Hopefully, the foregoing has provided the reader with a relatively thorough grounding in the attributes possessed by a proper Scout Rifle. Jeff Cooper worked with Steyr-Mannlicher to bring the first and finest factory Scout Rifle to market. The Steyr Scout is a masterpiece of modern firearms engineering, and that fact is reflected in the rifle's price, over $2000.

With this project, I have created a rifle which meets the definition of a Scout Rifle to maybe 80%, for $350, and you could do it too, if you wanted to, for even less.

The base platform for my Scout Rifle (or is it really a Pseudo Scout? - we'll get to that later) is a Model 91/59 Mosin Nagant carbine. All M91/59's started life as long M91/30's. The exact history is a little murky, but it is believed that the M91/59 was born when the Russians went into a rifle refurbishment program starting in 1959 and on into the early 60's. By this time, shorter rifles were contemporary, so during refurbishment, they cut down their older M91/30's to carbine length and in so doing, created a new variation of the Mosin Nagant.

My particular M91/59 specimen was originally manufactured (as an M91/30) in 1943. During the war years, production was naturally very pressed. I also have a standard M91/30 which was built in 1943. But the first thing you notice about the long rifle is how rough the receiver finish was left. It sort of looks like a beaver carved it out of a chunk of wood with his teeth! They were in a hurry to get rifles out the door in 1943, so a fine finish was considered an unaffordable luxury.

However, the receiver finish on the M91/59 is satiny smooth. The original 1943 date stamp is somewhat faint and shallow, which leads me to believe that they cleaned up the metal finish as part of the refurbishment process when they rebuilt the rifle into the M91/59 configuration.

I found the '59 at Big 5. The rifle was in overall excellent shape. It looked like it had never been used since the re-arsenal job. The wood was beautiful. The swirl of the wood grain underneath a clear yellowish-orange lacquer gave the stock the delicious look of butterscotch. The lacquer had chipped off in a few small spots, and there were a few minor compression dings and shallow scratches, as you might expect of a rifle which had been stored away for the last 40 years or so.

The bore condition is pretty good, but you can tell that it's not new. The lands are shiny, but the grooves are slightly "frosty", but certainly not dark. For only $120, I consider the rifle a great buy!

In this year's May issue, I discussed my first Mosin Nagant, the M44 carbine. The M91/59 at first glance, looks very much like an M44, but there are some key differences. In fact, when I saw the 91/59 on the rack at Big 5, I told the manager, "I'd like to take a look at that M44 Mosin Nagant." He played it coy, and said, "I'm sorry. We're all out of M44's right now." I had to blink my eyes, because I was staring right at the Mosin Nagant carbine behind him. Finally, he let on that it was an M91/59, not an M44.

The most obvious difference is the lack of a built-in bayonet on the 91/59. It's surprising how much of a difference that makes in the feel of the rifle. Without the extra weight out front, the '59 feels so much livelier in the hand, and the balance of the piece is so much better.

But it's the difference in the rear sight that makes the 91/59 particularly suited for "Scouterizing." The M44 and the earlier M38 carbines have true carbine sights. The rear sights are shorter in overall length and they are not graduated to as far a distance as the M91/30 rear sight. The 91/59 retains the M91/30 rear sight, though the distance graduations beyond 1000 meters have been scrubbed off. For Scouterizing purposes, the important thing is that the sight base on the 91/59 can be easily removed from the barrel. Those on the M44 and the M38 cannot.

I've had a Burris revolver scope mount lying around in a drawer for a number of years. I was so happy to finally find gainful employment for it. I took the Burris mount and the cutoff sight base to a local precision welder. For $20, he made the two pieces into one. The job wasn't perfect, though. The Burris mount was slightly angled on the sight base. But, because the Burris mount has windage adjustability in the rear ring mount, the angle was easily tuned out. The scope sits nice and low. The ocular bell is about ¼" off the front receiver ring. Though it appears to, the rear of the mount does not contact the fat part of the barrel. A piece of card stock can be slid between the rear of the mount and barrel. This is a very solid and secure scope mount setup.

I decided to use a Simmons 2x pistol scope. I've used this model of scope on a couple of different scoped handguns over the years, with never a problem. This scope has a minimum eye relief of only 9 inches, just about ideal for Scout Rifle purposes.

I contracted for a bent sniper bolt body for yet another M-N project rifle, an M91/30 PU sniper, but when the bolt came in, I put it on the Scout just for fun, and decided that I liked it there. The turned down sniper bolt is a nice added ergonomic feature. I guess I'll need to get another bent bolt for that sniper project.

After I finished sanding the stock smooth, I wanted to figure out how to re-create the original color. I started by staining the white wood with a rosewood stain. The wood sucked up the stain like a thirsty desert traveller. The reddish color covered the grain pattern pretty evenly, not allowing the grain to show off. I grabbed some 600 grit wet or dry sandpaper and dipped it in some paint thinner to wet sand the stock. This was effective in allowing some white to show between the darker wood grain stripes.

My next step was to throw some Golden Oak Watco Danish Oil Finish over the stain. This color of oil finish is very yellow. I was hoping that the yellow over the red would get me that butterscotch color I was looking for. After a couple of coats of the oil finish, the stock started looking like . . . well, golden oak . . . which really wasn't so bad, but it wasn't quite what I was looking for.

So I grabbed another can of Watco off the paint shelf - this one was Dark Walnut. I needed to darken the tone up a little. With the previous coats of oil finish already into the wood, I was confident that that the Dark Walnut would not soak in to overdarken the color. So with three coats of Dark Walnut over four coats of Golden Oak over the wet-sanded rosewood stain, I didn't quite get the original Russian butterscotch, but I was quite happy with the end result.

But I wasn't finished yet. I like to finish up with a polyurethane wrapper to stabilize the wood, keeping it waterproof and simple to care for. Five coats of satin poly spray completed the job.

In creating this Scout, there was one thing I was not willing to do -- I was not interested in making any irreversible changes to the gun such as chopping the stock or cutting the barrel. I wanted to be able to put it back to original configuration if I ever wanted to. Yes, I chopped the sight base, but the sight base is easy to replace.

On the other hand, I did want to get as close to proper Scout Rifle parameters as I could. But my unwillingness to make any significant changes led to a major violation of the Scout Rifle specs.

My spring fish scale says that the Scout weighs a full nine pounds, or 4.1 kg, which is .6 kg over the weight limit. I did the best I could to put the rifle on a diet. The upper handguard was jettisoned along with the barrel bands and the barrel band keeper springs in the stock. The cleaning rod was also set aside. But I was not about to put the rifle into an ugly plastic stock as Cooper prefers.

Let's say that you don't care about maintaining the ability to put the rifle back to original. What else could you do? You might saw off the lower handguard part of the stock. You could turn the barrel down to a slimmer profile. You could at least cut the barrel back another inch or so to lose the front sight mount. Here's another violation of the Scout Rifle specs: the barrel length is 20", giving the rifle an overall length of 40" - These numbers are over-length by one inch each.

Scout Rifle specs would prefer the rifle to have some sort of backup iron sight capability, but I just couldn't get there with this rifle. The hooded front sight was clearly visible through the scope and proved an annoying distraction. So I also removed the front sight by drifting it out of its dovetail.

If the rifle didn't blow past the weight spec so badly, I wouldn't feel embarrassed in the least claiming full Scout Rifle status for mine, but I'm afraid that I'll have to settle for the Pseudo Scout title. Due to the fact that my case of Russian Fever rages on, I'm still very pleased with this handy little woods carbine, despite a little extra weight.

Here's the cost breakdown:

If you lose the bent bolt, substitute a 2x BSA pistol scope ($50 from Midway), and don't refinish the stock, you could save $120. Yes, you too could have your very own, very competent (Pseudo) Scout Rifle for only $230! Now that's what I call a Cheap Scout!