Why, Mosin, Why?

So, when I got home from work this evening a little earlier than normal, the spouse sent me to my room while she worked on a Father's Day gift with the kids. Rather than disappear into another part of the house and waste time, I thought I would run out into the garage and do a little sporterizing.

My plan to mount a scout scope (or more accurately really-cheap-NcStar-pistol-scope) almost went awry. When I siad I was going to wait, I probably should have.
It appears the 1939 91/30 I just purchased was made when the Russians had plenty of time to do everything just so. No cutting back on machining steps or skipping finishing touches due to war time necessity. No, it turns out those dutiful Russian not only pinned the rear sight block, but they also put in a set screw. In addition to those two methods of holding that block steady against the all-powerful 7.62X54R recoil they also thoroughly silver soldered that block to the the dovetail.
I've watched a couple of videos on youtube where folks just knocked out the pins and softly tapped their rear sight off the dovetail, lucky ducks. I also watched iraqiveteran8888 and friend apply copious amounts of heat via a torch and knocked theirs off.
Not realizing that mine was soldered on, I beat on it for a little while with a standard punch and a ball peen hammer to no effect. I thought it might be because I needed to lock the barrel down and keep it from moving so I strapped that bad boy in and hit it a few more times. Still nothing. Did I mention it made it up to the mid-90's in north Texas today? And I decided to do all this in the garage with the door closed? There's three kinds of not smart right there.
Realizing I had trouble on my hands I went for the big guns. No heat required, just pure Thor-like Mjolnir hammer force. I pulled out a huge piece of stainless steel flat stock that my Dad custom made into a valve-spring compressor when I was in high school back in the 80s. It has a nice split at the end where it can slip under the rocker arm nut on a Chevy small block to leverage down and compress the valve spring. Turns out that fork is a really good dimension for straddling the Mosin barrel and hitting both sides of a reluctant rear sight block evenly. Add to that a honkin' 3-pound sledge and you have yourself the perfect anti-solder device.
I should feel bad about wailing away on a rifle in such a fashion, but I only paid $139 for it so I don't. There are millions of them out there and I am preserving an M44 in its original state. The M44 is too pretty to mess up with matching numbers and all. So, I don't really feel bad. Purists may feel free to cuss me out now.
I mocked up the scope to see how it handles and I already don't like it because it's too tall. I have to do the jaw weld rather than a cheek weld. Putting a rail on the dovetail and medium-ish rings on top of that have jacked the scope up a bit high for me. I'm considering a set of low or medium airgun rings with built-in set screws. There's enough eye relief that the scope can be a good distance forward and still be in its working range.
I've got some time to figure it out. In the meantime I may actually break out the torch and get that leftover solder off just to make this old girl a bit prettier before the real makeover starts.