This Christmas I received a valuable gift from a family friend. We both share an interest in history and firearms and are of the same mindset on how historical items such as firearms should be treated. The gift was a firearm, not an uncommon one. In fact, this general type is often the start of military surplus rifle collections in the USA.
A Mosin-Nagant.
In this case, an M44 Carbine manufactured in the USSR by the Izhevsk arsenal in 1945.
The carbine, with the extended bayonet, awful paint, and the book that has provided most of the information about the carbine that I will be using for this project.
This is a project rifle, one or more of the previous owners has done a number or ten on this carbine, something that is all too common with how cheap imported Mosin-Nagants of all types were for several years. The mauling done by these garage gunsmiths to this M44 consists of but is not limited to:
Use of wood putty to fill in the sling holes in the stock.
Removal/loss of the cleaning rod.
Filling of the cleaning rod channel with more wood putty.
Part of the left rear of the stock was cut away to mount some sort of rail or scope, which has since been somewhat capably repaired.
Nearly every small pit, chip, and scratch in the stock have been filled with wood putty no matter how small they are.
A thick and shoddy coat of dark brown gloss paint was applied to the stock, and some spilled over onto the permanent metal fittings.
This is a disgusting thing to have done to a carbine, the paint was already peeling off because of how poorly it was applied.
Despite these crude modifications, the mechanical components of the action are rock solid more than 50 years after it was built. The large number of proof markings are still on the receiver and other parts of the rifle, including the markings of the Izhevsk Arsenal which produced the majority of the Russian M44s between 1943 and 1948. Best of all, the side folding bayonet is still attached to the weapon.
With a mangled but mostly intact rifle, one of the more than 3.4 million M44s made in 1945, the question now is of intentions for this project. My M44 is not very valuable in terms of money, ones in far better condition are on gunbroker.com right now for less than $400. But to me, it's historical value is not something that can be put down so clearly.
The markings of the Izhevsk Arsenal are the hammer-and-cycle and the arrow-in-triangle that can be seen on the top of the receiver. The year is correct but is not a guarantee of how old it actually is under US law.
So, my intention is to return this carbine to as close as it was when it was in service as I can. That is my main interest in this carbine, how it would have been during WWII or after the war when it went through re-arsenaling.
But to do that, return the carbine to as close to its original state as I can, it's important to know what exactly I have to start with. For that, I have turned to the internet and the book from North Cape Publications about the Mosin-Nagant for photos, diagrams, and descriptions.
The book in question, this is an outstanding book for all types of Mosin-Nagant rifles and carbines.
The stock is a typical WWII production M44 stock, 36 1/4 inches long, made of solid birch wood with two barrel band springs, a stock bolt for strength, a groove for the side folding bayonet, and two holes for attaching a sling. Some M44 stocks have a sort of notch just behind the rearmost barrel band spring, which mine does not have, but looking at photos of other M44s that were made during the war, this seems to indicate that my stock is not a replacement from when the carbine was re-arsenaled for a rebuild. It has the standard Russian blued nosecap which is secured with a single screw.
The defining feature of the M44 aside from its length is the side folding bayonet attached to the right side of the carbine. Mine features the first version of the bayonet, the Type 1, which is found on war production M44 carbines. It is 15.1 inches long, made of heavily blued steel, and has a nasty cruciform shape that is very hard to stitch up. This make of carbine was the first to be equipped with a fixed bayonet like this, and it remained a feature on the M44 copies made by other communist nations after production in Russia stopped.
Sights are a simple Type 5 leaf at the rear and a Type 2B or Type 2C hooded front post, with the leaf graduated in hundreds of meters from 100 to 1000. The hood is slightly bent out of shape, but the actual post is in the proper place still.
There is nothing special about this carbine really, aside from that it is now mine. But I feel like I have an obligation now to fix this weapon up as best as I can, and I hope that this will be informative for anyone who wants to do the same.
The next in this series will be about the stock, and how it will have been repaired and cleaned up from what it looks like in the photos in this post.
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