Finnish-captured 1920 Tula M91 (First Post!)
Posted: Wed Mar 25, 2015 7:23 am
Greetings everyone! Here is my 1920-dated Tula Model 1891 infantry rifle, which was captured by Finland either during the Winter War or the Continuation War, and later re-built by them. The receiver and barrel show plenty of tooling marks; signs of hurried wartime production during the birth of the Soviet Union. I do not know the tang date because the barrel bands cannot slip over the nails in the stock, so it has not been disassembled. It has a walnut stock from a New England Westinghouse-contract M91 rifle, which was captured by one of the Central Powers (probably Austria-Hungary) and drilled for their sling swivels. The stock has been serial'ed to match the rifle. The handguard has copper rivets and is extremely worn and rough. The bolt is numbered on the handle and almost matches the rifle; I think it is more likely an armorer's mistake rather than a bolt from a different rifle that just happened to be one very similar digit off (the bolt reads 8643, whereas the rifle is N108648). The bolt is a mix of Izhevsk and Tula parts, with a Sestroryetsk extractor. The magazine body and follower assembly are all Tula but I think older than the action; the floorplate number does not match. The rear sight is still graduated in Arshini, but does have a new minimum setting roughly cut into the rear of the base. The bore is decent with only one region of pitting about 3" down from the crown, with a reasonably tight muzzle. I have shot it, and noticed that the case shoulder was blown forward, but overall case length did not change. The sling it wears now is Finnish-captured Soviet canvas. I had trouble keeping the sights in focus, so I didn't do the rifle justice with my shooting. It's really neat to have a rifle that probably fought in both the Russian Civil War and for both sides of the Russo-Finnish wars.
good looking old war horse.
