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I notice somebody already mentioned http://7.62x54r.net/

http://mosinnagant.net/ is also a good one.

The best way I’ve found to get cosmoline off of milsurp rifles is with plain old boiling water. Take the rifle out of the stock and down strip the bolt. Drop the small parts into a five gallon bucket.

Wipe/scrape as much of the excess grease as possible. Also, push a rod through the bore and get as much out as possible.

You’ll want gloves while your doing the rest of this because it’s HOT. With the small parts in the bucket, squirt some good grease cutting dish washing liquid (Dawn seems to work well) into the bucket. Then while holding the receiver/barrel over the bucket, pour boiling water over it. This pretty much melts the grease into the bucket, and the hot water falling into the bucket degreases the smaller parts as well. Make sure you coat the small parts in dish washing liquid so the melting grease doesn’t re-stick to them!

When you’re through, the rifle and small parts will be “relatively” grease free.

Watch out for a barrel that’s “counter bored”. This is where it was arsenal refurbed, and was determined to be worn, but not worth rebarreling “yet”. So they counter bore a section starting at the muzzle. One that I had was counterbored about an inch. It’s easy to tell if your rifle is counterbored. Just drop a 7.62x54 round into the barrel, pointy end first. IF it drops EASILY over the ogive of the bullet, then yours is counterbored. You’ll probably be able to see it with a light as well, and you can DEFINITELY tell if you’ve got a dial caliper with “inside” calipers.

I don’t understand everybody talking about recoil on the M91/30. I weight 150 lbs soaking wet and mine never bothered me. I had the long version, as well as a carbine, and both were comfortable to shoot. The long one was very, VERY accurate too!

One other “tidbit”... Russian military doctrine dictated that bayonets stayed FIXED on the rifles during use. They were zeroed in with the bayonet fixed as well. Most people discover that the rifle is horribly out of zero when they first fire it. But if you put the bayonet on it, zero will correct. We re-zeroed with the bayonet removed.

Anyway... now you’ve made me miss our M91/30s! :-)