I went back to the pawn shop/gun store to look at the M39 I had seen there before. I have a prefectly good Russian MN 1891/30 made in 1939 at Tula.
At the pawn shop they had two M39's, both with import marks on the barrel near the front sight and hex frames. One was for $155 on consignment without the cleaning rod and with a crack on the top of the stock guard above the barrel. It was an SA barrel, 1944 mfg mark and the barrel looked pretty clean, but the rifling was not what I would call new square or sharp. The finish was mostly gone and there were some hammer marks on the reciever near the SA barrel/reciever joint.
The second M39 was for $75 and it had the cleaning rod, but the stock had two cracks one on each side of the hand guard band. This second one had an SA barrel and 1943 mfg mark. The bore looked really "fuzzy" that is the best way to describe it. I asked the pawn shop owner if he could run a patch through the bore and he did for me. The patch came out brown like dried cosmoline, but he said the bore was probably damaged by corrosive primers. Most of the bluing was gone.
I toyed with the idea of offering $200 for both, but finally decided to go and think about it some more. Neither was in great shape, but they also looked very shootable. Both had "matching numbers" to the extent some could be seen as having two sets of serial numbers, one of which matched everything else on the rifle.
I finally left and when to the range to shoot handguns (22 Ruger pistol, 357 Ruger Blackhawk, and 45 (Long) Colt Ruger Blackhawk. Decided I would post this and see what kind of thoughts folks have. I really don't need another MN. If I get another rifle, it will be because I would like a very acurrate military rifle at a bargain basement price.
The owner said since I must like MN's, he was going to tempt me. He brought an MN that someone had put a fluted stainless steel barrel and painted the barrel black, welded a bent bolt handle on, put on a funkey scope mount and scope over the action, a built in biopod, and a strange sniper/modern type of adjustable stock with adjustable monte carlo device. He wanted $125 for that. I said that it looked like someone had attemped to make a silk purse out of a sows ear. The shop owner said something like "polishing a turd."
The point of the post one is that if you want to spend serval hundred dollars tricking out a rifle you might not want to end up with something more than a $125 rifle.
Any thoughts on what I should do would be appreciated. I am leaning toward waiting to see a really high quality rifle before i purchase my next milsurp.
