT, if this is open space that you can get to....so can others. Even children. Secure your space from a potential catastrophe and then have fun.

I remember the first time I shot mine too. I can't remember though if I laughed out loud, hollered yea baby, screamed awesome, or what. But it was good!

andrewd41 wrote:I don't want to sound like a kill joy BUT, if this is open space that you can get to....so can others. Even children. Secure your space from a potential catastrophe and then have fun.

Back in '03 I was shooting at my friends sand pile before he had the proper range put in, I was invited with some friends. I was blasting a target at 200 yards with the M14 and was lining up a shot when my sight picture was suddenly filled by some idiot on a four wheeler atv. I was seconds away from shooting him in the head. Well, first he found himself in front of an armed group, were he was lectured at length by me and had his helmeted head smacked with the buttplate of the M14 to illustrate the exact spot the bullet would have penetrated, then he was arrested,and his machine impounded, my friend pressed charges for trespassing, and for the broken gate he found, plus the tron up ground were he was having a corn crop planted. His chicken shit friends lit out and left him to face the music alone. Seems the guy failed to hear the gunfire because of all the noise his machine made, and we failed to hear him because of the double layers of hearing protection and the gunfire.

howitzer wrote:I'll admit I was sweating because I was so nervous about shooting it. I didn't do a head space check and I always have bad luck so i thought it was going to blow up. Held the gun away from me...aimed at the hill...loud as hell and everything was good to go....casing looked excellent...no splits or cracks.

Once I got used to how the sights work...holy is this gun accurate...my first time shooting it and i was able to pick off a small paint can from roughly 300 feet away. Love this gun...And living in a town with 150,000 people it was friggen awesome finding a big open sand pit 25 minutes up north. I will be making a video this week or next week....this sand pit is a gun owners dream. I just hope it doesnt get fenced up...its private land owned by a cement company but they arnt doing anything with it...the past 4 years anyway lol

Sounds like my first experience with a Mosin. My big mistake was only buying 20 rounds with it!

I actually was only going to look at them for a guy at work, see whether they were useable for deer hunting. Stopped into FleetFarm to check them out for the guy, and ended up walking out with an M38.

entropy wrote:

howitzer wrote:I'll admit I was sweating because I was so nervous about shooting it. I didn't do a head space check and I always have bad luck so i thought it was going to blow up. Held the gun away from me...aimed at the hill...loud as hell and everything was good to go....casing looked excellent...no splits or cracks.

Once I got used to how the sights work...holy is this gun accurate...my first time shooting it and i was able to pick off a small paint can from roughly 300 feet away. Love this gun...And living in a town with 150,000 people it was friggen awesome finding a big open sand pit 25 minutes up north. I will be making a video this week or next week....this sand pit is a gun owners dream. I just hope it doesnt get fenced up...its private land owned by a cement company but they arnt doing anything with it...the past 4 years anyway lol

Sounds like my first experience with a Mosin. My big mistake was only buying 20 rounds with it!

I actually was only going to look at them for a guy at work, see whether they were useable for deer hunting. Stopped into FleetFarm to check them out for the guy, and ended up walking out with an M38.

M38 nice

I will soon get that excited/ nervous feeling when I fire mine for the first time on Thursday.

finloq wrote:Ahhh.

hey leave the Canadians here alone

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leMm4F4NAJ0

My wife is from Scarsborough.

Great shooting area, buy it! .....

We have places like that around here (BLM Land), but shooting steel core surplus always carries the danger of lighting up a fire.....so we have to take that into consideration while placing the targets. So far (+10 years) we were lucky.....no fire, but we always carry 3 fire extinguishers around in the trucks, just for that reason. What a wonder, all the other people using these "open ranges" seem to be as responsible as necessary. Even campfires are set up right.
Well, we live in the USCCA (United Socialist Counties of California), that's why, I guess. I know Miss Feinstein would have a cow if she read this, oh well!) Some of us live within a 40 minute reaction time to a 911 call (Fire department is 15-25 minutes)
And she disputes the "Right to carry and own guns", I rest my case.........

They were blaming the Colorado wildfires on sparks caused by steel core ammo.

Junk Yard Dog wrote:They were blaming the Colorado wildfires on sparks caused by steel core ammo.

I live on a big "hill" and can see approximately 80 miles worth of range, from Boulder to Wyoming and saw smoke from the several fires rising up from the front range for months. These sights were something I never want to see again. Not to mention that the fires were uncomfortably close, especially one in particular. Last winter was very dry in the high country and it became so dry that almost anything would start a fire. Tiny grass fires in the foothills started weekly for no apparent cause. It wouldn't surprise me is sparks from ammunition could have started a fire but in general it is almost always lightning, failure to put out a campfire, or a cigarette thrown out a window.

Word here is the fire that burned the western side of Colorado Springs, the one on national TV, was human caused. The others on the eastern slope were lightning strikes. Can't speak for most of the western slope fires because they were generally so remote no one messed with fighting or investigating them. This is actually the first time I've heard anyone say that about steel core ammo regarding our fires.

There was some mention of it in the media at the time, there was a thread on the forum talking about it, probably in the archives someplace now. Steel core ammo can spark a fire, I had it happen when I suddenly had a pile of old target papers next to my target stand ignite while I was shooting. I was not shooting tracer, but was shooting steel core surplus ammo, there was no other possible cause. After that I moved in a large tank of water, and wet the area around the stand before shooting in dry times.

Junk Yard Dog wrote:There was some mention of it in the media at the time, there was a thread on the forum talking about it, probably in the archives someplace now. Steel core ammo can spark a fire, I had it happen when I suddenly had a pile of old target papers next to my target stand ignite while I was shooting. I was not shooting tracer, but was shooting steel core surplus ammo, there was no other possible cause. After that I moved in a large tank of water, and wet the area around the stand before shooting in dry times.

Steel core ammo as well as what is called bi-metal (coated steel jacket) is banned from a lot of dry areas because of fire danger. Regardless of the jacket type firing a weapon in a dry area that's not a designated range can start a fire. Ranges don't have the leaf litter like a forest floor does. I mean it's fire coming out of the rifle and in a non range situation, like out in the woods the fire danger is not only sparks from projetiles that contain steel but from the actual firing of the weapon. Ranges are concerned about fires at and around the target area as well as damage to them. I know when I lived in California everything is dry as a popcorn fart and like nuclear fuel. I lived on the Altamont Pass next to the speedway in a field during summer and the field was set on fire by some guys smoking dope. That fire moved so fast you couldn't out run it. Plus California has Eucalyptus trees everywhere. They shed huge amounts of bark and leaves as well as seeds that all contain very flamable oils. As bad or worse than pine needles. I lived in the Oakland Hills during the 1991 fire and those hills were full of it. I watched it from the front of the house. It stopped about 1/4 mile from me in Montclair. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakland_firestorm_of_1991

Those fires in Colorado are being blamed on shooters and also being used to try to reverse the law allowing firearms in national parks even though the fires were mostly on other public lands. http://www.outdoorlife.com/blogs/gun-sh ... rest-fires

That's why I like shooting in the sandpit at SWMBO's folks' farm.

I call the neighbor next door, out of courtesy, when I'm going down there to shoot. My a-hole BIL, the one that just 'got into' guns, (Dec. 21st 2012 thing) went down there, shot , and left all his cases on the ground. I was out hunting with Lil' Red at the time, we got down there just after he left. I picked up all the cases, and gave them to my FIL, who read the BIL the riot act. I'll bet there won't be any cases laying around after he shoots henceforth!

That idiot has muzzle swiped me every time I've taken him out and tried to teach him how to safely handle firearms. I told his wife to up his insurance, because he will probably blow his nuts off or worse.....