Noob Mosinite looking for help with all these marks!!!

[lilstinker762]

How in the world did i end up in a Mosin forum???

Hello everyone who hopefully reads this, I am a new owner of a Mosin 91/30 and yes i know there are literally millions of me lol. Anyway i've had this thing for maybe 2 weeks now and i've been looking online here, there and everywhere else and i'm pretty overwhelmed by all the information especially because a lot of the information and marks found by people seem to contradict each other and it would just be nice to talk some plain english with real people about russian marks! So what does one do? One goes online, joins a forum and immediately asks for help from strangers (i know, what a jerk).

So down to business. To me it looks like its in good condition for something about 80 yrs old but that's just based off my massive experience with just this one rifle and what i've seen in stores around here which look like they have been run over by cars or carried by someone who stepped on a landmine, yes really. I can see its Tula, hex 91/30, Its a refurb by the mark on the buttstock, its double dated obviously, It has an MO-which i believe i read somewhere is a ministry of defense mark?? Everything has matching numbers including the bayonet, its not counterbored and that's about all i know aside from the obvious. It has a PM 86 mark and a big square mark on the receiver and a big 3, I have no idea what those are. Also on the receiver are some small marks in circles and about a million other places all over the rifle. Everything on this rifle is marked...some only a 1/16 of an inch some as big as the big square refurb mark on the back and i mean everywhere, on the inside of the rifle and out, literally on every piece, usually more than one. As you can see I have a few of these marks down so by my calculations there's only about 3 or 4000 more to go conservatively.

I am including photos hopefully they upload and post well because they were a nightmare to upload and if there is anything i failed to mention or photo that would help, please let me know.
Also, notwithstanding all the help i really appreciate, i'm not very interested in just answering questions like where i bought it or how much i paid etc.

It's too heavy.
It's way too long.
It kicks like a Mule and could stop a train with the barrel alone.
It smells like History and i love it.

[Junk Yard Dog]

Welcome to the board You seem to have identified most of the important markings on the rifle, the small ones are inspection stamps and will remain unknown for now, or possibly forever. MO, didn't we have some new info on that one? The defense thing is out, just another theory with no provenance to back it up.

[steelbuttplate]

Anything you find with a triangle is a Ishevisk replacement part. The 3 is a mystery,? There is no shame in getting a slip on recoil pad for summertime, if you got long enough arms you can wrap your left hand around and put it between your buttplate and shoulder. Or you can do enough pushups til it feels like a .30 M1 carbine kick. (known as the hard way) You already know more that most FNG's, much info on markings on 7.62x54r.net Welcome....nice rifle.... SBP

[ParrotHead]

Most likely going to be an earlier dated recycled receiver too since hex receivers weren't made in 1937.

[King Johhny]

Nice rifle! That's a lot of marks! look on the info pages for some of them.

[ffuries]

PM and MO marked interesting. First I've seen marked with both.

[WeldonHunter]

Welcome to the madness. You asked how you ended up on a Mosin Nagant forum but you answered your own question and I quote "It's too heavy. It's way too long. It kicks like a Mule and could stop a train with the barrel alone. It smells like History and i love it." Sounds like some of the best reasons to me. I bought my first one in about 1999, a Polish M44 for about $69 and kicked myself years later for not buying more. It does kick like a mule and back then not a lot of people knew what it was and it drew a lot of attention at the range. It spoke for itself and was it's own salesman. I've since remedied the only having one, try 17 now and I'm a piker compared to a lot of guys here. This is some interesting reading about the refurbishment program, serial numbering and what these rifles now are. http://www.russian-mosin-nagant.com/ref ... index.html

[FR0STY54R]

First off, welcome to the forum, that is a beautiful rifle [emoji106]

The square mark on your barrel shank is the arsenal logo for the Soviet refurbishment facility that refurbed your rifle. The 7th Main Missile and Artillery Directorate facility based out of Riga, Latvia.


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[qz2026]

Welcome! Your first is a beauty, especially the pre war appropriate stock.

[lilstinker762]

Hey guys, big thanks for the really fast responses, links and answers. I'm sure yall know how much it helps. As soon as you type in Mosin or anything related into the search about a million results pop up completely clouding what you actually want to see. One thing i had noticed was how many diff people had gone to great lengths, with all due diligence for w/e reason, to start their own pages when if they had worked together we could have exponentially more data and in the same place, with likeminded people talking to each other without having to dive to the depths of the internet for answers already found but thats in a perfect world.
So here's what i've learned so far:

I don't know what a pre war appropriate stock is lol (qz2026)
One site said that late hex receivers like mine were collectible. I'll take it!
7.62x54r.net while having a vast array of info on it does not seem to have much about mine being why it is the way it is...No MO, if i'm even using the chart right, i'm not sure. Although some of the links provided by members here have led to valuable info and then secondary links etc etc with more good info.
I've only found 1 other example of a Tula PM-86 mark and that was a 1934?? i think on gunboard.com?? and i haven't seen any Tula with MO and PM marks.
I've completely missed a large, about half inch, "K" on the bottom of the stock this entire time leading me to believe that i am an idiot or completely blind lol but i still don't know what it means.
This rifle made in Tula, has izhevsk replacement parts, all the same #'s as seen in the pic, a Ukranian refurb mark on the stock and a semi large square on the shank from the 7th Main Missile and Artlillary in Riga,Latvia(FROSTY54R) This thing gets around! All this assuming these were marks made in the appropriate time frames and not after the fact by someone else, although its hard at best to think that someone could acquire pieces with the same #'s on them and put them together, tho its possible.
And it has about a 1000 proof marks on it that will never be rediscovered, some on my rifle i've found other instances of are just marked "unknown"

I thought when i bought this that i was going to add this to my collection but the more i dive into its history the more i think it may be the other way around. Either way as soon as i find a gypsy to relocate my shoulder from that last box i put through it i'm going to throw the bayonet on and see how accurate it is. Thanks again

[WeldonHunter]

I believe that stock is a late war/post war stock. It's kind of hard to tell from the picture but it looks like it has the pressed in sling slot escutcheons. Prewar are screw in, early and during the war they had only a front insert and no rear escutcheon. It was probably replaced during refurb along with the other parts. That's explained in the link I provided. These refurbished rifles in most cases are made from the parts of many other rifles from some or all of the other factories.

[FR0STY54R]

Hey guys, big thanks for the really fast responses, links and answers. I'm sure yall know how much it helps. As soon as you type in Mosin or anything related into the search about a million results pop up completely clouding what you actually want to see. One thing i had noticed was how many diff people had gone to great lengths, with all due diligence for w/e reason, to start their own pages when if they had worked together we could have exponentially more data and in the same place, with likeminded people talking to each other without having to dive to the depths of the internet for answers already found but thats in a perfect world.
So here's what i've learned so far:

I don't know what a pre war appropriate stock is lol (qz2026)
One site said that late hex receivers like mine were collectible. I'll take it!
7.62x54r.net while having a vast array of info on it does not seem to have much about mine being why it is the way it is...No MO, if i'm even using the chart right, i'm not sure. Although some of the links provided by members here have led to valuable info and then secondary links etc etc with more good info.
I've only found 1 other example of a Tula PM-86 mark and that was a 1934?? i think on gunboard.com?? and i haven't seen any Tula with MO and PM marks.
I've completely missed a large, about half inch, "K" on the bottom of the stock this entire time leading me to believe that i am an idiot or completely blind lol but i still don't know what it means.
This rifle made in Tula, has izhevsk replacement parts, all the same #'s as seen in the pic, a Ukranian refurb mark on the stock and a semi large square on the shank from the 7th Main Missile and Artlillary in Riga,Latvia(FROSTY54R) This thing gets around! All this assuming these were marks made in the appropriate time frames and not after the fact by someone else, although its hard at best to think that someone could acquire pieces with the same #'s on them and put them together, tho its possible.
And it has about a 1000 proof marks on it that will never be rediscovered, some on my rifle i've found other instances of are just marked "unknown"

I thought when i bought this that i was going to add this to my collection but the more i dive into its history the more i think it may be the other way around. Either way as soon as i find a gypsy to relocate my shoulder from that last box i put through it i'm going to throw the bayonet on and see how accurate it is. Thanks again

Honestly I've found the Mosin to be the easiest of all milsurp rifles to research. It has a huge collector base spanning multiple forums and even a couple dedicated websites. 7.62x54r.net being the most well known, even though it has become somewhat dated regarding a few things.

There are 3 types of stocks.

Pre war stocks have screwed in sling escutcheons



Wartime stocks have no escutcheons



Late/post war stocks have pressed in sling slot escutcheons



You will find pre war and war time manufactured rifles in post war stocks and you will find pre war rifles with war time stocks and war time rifles with pre war stocks and vice verse because of the gigantic refurbishment process these rifles went through after the war. There were numerous facilities refurbishing rifles and rifle parts all across Soviet controlled Europe.

Here is a list of some of them along with their respective arsenal logo


Basically these facilities completely stripped the rifles down to the last screw, made piles of the individual parts and after cleaning, rebluing and whatever else they did to the individual components of the rifles, they then proceeded to assemble new rifles out of these piles of stripped parts. The magazine floorplate, bolt body and buttplate were then force matched to the serial number on the barrel shank.

The MO marked rifles as described by 7.62x54R.net were apparently issued to the "Defense Ministry Militarized Security force" but that theory is controversial and many collectors now disregard it.

Each rifle is truly unique and that makes collecting them that much more appealing. You could have 3 rifles from the same year and factory yet still have 3 completely unique rifles.

The moral of the story. You can never have too many mosins.




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