Got a plan, but will it work?

Sounds like a good, cheap starter project to me. I have never done one personally. Some traditionalist / historian types will argue that you are butchering a piece of history. Im not one of them. I respect their opinions, but respect your right to do what you want with your property more. Or, you could off to let anyone who has a problem with what you want to do rescue it for twice what you bought it for.

Good luck and have fun!

I'm thinking of doing the exact same thing. I've got 2 9130s that I cleaned up and refinished. I believe brassstacker.com has some pretty good pieces you may want to look into.

I'm one of those "historian" types that normally doesn't like the idea of a nice war rifle being chopped up.

My one piece of advice: look over and thoroughly research your specific rifle to make sure you don't have something special. Take note of any odd marks or stamps, dates, etc. Lots of information about that kind of thing can be found at 7.62x54r.net.

If you aren't careful about that, you could turn a rare, expensive, collectible variant into something with much less of its original value.

^^^this. At least get a non matching rifle, preferably after 42. Then butcher away

History aside, you won't learn much about smithing from attacking some old Mosin. Nor will you produce anything particularly worthwhile. You should focus on getting a cleaned up Mauser action and building a rifle around it. That's real gunsmithing. Or get a black powder kit and build one of your own from that. You'll learn about chisel work, inletting, drilling and tapping and a lot of other things in the process that apply to all firearms not just black powder guns. And at the end of the process you'll have something worthwhile and neat looking, even if it isn't perfect. My poor boy style .40 squirrel rifle flintlock has every mistake you can imagine in it, but it still looks nice and works. It's nice to have a starter project that's forgiving. To TRULY put together a properly done military sporter is actually one of the most difficult of all challenges. I have seen some good ones, but they were done by master smiths in the early part of the last century.

Tools are something I have just looked into myself and without proper tooling gunsmithing would be a hit and miss.

A good metal working lathe used can be had for around $2,000.00 if you're lucky and than you need to know what to look for in a lathe. Tolerances are VERY fine when building an accurate rifle. As well a metal working mill isn't cheap!

In the Mosin you're going to find expenses as well. Surplus ammo is a hit and miss thing if you're looking for accuracy, dies and brass are most likely going to cost more than the Mosin did to show gains in accuracy.

On the other hand stuff like bedding, drilling, tapping, crowning, polishing, texturing for spray and bakes aren't all that expensive to get into.

If your attention to detail is more than that of most you know and have the patience to go along with it maybe a few classes would be a good ground breaker.

I'm no smith but have looked at what it takes to get serious with smithing and the expense is my detourant.

This is a great begginer project, esspecially because arch angel is putting out a sweet ass stock for this gun soon. It looks awefully nice and free floats the barrel.. The most difficult portion of this project is mounting optics. If your able to get the rear sight off, its actually mounted on a dovetail rail. Typically these sights are soldered on, so youll have a hell of a time getting it off unless you heat it up real good. very rarely do they come off without ALOT of persuasion. The problem with this though, is the rear sight was soldered for a reason! the mosin has a serious kick. And will rattle off anything attatched in normal fasion to the dovetail. What I did with mine was installed a dovtail to picatinny conversion, resoldered for stabilty (not hard, just remember to clean the surface down to smooth and apply the flux! dont forget the flux!) then mounted my optics on the picatinny. This prooved solid. The mosin can be very accurate with the right set up. Theres also some monte carlo style stocks that can be bought for like 50 - 70 dollars for mosins... these stocks can be problematic for those who are not any good with a dremel. I bought one of these stocks, and it wasnt cut correctly, It didnt allow for the magzine to cycle rounds because theres a moving part in there that allows the bullet to move up. Anyhow, i had to sand that area down quite a bit to allow for that movement. (I know those arent professional terms, but wehat the hell, im not professional) I dont particulatly think the sanding had much effect on the accuaracy. Then again i never shot it passed 100 yards. so i dunno. Still i ended up trading that mosin. I wish i had it back. Good luck. Dont hesitiate to PM if you have any other questions

The rear sight on a Mosin is held with pins, not a dove tail.

If you take the rear sight off, theres a dovetail rail under there.

Let me rephrase, the plate that the reat sight sits on can be taken off, once you take that plate off theres a dovetail under there. (thats what is usually soldered on)

I know mine wasn't dove tailed.

Once again, theres a plate the rear sight sits on, the rear sight sits on that plate and if you pull the pins, you can disconnect the rear sight from that plate... that plate i speak of, is sitting on a dovetail... im 99.9 percent posiitve this is true of all mosins,.

I don't know how many thousands of guys chopped up Enfields, Mausers and Springfields in the 50's. you are in good company.