Just bought a collector-grade Finnish Mosin Nagant M39. It is one of the batch made in 1967 through 1973. The importer lists them as "match rifles," but the Finnish sources state that they were made for officer marksmanship training. This one, made in 1967, is probably unfired and still has the arsenal hang tag attached to it. It was made at the Helsinki Arsenal. It is a nice gun, but it is still ugly.

What brings this up is that the Finns rifled and chambered their rifles for .308 diameter bullets up to WWII. At that time, they saw the problem with Russia coming and switched over to a .310-.311 groove and bullet diameter so the rifles would function with captured Russian ammunition. Many of the older rifles were rebarreled to the new dimension and some were merely opened up in the neck. This one has a .311 groove diameter and shoots .303 caliber bullets quite well. Nowadays in Europe, the .308 diameter round is designated "x 53R" and the .311 diameter round is designated "x 54R." In the U.S. the terms are interchanged freely, so slugging the barrel of your Mosin is in order.

All of the American die manufacturers of which I am aware, make reloading dies suited for .308 diameter bullets. Nevermind that all of the rifles coming in now, Russian and Finn, take .311 diameter bullets. Brass is expensive (as in Lapua brass) and simply changing the expander ball to .303 works, but overworks expensive brass.

I just called Forster, asking them if they made a die suited to the larger bullet. Forster is one of the few makers to produce dies for small cartridge dimensional differences, e.g., they make both .308 Win and 7.62 x 51 mm (called "National Match") dies. What is really neat is that they offered to open up the neck on my standard die for a measly $10.00 and replace the expander ball. I ordered a complete new die on the spot. Nice to find a manufacturer that understands our needs.

Credits: www.mosinnagant.net for most of the stuff.

There is less expensive brass made by Prvi Partizan, Grafs and others around.

I'll look but I'm nearly 100% sure my RCBS dies came with 2 expanders,One .308 and the other .312.

All Finn barrels were .3095 except the M28-30, which had a .3082 bore. The M39 has a .310 bore as you said so they could take advantage of the large amount of Soviet ammo that was captured during the Winter War, 1940.

You can get Lee dies and request a .303 expander and you will be good to go.

The load I use in mine is the "accuracy" load listed in the Sierra manual. You'll be really surprised at the accuracy of your Finn. Mine will shoot right along with my National Match M1, M1A, and Springfield. As for surplus ammo, Albanian is really good ammo, corrosive of course. Shoot it and enjoy. Oh, they aren't ugly!

I have been reloading the Partizan brass from Grafs for some time now, and it works in most of my rifles, but the primers sit pretty far down in the brass, and one of my polish M44s won´t fire it. I think they were using the depth of the Berdan primer, but I´m not sure.

I saw the guys from Grafs at the nurnberg IWA a few years ago and complained about it. They said I should be lucky to find that brass at all, and blew me off.

They are right. I hope they correct that problem one day.

You aught to try the Lapua D66 bullet in your M39, you´ll really see what it can do!

Murkan Mike,
What primer brand and number are you using?