The Russian Mosin Nagant Forum

Hi everyone,

I picked up this Mosin today from my FFL after winning it in an auction. It began its life as Cossack rifle(KA3 Marked) made by Izhevsk in 1896, and has been converted a few times since. Hopefully everyone here can provide some clarification if my research is incorrect.

From what I have learned through my research, these were originally converted from M91's, Cossack's or Dragoon's to M44 spec with a folding bayonet. This is evident by the bayonet cut existing even on early stocks with no cross-bolt, and all M91/38 examples having a M44 wide sight base. From my research, only 2 of these versions with the bayonet are documented to exist in the US.

Then apparently at some point they again decided to convert these rifles to M38 specs by eliminating the bayonet and lug and milling it off the front sight base. You can see this on M91/38's by the remaining M44 style wide sight base, as well as the pin for the M44 sight. I will point this out in my photos.

Anyway on to the photos of this rifle:
The Receiver:
Various Serial Numbers:
The sight base, and where the M44 sight pin was:
Markings on the wood, feel free to add any info you have on these:

Not your run of the mill find for sure. One heck of a nice addition!!!

Neil will want to archive that one.

That's beautiful, thanks for sharing !

Very nice!

I like that one a lot. The antique ones are my favorites and this one was not already in the database.

I know about a lot of 91/38s that have entered the market in the last two years so listings and sales should be popping up on the big auction site soon, if not already.