Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats 6.5x257 Roberts Arisaka custom rifle woes

Jericho:

Actually just a little wood needs to be removed where the safety is located other than that it is "'drop-in".....I also double checked the Graf & Sons price and it was $95. I also sent you a PM.

PennDog

Thanks for all the help and observations guys . it's really neat to be able to draw on so much experience out there. When you been there and done that,you can save a fellow a lot of retravel over the same BUMPS. My 140gr Buffalo bullets just came and I will try them to see how they perform. I may not improve anything but I won't have unturned stones haunting the back of my mind at NIGHT. Now lets see what did I do with that other Model 30 Express 35 cal and that Rem 788 6mm I bought a while back, time to play some more !!!

old thread but I was compelled to reply. I bought an Arisaka 38 sporter from a contractor (plumber). it belonged to his Dad who had passed away, and the guy inherited it. original stock cut down to sporterize it, and chamber cut for 6.5 x 257 wildcat. also a box of shells thrown in, all for $100. could not pass it up. got a set of dies for $20 at a gun show.

well holy smokes, that rifle is DEAD NUTS ON accurate. one of the best rifle buys I ever made. it shoots better than quite a few Remington, Winchester, Ruger, Savage, Mauser rifles I've owned.

I'd like to have it scoped, bolt handle turned down, and keep it. maybe get a nice stock for it. if I could find a conversion side safety for it, I'd buy one. they used to make them years ago.

also have another type 38, original 6.5 Jap chambering, someone bedded it into a Winchester Model 70 stock. THAT is also a dead nuts accurate rifle, even better than the 6.5 x 257. open peep sights and it shoots 1" MOA or smaller from bench.

the type 38's are a high quality rifle. very well made. the type 99's sort of give all the Jap rifles a bad name. I also have a type 99 sporter, and sold a few others I had as well. they are to be respected for a decent Japanese repro of the Mauser 98 action. the action/barrel strenth of the 38/99 rifles is legendary.

While this is an old thread, mine shoots very well. I did not slug my bore or cast the chamber. It is in full military garb with the exception of a chopped 18" barrel. 120gr Rem bullets go into 3", but 140gr Rem go into 5/8" with Scot 4351 powder. It had a 6X scope on it but I changed it out for a 3-9. I was using 6 Rem brass but found case life was short. I switched to 8x57 brass and case life is better. The headspace is on the long side.

Maybe 5 years ago, bought a customized 6.5x257 Type 38 Arisaka from a gent in his late 80s, who'd had the rifle made for his wife to use. Rifle was probably done by Atkinson & Marquette, two Prescott, Az gunsmiths that had quite a reputation for quality work back in the 70's.

Any way, I already had both 6.5x55 and 257 Roberts dies and figured out how to use them to reload a 6.5x257R cartridge without having to buy pricey 6.5x257 (6.5x57) dies.

I put quite a few rounds downrange with my 6.5x257R Arisaka, trying various combinations of bullets/powders. Results were rather poor at 100yds....LOL, never a cloverleaf, not even close to one. Perhaps 1 3/4" 100 yd group was maybe the best I shot (2 1/2 - 3" was typical), till I tried something on the very strange side.

LOL, I swabbed an automotive crankcase (oil) additive called "greased lightning" down the bore. The Greased Lightning product is a very thick oil crankcase additive....similar to the old STP or Casite Motor Honey products. But, the Greased Lightning has teplon in it. I'd read of some bore coating product that used teplon a few weeks before finding the Greased Lightning automotive product in an auto parts store. What the heck, Arisaka action is darn strong....decided to try the teplon product in the bore. This is something I DO NOT RECOMMEND you try, just recounting a personal experience.

Well, I'd swab a glob of it in muzzle, run a patch down bore to spread it and fire a round. After about 3 rounds, swabbing the Greased Lightning between each shot, noticed my groups on a 100 yd target had begun to shrink....then I had my first clover leaf with the rifle. After about 8 swabs with the product, I was shooting less than a 1" group with my reloads. FWIW, when I cleaned the Arisaka bore after returning from the range, the cleaning patches sure did go a lot smoother down the bore. Guess the teplon had been burned into the bore, making cleaning it a lot easier.

OK, then the time a gent showed up at our private range with a sporterized type 99 arisaka that originally was chambered in the 7.7 Jap round. It had been rechambered to 30-06, but it still had the military 7.7 bore barrel. Owner was setting up to shoot. He had a box of Remington 30-06 ammo on his bench. I stop to chat briefly with the gent....he'd paid $100 for the rifle in a pawn shop a few days before and he was shooting it for the first time. I tell him, you have a .308 diameter bullet going down a 7.7 Jap bore...basically a .311-312 bore, and that he shouldn't expect much accuracy with the rifle.

He will fire a couple of rounds at a 25 yd target to check the zero on the old scope on the rifle and eventually end up shooting most of the box of 30-06 remington at 100 yds. When he'd finished shooting and gotten his target off the range, he finds me on the firing line to show me his target, saying, I think this rifle is a keeper. Darn if he didn't have nothing but clover leaf groups on the target.

When I was a kid, I bought a customized Ariska. Seller told me it had been re chambered to .257R. Keep in mind that I'm 13-14 at the time. I bought .257 Roberts ammo and went out to shoot stuff. It was accurate, but there was a strange noise as the bullet traveled to a target.

Uncle was visiting from the city. There were two lakes on the farm. There were a few ducks on the lake. Uncle took good aim and killed a lone duck, much to the glee of a Federal Game Warden who just happened to be watching. The duck was $100. Lots of money in the fifties.

Once I garnered enough rifle knowledge to know that it was the undersized bullet wobbling that caused the noise, I traded the Ariska for a nice .38-44 HD revolver.

Jack

Handled an Arisaka Type 38 carbine today that had been rechambered to 6.5-257 price was $299. Barrel was stamped 257