notebook: Mosin-Nagant history

Retrieved: December 06, 2013

Back shortly after the US Civil War, Hiram Berdan (yes, *that* Berdan) designed a large bore bolt-action rifle for the Russian military. Most of the rifles were made at Chateullerault in France. later, Berdan came out with a newer version, imaginatively called the Berdan No.2. The "Berdanka" served the Tsar's armies for a decade or so, until they decided to upgrade to a modern bolt-action repeater. That was the Mosin-Nagant.

Somewhere on one of those picture-hosting boards I came across a full set of dimensioned drawings for the Berdan No.2. It was instantly obvious that the Mosin-Nagant was the Berdan with the minimum number of modifications to turn it into a repeater. They went to a bolt with front locking lugs, stuck a magazine on it, screwed on a new .30 caliber barrel instead of the 11mm one, and voila! Doing further research I found that during WWI there was a shortage of rifles, so the Tsar's armorers grafted Mosin magazines and barrels onto stockpiled Berdans, retaining the bolt and single locking lug.

Anyway, the Mosin bolt is a seriously strange piece. It's pretty instantly recognizeable, which is why I came across some pictures of the innards of an old French Lebel rifle from the 1880s and thought, "WTF?"

The Tsar's committee that engineered the Berdan into the Mosin did a bit less innovation than I thought. They simply adapted the Lebel bolt assembly to the Berdan, stuck M. Nagant's constant-tension magazine on, and rebarreled to the new cartridge.

I don't know who did the cartridge design, but we're talking about the dawn of the smokeless era. Someone did good. The 7.62x54R is still in use by the Russian military. And modern Sellier & Bellot commercial 54R falls right between 7.62x51 NATO and .308 Winchester.