Since I started down a nostalgic road with my post on George Nonte, I thought that I would go down it a little further with some memories.

In the fifties, I took Army ROTC in H.S., unlike today it was serious business. No females. Every male was expected to be either drafted, enlist upon graduation or go into college ROTC.

We were taught close order drill, the manual of arms, the chain of command, General Orders, the Code of Conduct, marksmanship and weapons maintenance.

Riflemen carried M-1 Garands, officers carried M-1 carbines and automatic riflemen carried the BAR. Marksmanship training and rifle team practice and matches were conducted in our own indoor range with Mod-52 Win rifles, not pellet guns as today.

During study hall in the school library, you could find copies of The American Rifleman on the shelves. Instead of doing homework, I spent the hour reading the A.R. and scanning the ads on the back cover. I dreamed of buying that BRNO M-98 Mauser for $24.95 or an Astra pistol for $14.50. Of course that all came to a halt with the JFK assassination on Nov 22, 1963.

During WWII, there was all kinds of propaganda about the inferiority of the Japanese and their weapons.

Two famous gun writers in the 50's (I wish I could remember who) tested the Jap Arisaka rifle for reputing to have a poor receiver heat treatment. They took a 7mm Arisaka rifle tied it to a truck tire, force-ably chambered a .30/06 round and fired it with a long pull cord. Forcing a .30 caliber bullet thru a .284 bore. You can only imagine the pressure created. They did this repeatedly without a failure on the part of the rifle.

Don't know why this has stuck in my mind all these years.

There were real substantial articles in gun magazines in days gone by.

I believe it was P.O. Ackley that did the pressure testing on the Japanese rifles

Ackley tested several military actions in his blow-up tests. The details escape me, but he wrote it up in Volume 2 of his handbooks. I think the Krag action also did pretty well as for strength. I don't recall tying rifles to tires, but maybe they did that.

These books may still be available. A portion of the material is quite dated and some of the handloading data appears unsafe to me, but there's still a lot of good information for anyone seriously interested in handloading. I always thought Ackley's books complemented HATCHER'S NOTEBOOK, another good one to have.

It was Ackley. I don't remember exactly what he was doing, but there is no way to jam a .30-'06 round into a 7.7 mm chamber. He was probably making up extreme overloads (possibly using pistol powder) in a 7.7mm case. Many 7.7 rifles were rechambered to .30-'06 after WWII and they would handle it OK. I think I have some information on those Ackley blowup tests if I can find it.
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Here is some information: http://dutchman.rebooty.com/temp/Ackley.pdf

The earlier Type 99 rifles (7.7mm) and the Type 38s (6.5mm) were found to have the strongest actions of any bolt action rifles used during WWII, during tests conducted after the war. However, the "last ditch" rifles made late in the war often had improper heat treatment in the receivers, and should be considered unsafe to fire. These rifles also lacked the chrome-plated bore that was a feature of the earlier guns.

John

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- Cogito, ergo armatus sum -

The only 7mm Arisaka was one small batch made for Mexico in the 20's and limited to fewer than 800. These are called by collectors, "Montezuma Arisakas" . That is 7 x 57 Mauser, the Japanese rounds are 58mm long the 30-06 is 63mm in length. People did use a 257 Roberts chamber ream to make a 7.7 x 57 chamber (.312 x 2.24"), kind of a pre 308 Winchester.

Ivan (I know you didn't ask for thibut. I just couldn't not share.)

NOSTALGIA just ain't what it used to be......

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Dean
SWCA #680 SWHF #446

In one of the "Gunsmith Kinks" books it tells of the common conversion where a 30/06 reamer was used on an Arisaka, giving you an 06 with a .312 bore.


A guy goes to a smith, says his bolt won't open. Smith finally gets it open, removes a fired 30/06 case. The guy says that he had had that conversion done.


Thing is, this was not a Type 99 7.7 he converted. This was a Type 38 6.5. He was shooting that 30 caliber bullet down a 25 caliber hole.


He said he'd fired about half a box before it locked up on him, and yes, recoil was a little stout.

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I always take precautions

"People did use a 257 Roberts chamber ream to make a 7.7 x 57 chamber (.312 x 2.24"), kind of a pre 308 Winchester."

The .257 Roberts reamer was used on the 6.5mm Type 38 rifle, so .257 Roberts cartridges could be fired in it. Many 7.7mm Type 99s were rechambered for the .30-'06. Roy Dunlap's book "Ordnance Went Up Front" has quite a bit to say about those .30-'06-rechambered Type 99s.

I'm sure that I just mis-spoke, I'm no authority on Jap weapons and memory is a strange and fleeting thing. I just remember reading the article in the A.R.

It's all good Chief. I always learn something even if I can't remember it.

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Dum vivo cano

Another conversion for Japanese 6.5mm Arisaka rifles was to rechamber it to the 6.5mm Swedish cartridge. I remember my dad having some correspondence from a gunsmith about doing it but Pop never had it done.

This story (or very similar one) appeared in the May 1959 American Rifleman "Data and Comment" section. The guy that did the rechambering of the Type 38 6.5 mm rifle said he couldn't get the .30-06 chambering reamer to go in til he ground down the pilot to fit the bore!!!

Nostalgia connection - This was back when the Rifleman had some really good product reviews and gee-whiz articles in the back of the magazine.

Attached Files

img113.pdf (1.12 MB, 22 views)

In the 1950s "TP GUN SHOP"in West Branch,Michigan converted 7.7mm Jap Rifles to .30/06 and 6.5mm Jap Rifles to .257Roberts. Price-$6.00.
I send a 7.7mm for rechambering to .30/06. When it returned the only change I could observe was the bolt face had been polished down. One .30/06 cartridge would fit in the chamber and the second would fit in the magazine, but no more. So I had a two shot rifle.

AMERICAN RIFLEMAN had a technical staff back then with excellent researchers and writers like C.E. Harris. They eventually did away with the technical staff and the magazine suffered a significant deterioration in the type and quality of articles from that point forward. I don't remember when that happened; guess it might have been in the mid-'80s or thereabouts.

Krags had one locking lug so they blew up when rechambered to a more powerful cartridge.

WELL DON'T DO THAT, YA IDIOT!

An Arisaka shot with ARISAKA ammo were fine.

Rechamber what you want, but if the dam thing fails don't blame the rifle.

This is a hoot. These guys kept upping the charge on a Mosin Nagant until they got to where they put 47 grains of 'range trash'....pistol shotgun and rifle powder and pulled a string to fire it. The results are absolutely incredible and it's hilarious watching them beat the bolt open with a heavy ball peen hammer.


PS: This is the second part of the video. They couldn't break it in the first video.

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"He was kinda funny lookin'"

Hatcher's Notebook has a story about firing .45 ACP round in a M1903 Springfield. The .45 jacketed bullet was squeezed down to .30, with no damage to the Springfield. But I wouldn't be tempted to try doing that.