Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters anyone with 6.5 Arisaka experience?

How a Carcano could be confused with a type 30 Arasaka is
beyond me. It has the same metal and heat treatmentas a type 38.
good luck!

The jap navy did indeed conract to have the infmaous carcano built, but it was not poular among the troops, for obvious reasons!

The 6.5 Carcano is not popular on Martha's Vineyard either.

I believe the "Carcano" being discussed is the Type I in
6.5x50mm caliber. In my opinion it looks like a cross between
a Carcano and an Arisaka. Its actually not a bad looking rifle.
Mexico also made some Arisakas in 7x57mm with the Mexican Crest
on the reciever. Most were bought up by the Russians in WWI
I have never seen one in the flesh. Hopefully someday Ill walk
into a pawnshop and find one, but I seriously doubt it.

FWIW:

I saw a neat little peep sighted arisaka that had been rechambered to 284 win.

Thought a lot about buying it.

Always wondered about making one into a 308 just because I can . . . . .

Today, I would rechamber to 7x57.

BMT

BMT

It was the Italians who made rifles for Japan. They used the Carcno action and the magazine and floor plate form the Arisaka but did not use wrist tangs. Some say 60K were made and shipped to Japan and some accounts say l120K. They are called Type I rifles. They do not have the oversize chamber of the T38's.

As for the story about the guy rechambering a 6.5 to 30-06, couple years back I did a similar experiment for the Blevins shoot out. I used a 7.7 chambering reamer and chambered a T38 - 6.5 barrel for the 7.7x58 cartridge. But I loaded the cartridge with a 308 bullet behind a normal hunting load of powder. I have a steel pipe test chamber that I put the barreled action in to fire it. Action was fine after the shot. One should never try anything like this without adequate protection. riceone.

riceone-
At least some Type I rifles had the oversize chambers.

One of the better researched and documented articles ever published in Handloader was James Taylor's "A Case for the 6.5 Arisaka", from Number 111 in 1984. Taylor found his sample Type I had the same oversize chamber as the Type 38s he measured. My own Type I has the oversize chamber.

(It is perhaps better to say that 6.5x50 cases of modern and WWII manufacture are undersized, rather than that the chambers are oversized. Earlier Arisaka cases have a case head diameter of .455, according to Barnes' Cartridges of the World. These would fit the chambers well. My Norma cases have head diameters that measure .447, and show some bulging when fired in the Arisaka rifles I've handled.)

--Bob

Bob, I'll do a little research. I have one Type 1 and will make a chaste of the chamber and see and get back when I have time. Seems I remember that in the beginning when the 6.5 machine gun was intorduce the cases had to be oiled and they either opened the chambers up or down sized the ammo. I just wrote to Frank Allan for his input. He just published a huge book an the T38 rifle. riceone.

riceone-
If Taylor's article is correct, the ammo was reduced in some dimensions at the time the machine gun was introduced. However, the Japanese continued to chamber the rifles to the original specifications. The rifles functioned just fine with the new undersized ammunition and the slight case bulging was insignificant militarily.

It will be really interesting to find whether your Type I has the same "oversize" chamber. I've read (can't remember where) that the Japanese sent quality control inspectors to the Italian factories, and that the Type I's were held to pretty tight standards. Both nations were (and are!) capable of building arms of extremely high quality.

Thanks for your input.
--Bob

Somewhere along the line I read that in the early 20thC there was a substantial Japanese immigration to Brazil, of all places, and that 7x57 Arisakas were made for those settlers.

vigillinus-
I knew that the Japanese made a few thousand Arisakas in 7x57 for the Mexican government back around 1910. I hope you can recall where you found the information about the Brazilian rifles. Thanks.
--Bob

BS, around 1900 the Japanese tried to establish an agricultural colony in Mexico, but it did not succeed. I may have the Mexican purchase of 7mm Arisakas conflated with the substantial Japanese immigration to Brazil at about the same time and it is possible that I am wrong about the Jap rifles going to Brazil, don't recall where I read that.

They actually did both, but as Rifles have had a checkered past in South america as to legislation, the most common firearm by Japanese people living in Brazil was the little 28ga. Murata single shot shotgun. Mine even came equipped with rifle sights but not the paraodx-type rifling that I have seen in some other examples.

The 7x57's were intended for the Mexican Gub-Mint, but over-runs/etc were likley sent to brazil as well.

I'll dig this thread out of the basement in order to let vigillinus know that his memory was mostly correct.

A descriptive history of the Mexican Arisakas appeared in The American Rifleman, November 1974, p.25, in an article by George A. Wiswell.

Here's a brief abstract:

In 1910, Japanese immigrants in Brazil imported Type 38 Arisaka rifles and carbines chambered in 7x57mm as part of a program to introduce Japanese products in South America. Brazil did not need these arms, but the Mexican government did. Some were shipped from Brazil to Mexico, and are known as Model 1910 Mexican Arisakas.

In 1911 the Mexican government was overthrown. The new government ordered more 7x57 Arisakas for the army's use against further revolution; these are Model 1913 Mexican Arisakas. The Mexican government could not pay for the Model 1913s, so they were sold to Russia in 1915 for use by the Czar's army. These were delivered in Manchuria, but during shipment to the European front of WWI, some of these Arisakas were appropriated by local Siberian forces. Americans in the 1918-20 Siberian Expeditionary Force encountered some of these.

The Model 1910 is marked either with three interlocked circles, or with the Mexican national crest with a left-facing eagle. The Model 1913 bears the modified post-revolutionary Mexican crest with the eagle facing right. Production of Mexican Arisakas is estimated at 80,000.