Insanity of a most delightful type: Tinkering on Carcanos.

GatorFarmer

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It's a little known fact, but Carcano sporters are able to reach a critical mass. Once a person has several of them in the closet, the idea will begin to take hold to "do something with them".

Mine reached that stage.

Long time forum members, or just obsessive compulsives, may possibly recall a thread some years ago where I showed off a Carcano sporter that I'd gotten off Auction Arms. It cost me the princely sum of 89 dollars. Originally it was apparently a swamper rifle and I purchased it from a combination drug store(pharmacy)/gunshop in some tiny town deep in MS. Apparently these sorts of things are sometimes found on airboats and what not on the theory that if they get lost or damaged - eh, no great loss.

Long ago and far away it was a '91 long Carcano. It probably saw action in the first world war. For extra fun there's a crudely carved date in 1937 carved on the stock of the sort one used to see as "evidence" markings. Neat. The stock on it was once the original, but it had been hideously sanded and whittled - yes, it looked like someone whittled it - into something else.

I cleaned off the rust and let it sit for a bit. Well for four years or so. At one point I thought about making a lamp out of it.

Later I misread an auction late one night and bought a nice Carcano sporter. Well nice in that it had an old Fajen stock on it. The misread part was that I didn't pay attention and ended up with a 7.35mm Carcano.

With the help of a forum member, I did round up a supply of 1939 dated Italian ammo and clips, but troubling reports of the old Italian rounds having a tendency to cause kabooms stopped me from actually trying it out.

Fast forward to the present.

One of my neighbors is a Marine Armorer here on Parris Island. Earlier, he'd redone my Krag sporter. (I paid him partially in bourbon.) He finished his distance education gunsmithing degree but has been working on a portfolio of projects - ie things to show off. Trading a few of my odds and ends began the great Carcano project.

Cleaning up and refinishing a more or less stock Carbine formerly of the Italian Army and later of the Bavarian Rural police is the easy part.

But that begat the real fun - what to do with the other two.

Thus far the idea that emerged was to take the nice Fajen stock and refit the long '91 into it. Using left over parts from other things, a 1913 rail has been fitted scout style on it. Next the bbl has been shortened down to 16.5" inches. Yes, the long 91s had gain twist rifling so this might be problematic for accuracy, but that didn't stop the Italians from doing the same thing to large numbers of these years ago. A recessed crown will be in place in a few days. A nice Duracoat job to follow. We're going to attempt to fit a flash hider salvaged from a bent bbl'd Enfield Jungle Carbine on it. Why? Because I've never seen it done. Of course there might be a good reason for that...

Then, armed only with vague descriptions from the internet, the modified stock that was on the old 91 is being reshaped. In it with go the 7.35mm's guts. The only vague description part is that we are going to attempt to convert it to fire .35 Remington ammunition via a new bbl and try to convert the magazine so that Enbloc clips will no longer be necessary. That'll allow a conventional low power optic to be mounted/used (the bolt is already bent). If we can find a spare flash hider that seems like it will work, that'll go on as well. Because who doesn't want a .35 Remington bolt action carbine? Solemn nod.
 
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I have several of them in both calibers and reload for both calibers using both cast and jacketed bullets.

For the most part I just use the rifles in their original configuration but Several years ago I picked up a 1941 long rifle that had been minimally sporterized. The crown was messed up from overzealous use of a steel cleaning rod, so I cut the barrel back to 16 1/4 inches and modified a Winchester 94 scout scope mount to fit and put a 2X Burris pistol scope on it and started shooting it. The rifle will shoot inch and a quarter groups all day long with my handloads using 160 gr. RN bullets. I have taken several deer with it all with one shot and penetration is complete from any angle.

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Bought my first and only Terni Carcano carbine back around 1978 for the sum of $15 , out of a bin of surplus rifles at a local 5&10 discount store(F.W.Woolworths).

A 20rd box of Norma ammo cost around $9.99. The only 6.5 Carcano ammo to be had.

A 50yd target got 6-8in groups , with many keyholes.

Was gonna fill a cartridge with Bullseye and pull the trigger with a LONG string , but luckily I found a sucker to buy it for $20.

If my country sent me to war with that piece of **** , I'd switch sides too.
 
Bought my first and only Terni Carcano carbine back around 1978 for the sum of $15 , out of a bin of surplus rifles at a local 5&10 discount store(F.W.Woolworths).

A 20rd box of Norma ammo cost around $9.99. The only 6.5 Carcano ammo to be had.

A 50yd target got 6-8in groups , with many keyholes.

Was gonna fill a cartridge with Bullseye and pull the trigger with a LONG string , but luckily I found a sucker to buy it for $20.

If my country sent me to war with that piece of **** , I'd switch sides too.

The Carcano is an interesting rifle. The various rifles using the action/6.5mm combination was the primary rifle of the Italians for 70 years, and even now in some parts of the world, including land that our troops are deployed on, Carcanos are still in use by people. I have exactly one myself, a so called "Oswald" rifle, a Tierni 91/38 rifle identical in spec to the rifle he used to kill JFK. I bought it, because I wanted to know if it was true, were they really that terrible...I expected so. I was wrong.

The answer is no, but you have to shoot the right bullet in it. The Italian 6.5mm equals a .267 diameter bullet, while for a long time almost all of the ammunition found for it here in the USA was loaded with American .264 diameter stuff. Maybe the Norma as well, I think some of the older Norma ammunition was .264, but they may have corrected it by now.
Hornady introduced a .267 160 grain SP bullet not too many years ago, its identical in dimension and weight to the ammunition the rifle was designed to fire. You can buy preloaded ammunition from Graf that uses this Hornady bullet. Hornady also offers 6.5mm Carcano dies for hand loading, which are the dies you'll want if you ever go down this road. The "other" dies have dimensional issues pertaining to the differences in American and Italian 6.5mm specs.


Oswald used ball ammunition made by WW for our own Government, in a few separate lots, which was made in the 1950s, and duplicated the original Italian ammunition to the T. The bullets are unusually long, proportionally the longest bullets I've ever seen or fired. The .26 caliber bullet is not quite 1.25 inches long, do you have any examples of bullets that are all but 5 times longer than their diameter? Also the copper jackets of the original ball ammunition had unusually thick walls, making them very strong and resistant to deforming. In old Italian Army lore, the 6.5mm was known for making very small wound channels and its deep penetration.( This is the very thing that a lot of people think makes the Warren Commission's conclusions about 1 bullet hitting both men so controversial, so called single bullet theory, but its actually spot on in terms of being exactly the sort of thing the cartridge was known for.)


Many of these rifles were literally picked up off the battlefields and crated up at the end of WW2. In those days the primers were corrosive. Needless to say that wasn't a good situation. Some of rifles that made it to the USA were little more than junk, but others not so. I picked out a fairly good one, paying attention to the condition of the bore. And it has been a pleasant surprise, kicking less than a 30-30, with more than enough accuracy out to about 125 yards. I shoot open sights off a bench, and I can easily hit a paper plate or an old ten pin at 100 yards with mine most shots. If my eyes were better, I am sure mine would hold its own at the 200 meter range.

Most Carcanos have fixed sights, and they are designed with a 200 meter range/shot. The oldest versions have a 300 meter fixed sight, but they decided that 200 was a lot more useful for the average soldier and changed to it, some time in the late teens or early 1920s I think. Unlike most iron sights where you are supposed to hold the front blade at the same level/height as the top of the rear notch, the fixed Carcano sight was designed to be used/sighted with the top of the front blade just barely showing in the bottom of the V of the rear notch. This also has contributed to the gun's reputation of being inaccurate, as most people don't know this and line the front and rear sights up like they would any other rifle, causing them to miss high.
The oldest of the Carcanos also had gain twist, which is an increasing rate of twist the further up the barrel the bullet went. They also later eliminated this too, and went with a fixed rate of twist. Some of these earlier rifles with the gain twist were later sawed off by a few centimeters, new front sight blades fixed, and the results were terrible. These rifles are the worst of them all in terms of accuracy.
You have to do a bit of homework, but you can get a Carcano that is as much fun as any Mosin Nagant to shoot. They even have a fairly nice 2 stage trigger built right in. The actions are very strong, the steel used was the best they could get (that they were able to bore out many of these rifles to 7.35mm, and even to 8mm on an experimental basis, without further modification, attests to the strength of the action and the quality of the steel they used) They use an unusual 6 shot clip which was made in either steel or later brass, the brass being the better of the 2 versions.
 
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