Episode 65: Two cartridges for hunting season, and the Mosin reburbishment project

.30-06 and .308 Win cartridges

The advantages of reloading your own cartridges are numerous. Two of the ones that I happen to enjoy are the .308 Winchester and the .30-06 Springfield. Now, any discussion of these two cartridges usually ends up in a holy war of Ford/Chevy/Dodge proportions. That’s not what I’m after here. We will discuss the capabilities of these two cartridges, since they’re so wildly popular. I happen to favor the .30-06 by a bit, but I also reload, shoot, and enjoy the .308 Win as well. The first segment will be .30-06. The second segment will be about the .308 Win.

Finnish Mosin M39

Then, we get to the ongoing Mosin-Nagant project. This is a Chinese-made barreled receiver (stripped) with essentially a sewer-pipe-like barrel (meaning: there was virtually no rifling left). I took this Mosin and am in the process of saving it, turning into something that I hope will be great. When you run across an old milsurp rifle that hasn’t been treated very well, it’s OK to do a total refurbishment and modernization. It’s not “bubba’ing” a rifle at all in such a situation. In this case, I’m going for sort of a “Finnish M39 with a strong American accent” sort of rebuild. And yes, the rifle is getting *totally* rebuilt. New barrel, new bluing, scope mount, and more.