Cheap ammo?

[lazs2]

boroda...  you should quit.. simply because you are talking... no, parroting...  some drivel about a subject that you know nothing about.   It was a crap gun...your country made a mistake... most likely it was the worst gun ever chosen for a military sidearm.

Fortunately... sidearms are really rarely used by the military.  it is kind of a moot point... mostly they are for ceremony or to give someone confidence that he is not unarmed.

you are the one who claimed all these feats of marksmanship for your dad... I am only claiming mediocre marksmanship... feats that the average handgunner here in the states can do if he shoots regularly.   hitting a 6' tall target that is more than 2 foot wide at 100 yards is hardly shooting a "squirrel in the eye".

You can't have it both ways... you can't have a revolver that is superior because it has crap tolereances and is also superior for accuracy... you can't have a perfect service sidearm that requires welding and stoning to get to shoot with any accuracy.

The barrel cyl gap on modern revolvers is from .002-.004"  that is thousandths of an inch... the dan wesson can actually adjust this..

At that kind of a gap.. the amount of escaping gas is minimal... many many many tests of this gap and its loss of gas and velocity and even sound have been made and the effect is minimal... at most... maybe 50 fps for velocity.

lazs

[Boroda]

Originally posted by lazs2
boroda...  you should quit.. simply because you are talking... no, parroting...  some drivel about a subject that you know nothing about.   It was a crap gun...your country made a mistake... most likely it was the worst gun ever chosen for a military sidearm.

My distant friend, I studied weapon engineering for 4 years. Not exactly the subject we discuss, but we had courses on all weapon types.

Again: you "tested" a rusty nagan.

It's like making a conclusion about modern M-16 with modern ammo as of a "magazine fed, air cooled, single shot, muzzle ejecting shoulder weapon".

Originally posted by lazs2
Fortunately... sidearms are really rarely used by the military.  it is kind of a moot point... mostly they are for ceremony or to give someone confidence that he is not unarmed.

Finally YOU said it.

As a match-shooting weapon Nagant is better then any automatic available in USSR.

I admire your approach. Testing a gun from self-cocking is an absolutely new and revolutionary way. JFYI: a properly tuned and at least clean nagan is easier on the trigger then a PM out of the box even on self-cocking, but if you fire it like that - then you are in real trouble.

Originally posted by lazs2
you are the one who claimed all these feats of marksmanship for your dad... I am only claiming mediocre marksmanship... feats that the average handgunner here in the states can do if he shoots regularly.   hitting a 6' tall target that is more than 2 foot wide at 100 yards is hardly shooting a "squirrel in the eye".

OK guys. You all are Davie Crocketts. We are all Ivan-the-fools. I have visited Father tonight, told him about a full-height target at 100m, he said, well, I'll probably do it, never tried though. What for?... And again he laughed about PM being more accurate then Nagan.

Don't you understand it yourself? It takes some courage to deny obvious.

Originally posted by lazs2
You can't have it both ways... you can't have a revolver that is superior because it has crap tolereances and is also superior for accuracy... you can't have a perfect service sidearm that requires welding and stoning to get to shoot with any accuracy.

You probably have "humanitarian" education, don't you?

Welding a front-sight and filing the rear is for match shooters. Working on trigger load is also quite simple, but it's all unnecessary for an ordinary serviceman. By default - any revolver is more reliable and accurate (if you don't shoot from auto-cocking, I hope I use right words, i have to check with the dictionary all the time in this thread) then any automatic.

Originally posted by lazs2
The barrel cyl gap on modern revolvers is from .002-.004"  that is thousandths of an inch... the dan wesson can actually adjust this..

0.1mm gap in Russia in 1895?! Impossible in mass-production. Oh, no, it was the limit.  Wait! Temperature expansion should be bigger then that.  Whom are you trying to fool?! Not even speaking about other things like placing cylinder holes exactly against the barrel, that is probably the biggest problem. BTW, S&W made revolvers with gas-seal according to Nagant patent too.

We had to order machinery from US and Germany to make Nagants. Russian engineering = designing things that work after being manufactured with lowest tolerance and making them perform as good as your high-tech overkill.

Originally posted by lazs2
At that kind of a gap.. the amount of escaping gas is minimal... many many many tests of this gap and its loss of gas and velocity and even sound have been made and the effect is minimal... at most... maybe 50 fps for velocity.

Again the money for the fish!...

We couldn;t make a cylinder cell stop against the barrel, with a jacketed bullet it will blow the gun up. So the cylinder comes upon the barrel, with cylinder almost hanging loose, tolerances are really bad, but the obturation is ebsured my a brass between a barrel and cylinder. No one cares about extra 15m/s. And revolvers can be hmmm let me check with dictionary again.. adjusted? zeroed? for those who want to shoot father then 25m. TT simply can't be properly adjusted. Grouping is awful. Nagant has the best grouping then any handgun available here.

And if you want to hit something 100m away - there are other weapons. I suggest a carbine

BTW, if you all have perfect eyesight - how do you shoot a full-height target at 100m from a handgun? Resting your wrist against a bag of peas? I spent some time in a shooting team, we never did anything like that, shooting from one hand, left hand in a pocket or on a waist. I shoot worse from two hands, but I was shooting at a range and, fortunately, never had a "target" shooting back at me. 20 years ago I only was able to place all shots guaranteed inside a black circle from 25m, and it wasn't the worst result in my team. I have very weak arms. Had to stand for hours holding loads on stretched arm. I don't even remember if Margolin has auto-cocking, we cocked it before the first shot.

[lazs2]

ok boroda.. I will give you the benefit of the doubt and try to realize that you have never shot an American made revolver.   I will also admit that I have never used one in sub zero climates.

I will also assume that you never shot handguns enough to really get to know what they do.

I will have to think all these things to explain how you think the way you do.

The gap on US and other revolvers is about .002-.004"...  I have never heard of any gun expanding so much that it locked up... we have some cold states... wouldn't all the metal... including the frame expand and the clearances stay about the same?

I have never heard that the old top break smith russian had problems with locking up in your country... and it used filthy old black powder.

Your dad never took shots at 100 yards with a handgun?   that seems odd... here... we do it all the time just for the hell of it.  We have several competitions where handguns are used out to 300 yards... it is not a big deal.

As for double action...  the fastest man here with double action shoots 6 rounds in about a fifth of a second and hits a man sized target... our revolver competitions involve mostly double action shooting.. we have not had single action target shooting here since the 50's.. why bother?

American double actions are smooth and... to tell the truth... many here shoot as well or better using trigger cocking than not.  I am old fashioned but even so... I can do will with a good double action.

Oh... my K22 smith was made in the 1930's and it was guarenteed to shoot 1' groups at 50 yards.

As for shooting.. I shoot both from sandbags and standing.  I shoot from sandbags to sight in guns and test ammo... I shoot standing or prone or sitting the rest of the time... it matters not tho shooting at a man sized target at 100 yards with a gun that is sighted in... childs play.

At the armory in sac (gun store) they had 5 nagants... all were under $125... not a single one was "rusty" and not a single one had a double or single action trigger that was even in the "acceptable" range... and...

not one had welded up sights... I have never seen one that was tuned or welded or had a good trigger sooooo... I have to assume that this was never done for the servicemen.

As for stopping power and handgun usefulness... maybe our guys are a little more familiar with firearms but.. we have always issued handguns with good stopping power (except for minor flirtations with the 38 colt) and... we have some good records of .45's being used by service men to kill multiple opponents with one shot each.

If you are going to carry a sidearm... it should have some power..  If you are going to carry a single action with a crummy trigger and sights...

You would have been much better off with the webley... it was a caliber that would stop a man and it was 100 times faster to load than the silly nagant.

I shot a webley converted to 45 acp (fairly common here) at a 4' target at 400 yards in nevada... just for fun of course... you know fun?  like drinking only without the blur?

The first shot with all the sight and half the barrel was about 200 feet low but on line.   The rest I simply kept aiming higher... like at the mountain range in the background.. finally at clouds..  did hit it eventually...  You could do it too if you worked at it.   You might not want to try it with the nagant...you would not be able to see the bullet strikes with that tiny little 100 grain bullet.

It was a crap gun.. only decent if you are to compare it to other soviet guns of the time but...

Knowing that all soviet handguns were a short range proposition... there is no soviet semi auto that I would not rather take into combat than the nagant.

They are all more powerful and plenty accurate for close work.   They can all be reloaded without calling a time out.

lazs

[Russian]

Laz, one more time. When Nagant was chosen, it was Tsar Russia, not soviet.

[Boroda]

One foot groups at 50 yards? So how are you going to hit anything at 100m?

About temperature expansion - it was just a guess out of my head.

Nagant drawing with English captions: http://alex---1967.narod.ru/waffe/437514_vzr_shem_nagan.JPG

You see, there is nothing too complicated, gas seal is implemented, i'll say, elegantly. If you tune it properly - it will probably be just a little heavier on the trigger then "traditional" revolvers.

Only 44 parts. Soldier's steel helmet has 32 parts.

The problem here is that you almost always have to work on everything with a file. Regulating a trigger force is one of the basic things, it's quite personal. Father said that shooting at 50m they had something like shneller on customized Nagants. And single action only.

There was a Soviet joke: Americans stole blueprints for newest Soviet jet-fighter, tried to assemble it according to drawing, and what they got was a railway steam-engine... They tried 3 times with the same result, and then kidnapped a Soviet engineer, Bauman uni graduate, he looked at the blueprints and laughed: "You see a small note here? After assembly - finish with a file!". BTW it was a genre of jokes about Americans kidnapping Soviet engineers to explain something

Nagants were produced with at least three types of sights, back sight V-shaped, square and semi-circular. Front sight also had different shapes.

[lazs2]

russian... yes, I knew that but..  the soviets kept the damn thing for decades.

boroda... you know someone who went to Texas and then moved back to russia.. that is the most amazing thing in the thread..

Oh.. on the K22 I meant 1" groups at 50 yards not one foot... sorry.

A "little heavier on the double action"??  you would have to tell me what you meant by a "little" everyone I have ever tried was a monster.   the truth is simply that it was a crap revolver that solved no problems but created new ones...

Why even have double action (it came in single action only at first) if you don't intend to use it?   as for the sights... yeah.. it came 3 different ways... all of em crap.

Look... I like all guns and especially handguns.. I would own a nagant.. they are dirt cheap here with little or no appeal but.. the ammo is very expensive and not reloadable in any real way.

It is also one of the most impotent rounds you can fire... About the only thing weaker is a .25 auto and no one shoots them.

It also has crap sights and double action... any work to fix those things take away from it's historical value.. as a shooter in historical trim...it has no value.

So far.. the above has made it pretty much worthless for me.. for most everyone too as the bargin basement prices for them will indicate.

lazs

[Russian]

Prices for ammo are dropping due to Russian factories restarting manufacturing process. So far I see 50 for 22$. I expect that to drop once more people buy cheap piece of history.

Today I went to a store to sign paperwork and got to touch my new toy. The pull on a trigger is not 9kg. It's about same as .44Mag S&W Long barrel that I keep under the bed. The gun itself seems to be brand new with manufacture day of 1931. Now I need to wait 10 days  

[lazs2]

boroda... here is an article on long range handgun shooting that shows what I am talking about.

http://www.handgunsmag.com/tactics_training/shot_022305/

You will note that the guns used are semi autos not normally considered for long range work...  the calibers are also relatively weak so far as long range shooting  with handguns is concerned.   Any good .357 or 44 mag revolver would do much much better... even a 45 colt... not to mention some of the new and more powerful revolver rounds like the 454, 460, 480 and the insane 500 smith and wesson.

The point is that every one of those weak calibers in defensive semi autos could hit man sized targets out to 200 yards... revolvers routinely double that distance.

It mentions a fact that I had almost forgotten..  the cops used to practice at 50 yards back when they were issued .357 revolvers.  

russian...  I think you need to put a trigger scale on those guns... my smith is about 8lbs double action and about 3.5 single as is my ruger 44... ruger might be 4 lbs single but has a better double action.   I think you will find that the nagant is about twice that.

As for ammo prices... I reload.. it costs me about $4.50 a box of 50 to reload the 44 mag or 45.. factory 45 ammo is about $12 a box... 44 mag...  high as $30.

The nagant stuff is not reloadable... you will never see it much less than $20 a box... that is a lot of money to shoot such a weak caliber and... I hate throwing away brass.   I have heard that you can get a cylinder for the nagant that will allow it to shoot .32 auto rounds.   they will cut the cost of shooting the gun in half.

I only shoot one gun in .32   the walther PPK... it is an ok gun to shoot but I won't bother to reload the tiny .32 ammo..  I don't shoot it enough to matter in any case.

Same for my makarovs.. I buy the cheap russian ammo by the thousand at about $6 a box (maybe $9 now)  I don't shoot them much.

The guns I shoot are the .45's and 44 mags.   I reload for them and get a lot of bang for the buck.   I know that out to about 200 yards I have a good chance of scaring the hell out of anything I can see.   They are accurate and cheap to shoot and the 44's are very powerful.   very versatile caliber...

I can load the 44 to mild 1000 fps loads that still have 3 times the energy of the nagant or... to 1400 fps hand smackers that will have a half a ton of energy.

oh... old guns are better as they age if taken care of.. my old smith K22 has a 2 lb single action... many shooters fire it by accident while trying to get on target even after being warned..   as a gun is used the parts wear in... this is pretty much what a gunsmith does to new guns to "tune" them.. he stones the rough places.. maybe takes a tad off the sear notch for less creep..

you can do the same thing by shooting the gun for a decade or three of... dry firing the thing for a few hours a day for a couple of months.   I have a trigger scale and you would be amazed at the horrible triggers that come from the factory these days...

To be fair.. some of it is fear of liability..."accidents" they will get sued for.  Some is because of new systems like the glock.. lots of creep is normal.  Others... like dan wesson and kimber and wilson and such...come with under 4 lb triggers that break like a glass rod.   sweet.

lazs

[Boroda]

And again: I don't pretend that I am even a mediocre pistol shooter, and, due to historical reasons () I didn't have an opportunity to shoot as many gun types as you, Lazs.

I look at Nagant as a piece of very smart and elegant engineering. And this revolver has a unique historical background.  It has some disadvantages, like reloading system, but the general idea is brilliant.

The choice of the cartridge was made because Army wanted to switch to unified caliber, like 4.2 lines with Berdan/S&W. And the cartridge probably can't be made any longer for obvious reasons. Anyway it kills at 50m, that' enough.

Nagant came in two versions from the very beginning, single-action "soldier's" and double-action "officer's". The reason for "soldier's" version was a belief that a soldier will shoot all 7 rounds too fast and then become unarmed. The funniest thing about it is that single-action version was more expensive... After the Revolution only officer's Nagant stayed in production.

Shooting a handgun at 200m or more is insane. Even APS that has sights marked up to 200m has a detachable wooden butt/holster.

8lbs = over 3.6kg trigger load!? And you still prefer shooting double-action? I am sure your revolver hero has much smaller trigger force, he took some time and tuned his gun

I'll try to find you a better Nagant drawing, so you'll see it's far from being overcomplicated, and gas - seal shouldn't give any significant extra load on the trigger.

There is a certain difference between "cylinder gap" and tolerances I mentioned. Hard to explain it in foreign language, it was hard for me even in Russian I can't find most of the terms even in polytechnical dictionary.

[lazs2]

borada... yes.. I can see where you might not have had much experiance.. but... like your theory about cold weather making a conventional revolver useless.. the idea of the nagant being brilliant is wrong also.

I hope you read the article... believe me.. there are plenty on this BB who could do as well or better.

It was a bad idea with no real reason to exist.. it limited the power of the gun and did nothing for velocity except maybe 50fps which is nominal and at the cost of using a sub caliber round and complex ammo.

The trigger pull is so bad because it has to move the cyl forward.

The 8 lb trigger pull on modern double action revolvers is not as bad as it sounds.. it is very smooth and breaks crisply.. I can't explain this.. you would need to feel it yourself.. for a comparison... I would guess that the nagant had a 6 lb single action...  most people really can't tell till they try guns with good triggers.

As for the nagant needing to be the way it was because of manufacturing tolerances...  if you can't make a revolver with a .002-.004 cyl gap and a hand and cyl stop that index the cyl and barrel to within a couple of thousands... you could not make ball bearings... you could not build rifles or rifle any weapon... the tolerances could never have been an issue.

As for "killing at 50 meters"  I doubt that the nagant could be relied on to kill at point blank except for the shot to the back of the head of a kneeling prisoner...  At 50 yards... the remaining energy would be so poor that even thick clothing or gear would stop the bullet.    The energy is about like a .32 auto round..

While 32's have done their share of killing... they have done far more of their share in wounding... worse.. they wound without the person being shot even knowing he was shot till much later.   By then... he has run you through with his bayonet.  

I would not want a nagant for a service arm.. there is no soviet pistol that I would not rather use as a service weapon... the old smith russian would still be my first choice for stopping tho.

But.. as I said.. it is a strange and interesting curio... much like the webley forstenr (however that is spelled)  you know..  the automatic revolver?

They have much in common... both guns are interesting and complicated solutions to non existent problems and both are relegated to the "have a good chuckle" pile of firearms history.

lazs

[Boroda]

Just one thing before I go to bed, will have to work early tomorrow.

Originally posted by lazs2
As for the nagant needing to be the way it was because of manufacturing tolerances...  if you can't make a revolver with a .002-.004 cyl gap and a hand and cyl stop that index the cyl and barrel to within a couple of thousands... you could not make ball bearings... you could not build rifles or rifle any weapon... the tolerances could never have been an issue.[/B]

First ball-bearings were produced here only in the 30s, IIRC. On imported equipment. No ball-bearings made here before that.

Lasz, you just have no idea of how backwards my country was before the Revolution. By 1914 less then 2% of the population worked in industry. I mean - all industry from textile to metallurgy. Only about one out of ten was literate.

Frankly speaking I envy you guys. "Tolerances could never have been an issue" - maybe in some other place. Looks like you don't read my posts at all.