Imagine you are now the proud owner of a classic Russian Mosin-Nagant M-91 rifle and are excited to try it out for the first time. So you take it out to the range, adjust the iron sights for a target 400 meters away and shoot at it. Upon shooting a few times, you examine the target and notice that you're not hitting where you're aiming at. Is there something wrong with the rifle? Actually, the answer may have to do with your misunderstanding about how the sight works.
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In the above image, we see a Mosin-Nagant rifle sight called the Konavalov type. This sight acts as both a tangent sight (for shorter ranges, marked as 4-12) and a ladder sight (for longer ranges, marked as 13-32). Note that the sight is sort of curved, as seen in the first image. Older Mosin Nagants have a flat shaped sight using the same idea.
The mistake that some people make is assume that these settings are in meters (e.g. 4 = 400 meters, 6 = 600 meters etc.) For Mosin-Nagants manufactured before 1925, this is not true -- in fact, these are calibrated in a unit called "Arshin" (plural "Arshini"). So what the heck is an "Arshin" then?
To answer this question, we must go back to 16th century Russia, where this unit of length first originated. This unit was the Russian equivalent of the English "yard" measurement. Its actual length varied over the years, until Peter the Great standardized it in the 18th century to be about 27.95 inches long (or about 71.1 cm. or 0.78 yards). This continued to be how distances were measured in Russia until some time in 1924, when the Soviet Union adopted the metric system.
Therefore, with older Mosin-Nagant rifles built before 1924, the sights were actually calibrated in arshini. Hence, when the slider is pushed to 4, the sights are set to aim at a distance of 400 arshini, not 400 meters. 400 arshini is approximately 285 meters, which explains why the rifle might not be shooting where the user expects it to!
A Konavalov type Mosin-Nagant adjustable iron sight.
In the above image, we see a Mosin-Nagant rifle sight called the Konavalov type. This sight acts as both a tangent sight (for shorter ranges, marked as 4-12) and a ladder sight (for longer ranges, marked as 13-32). Note that the sight is sort of curved, as seen in the first image. Older Mosin Nagants have a flat shaped sight using the same idea.
The mistake that some people make is assume that these settings are in meters (e.g. 4 = 400 meters, 6 = 600 meters etc.) For Mosin-Nagants manufactured before 1925, this is not true -- in fact, these are calibrated in a unit called "Arshin" (plural "Arshini"). So what the heck is an "Arshin" then?
To answer this question, we must go back to 16th century Russia, where this unit of length first originated. This unit was the Russian equivalent of the English "yard" measurement. Its actual length varied over the years, until Peter the Great standardized it in the 18th century to be about 27.95 inches long (or about 71.1 cm. or 0.78 yards). This continued to be how distances were measured in Russia until some time in 1924, when the Soviet Union adopted the metric system.
Therefore, with older Mosin-Nagant rifles built before 1924, the sights were actually calibrated in arshini. Hence, when the slider is pushed to 4, the sights are set to aim at a distance of 400 arshini, not 400 meters. 400 arshini is approximately 285 meters, which explains why the rifle might not be shooting where the user expects it to!