Nagant Revolver

[Cheesehead]

http://www.jgsales.com/russian-1895-nagant-revolver,-in-7.62-nagant-caliber,-with-holster.-p-1059.html

These look interesting, unique and inexpensive. Does anyone have any experience with them?

Cheese

[EastKY_DO]

I have one that's not a bad shooter.  I shoot it single action almost exclusively since the double action trigger pull is on the order of 1000 lbs.  Seriously, it is heavy.  I don't have a trigger pull scale, but I would guess the DA pull is between 10-15 lbs.  It loads like an old single action with a loading gate on the right side of the frame.  A little unrefined, but not bad for the price.  Ammo can be a little bothersome to round up.

My $0.02

[whetrock]

I've got one. While it isn't the most practical handgun by todays stringent standards, it's a reasonable shooter with some really cool historical significance at an incredibly low price. I'm glad I bought mine. Ammo is a bit spendy, but fun and unique as far as I'm concerned. I believe life's too short not to pick up these inexpensive surplus pieces, while possible. Who knows maybe they'll prove to be good investments in the future.... or maybe not, all in all who cares, it was in WWII and that's worth quite a bit to me. They wreak of the USSR.

[lonedog]

I had one but traded it off for some smith work. I was intending to get a second and maybe campaign them in Cowboy Action Shooting. So I bought the first pair of cowboy holsters ever built by Bob Mernickle for Nagants. (Yes you might be a CAShooter if you spend more for holsters than the guns to put in them). Those mahogany holsters are now for sale if anyone is interested as nothing else I have fits in them.

Ammo is pricey but readily available from the Serbs and the Italians. Fun gun with the longest hammer mounted firing pin of all time. I mean Rube Goldberg long. And yes it does reek of history.

[Nobade]

Not to mention it's the best black powder revolver ever made. The gas seal feature keeps the fouling in the bore instead of all over the outside. With BP it is quite a bit more powerful than with any safe (max pressure 11,000 psi) smokeless load.

Use Privi brass, it's cheap from Graf's. Use 30 carbine taper crimp die to crimp the case, no other tools needed once they are fireformed other than to de/re prime. Any .311 - .312 cast bullet with good BP lube.

The commercial Privi and regular Russian ammo isn't all that accurate and low powered. The Russian is corrosive if you use any, but it is fairly cheap. The Privi can be reloaded, the Russian can't unless you can find the right primers.

Wonderful toys, and certainly entertain all onlookers when you pull one out and start blazing away with black powder loads.

[Awf Hand]

Sorry so late to this thread, as I just happened on it.  I've got 4 or maybe 5 of these Nagants.  One of them I have modified extensively for use in slow-fire target shooting.  It is not great, but not bad -but not great.  I bought them at a time when they were going for around $40 in new, unissued condition with holster, lanyard and screwdriver.  At the same time I bought them, I bought the conversion cyclinder which would allow shooting of .32acp.  The cylinders require a fair bit of use to 'work in' but allow a far more common caliber.  The .32acp round seems a bit more accurate than the 7.62 Nagant round, but I'd not done any kind of load work-up on the 7.62 rounds.
They are a 7 shot, which is kind of neat.  They also gas-check the cylinder which adds a lot of poundage to the DA trigger pull.  A previous poster claimed 10-15 lbs.  I've never put it on a scale, but I would say it is all of that.

[GarrettJ]

It's one of those guns that I keep thinking I should get one or two of.  Due to the unique gas seal, it makes for a practical revolver to use as a suppressor host.  Where most other revolvers are going to be pretty loud, due to gas escaping through the cylinder gap, and still going "boom". 

[1911crazy]

If we search we can find the Russian ammo for this.