I remember seeing collector grade M1903 Springfield with fingergroove stock, a pristine M1896 or 1898 Krag rifle and carbine, and my M1903-A3 Springfield for sale for $200.00 each in San Antonio in the mid-1980s.
As I remember, most military rifles were fairly inexpensive up until the late 1990s. He could have picked one up for basically nothing, but it was a last ditch one and he said it looked like the stock had been carved by someone with little skill. I think they had piles of them that were brought back to be sold, along with all kinds of neat war material, at rock bottom prices at the DRMOs (government auction houses). My grandfather had a chance to get a Japanese Arisaka at the end of World War Two. After researching them I found out that the ones with solid bases are for rifles and the ones with recessed bases are for machineguns. Some had solid cartridge bases and some had recessed bases. Reminds me of some 8mm Lebel ammunition that I used to find on the battlefields of Verdun, France. and the ejected case was BLACK and VERY distorted and the spent primer merely FELL OUT!Īs you now know, that HOT ammo was loaded in a SLIGHTLY different case, meant for use in the Type 92 (Hotchkiss) machine gun. Years ago, a friend WAS able to chamber said cartridge in his dad's LATE Type 99, and when he fired it, the rifle bucked and snorted. One more lesson learned and it only cost me $20.īe glad the cartridge you bought at the GS didn't chamber.
The only thing that tipped us off is the 30 round clip. The fun thing about all this is the Japanese didn't bother with silly little head stamps! There are no marks on this ammo. It doesn't ! My son did a search this morning and found out that my ammo is for a machine gun! It's 7.7x58SR. Last night I tried the ammunition to see if it would chamber alright. While at a gun show last Saturday I bought a 30 round clip of Arisaka ammo.
#Type 99 arisaka ammo series#
I am the proud owner of an all matching type 99 series 33 7.7 Jap rifle. Took me almost two years of fiddling to get it to shoot right.īallistically, the 7.7 is in the same class as the. I used bullets intended for an 8mm J-bore in my reloads, and had to have the sizing die adjusted for my chamber. Headspace was good, but the neck was several thousandths oversize, and the bore had a. The one my dad brought back was one of those. Wartime production was less than kind as many of them had oversize chambers, and many had bores that were very 'generous' in the land and groove diameters. The early ones are the best from an accuracy standpoint. You're lucky you got one that shoots good. Here is a 7.7 I have had for years and a 6.5 that has been sporterized:
They can be loaded to popgun velocities with cast bullets and are a joy to plink with. One good thing is that it is easy to make cartridges for the 7.7 from 30-06 brass. Type 99's had a chrome bore up until the last ditch rifles. I have read that the US Army tested rifles at the end of the WWII and the Jap came out first in accuracy over the 03 and 98K. The Jap rifle is a good rifle with some unusual features.