I recommend that until someone has their own headspace gauges that they take it to a 'smith and have it evaluated. It is a slight risk with these guns, but a risk nontheless, to shoot them without having them tested. If you compare these guns with Enfields, Arisakas and Mausers, you will see that the 3 I mentioned all have bleed holes for the gas to escape away from the shooters face, the Mosin family of rifles does not have these types of holes and therefore if headspace is severly off then blowback will be straight through the bolt and into your face. The Mausers bleed system is not as easily seen as most are in the bolt itself designed to blow down through the magazine. The Arisaka has either 1 hole(Type 99) or 2 holes(Type 38) on top pf the receiver for their system and the Enfield has one hole on the left side of the receiver. As I stated before, you will probably never encounter a Mosin with faulty headspace but it is your face and your life you risk, so your choice. I must have shot around 20-30 of them before I bought my gauges though, lucky, maybe. Now a Type 38 Arisaka that I once owned got tied to a big oak tree and 50ft. of twine tied to the trigger for it's first shot, but all was good in the end. BTW, ZeroDaze, you still got that one?