Mosin Bolt Issues

[westscoutguy]

Alright, so I have a Finn M91, 1942 Tikka, PL and SA marked. Beautiful rifle, wonderfully accurate, but I found myself having issues trying to turn the bolt after firing. I'm thinking that this is either a simple sticky bolt or the ammo I was using, but I'm really not sure. I only had this issue with surplus military ammunition, if a headstamp picture is necessary then I'll get one. PPU brass cased ammo fed fine and didn't cause any issues. It's a mixmaster bolt with nonmatching serials and varying arsenal parts, mostly Remington and Tula. So what of this could be causing a malfunction? It was bad enough that an older gentleman had to come over to me at the Archbald range and hold the rifle down so I could beat the bolt open- which, if he's here, my thanks to him. This isn't an immediate issue at the moment, but it's something I'd like to fix, given the 100-odd rounds of surplus I have. Many thanks for any advice you can offer.

[Gunsnwater]

High pressure would do that. Especially since the ppu works well.

[Hodgie]

Could be sticky bolt but I wouldn't bank on it, is your surplus ammo heavy or light ball?

[westscoutguy]

I believe it's Russian heavy ball, I don't have a round on hand to check (college dorm, sorry).

[markshere2]

With Mosin Nagant that is a common issue

Use that Google thingy

Here's a good link

https://www.survivalistboards.com/sh...d.php?t=834402

[Ecclectic Collector]

Good link:

Here's a shorter, more concise explanation pulled from the old 763X54R web site.

So you're using steel cased ammo? Steel cased ammo was normally used in MGs where hard extraction isn't an issue. Many Mosins have rough chambers, and/or cosmo residue which adds to the problem. Check your chamber. Clean and polish as needed until it is very clean. This should reduce the problem with the laquered steel case ammo.

Better, try using brass cased or cases that aren't laquered.

The problem varies from rifle to rifle. I have several Mosins and I've had one rifle work just fine with the steel cased stuff while an identical rifle practically needs a mallet to open the bolt after each shot from the same box of ammo.

[Noah_Zark]

It's fairly common with Mosins. The bolt handle is relatively short compared to those of other milsurp boltguns and there's reduced leverage for both unlocking the action and extracting the case.

I simply unshoulder the rifle and "upward slap" the bolt handle of my Mosins and that usually unlocks them. Wearing a glove helps if firing a quantity of rounds.

Noah

[Lee-online]

Cleaning and polishing the chamber with a 20g bore brush, bore paste and a drill will to wonders.

Another trick is to pull the cocking knob before you open the bolt. It removed the spring tension from the bolt.

Watch this old video, at the end when firing they do this.

[borekfk]

It Mosin. You need strength of strong Siberian Bear to open stuck bolt.

[Hodgie]

The easiest work around for this issue is to shoot Mausers, preferably Argentine or Sweedish.