What ex-sniper means?

[nexikan]

Hello,

This is my first post on the forum. I am very new to the topic.
I am trying to understand what ex-sniper means? How and why that happened that rifles became ex-sniper. How to identify them?
Are there fake ex-snipers on the market? I am assuming ex-sniper should perform better than other regular rifles, is this right?

Thank you!

[SA1911a1]

The Soviets fielded many more sniper rifles in WWII than any other country. After the war, there came a time when it made sense to them for a variety of reasons to mothball most of their Moisn rifles, including snipers. I sniper rifle may have been "de-snipered" (for lack of a better term) perhaps because is simply wasn't needed in the quantities that they had, it may have been worn out of spec, or any other number of reasons. Sometimes the Soviet's actions are not easily understood....By the time that they were refurbishing these rifles they were so obsolete as to make you wonder why they went through the effort at all. Some theorize that it was just make-work for a gazillion out of work Communists.

Most of the time they completely rebuilt the rifles as 91/30s by swapping stocks and plugging and welding up the holes in the receiver where the mount bolted on, replacing the bolt, and renumbering the whole thing. They usually, but not always polished out the old scope numbers as well.. You can see the results of the plugged holes by opening the bolt, it is quite obvious. I don't think that anyone is "faking" exes because the generally don't bring a lot more money than the standard 91/30 refurbs. If picking among ten refurbished 91/30s, all equal, I would probably select the ex-sniper but I wouldn't pay more than ten bucks for it. The only reason I might pay the extra ten bucks is it might be a little better shooter, or it might not...;)

A quick search on google should find you a photograph of what the plugged holes look like. You usually can't tell on the outside after they were polished out, but they are obvious on the inside. Probably someone who is a bit more familiar with searching this site will link you to a pic.

[Darryl]

Look in the "Knoledgebase" above
app.php/page/64

Darryl

[nexikan]

Thank you very much SA1911a1 for the explanation! really appreciate it! And Thank you Darryl for the link, will study it now! Cheers

[44 30-06]

Great information, thank you for the message

[steelbuttplate]

An ex-sniper was accuracy tested back in the day, put 2-3 thousand rounds thru it and that accuracy starts dropping, the ones I've had were not extraordinary shooters.