Big Redhead,
Your story brings back fond memories. My uncle served with the Marines in the Pacific and brought back a few Arisakas. His wife had stayed with us during the war. When he came home, he gave one of the 6.5's to me. I was five years old at the time. Like you, I took that thing apart many times and played with it. I think that had a lot to do with my interest in rifles. When I got to college, and deer populations reached the point in Louisiana that hunting them became popular, I wanted a deer rifle. This was in the early '60's when sporterizing military rifles was in full swing. A buddy bought one of the surplus 1917 Enfields, and we worked on these projects together. Of course we were rank amateurs. I had some notion that we ought to be sure the rifle was "safe" before doing any work on it. So we took it out into the woods and literally tied it to a tree, and pulled the trigger with a long string. Not the ideal proof testing, is it? Most of our supplies, including the stock blanks, came from the famous Herter's. Like yours, my barrel wasn't too good, so that accuracy wasn't fantastic. But at typical ranges in the southern woods, that didn't matter much. And I had not yet achieved "Loonieness." I used the Norma ammo with 139 gr. bullets. Over the years, I killed a lot of deer with that rifle. In all of the fooling around I've done with guns, I only have one deep regret. That is having that rifle rebarreled instead of just keeping it as I had it. I feel bad every time I think about it.
