Some more observations on the 7.62x38R 1895 Nagant

I've had this gun for almost 2 years or so now. I've slugged the barrel after reading a few more articles saying the original bullet diameter was .295". That still makes me scratch my head a little, the example I have slugged to .302 lands and .312 grooves. So from that I'm good in both the cast and jacketed bullet area. Technically my cast bullets should be done up around .313 but with such a low power / low velocity caliber I'm not going to even worry about it, besides I haven't had significant leading yet. But a .295 bullet in a .302 bore? which is probably supposed to be closer to .300 I would like to get some more background on the thinking or reasoning there.

Another issue I've come to realize I do not think I mentioned in the original blog post was the cylinder advancing star is slightly off center. This I've found causes larger diameter rims to slightly jam up, so in addition to making the rims thinner you also may have to reduce their diameter. but this will vary from gun to gun, on my particular gun its enough to cause 3 of the chambers to be slightly off. If I had a rotary table for my mill I would see about fixing the cylinder but for now modifying the cases some more won't be too much of a hassle and will leave the gun stock still. It may be a project for down the road for this neat little gun, if you have not see my earlier post on reloading for this round click here .