Couple of Japanese Rifles

[clestuff]

I'd keep the 30-06 unless you REALLY want it to be original. It's next to impossible to find 6.5 jap let alone 7.7 jap

You lost me. Whats a 6.5 or 7.7? I'm a beginner when it comes to rifles. I love em but have a lot to learn. I just picked up a 1915 British rifle from the same guy yesterday. I think its the coolest one I've picked up yet...

[blinky]

The Type 99 rifle (the shorter one) fires a 7.7mm bullet. The Type 38 rifle fires a 6.5mm bullet. The longer rifle you have is basically a copy of the Type 38 rifle. It was never intended to fire a live bullet, just blanks. It was designed to give a student the feel of an actual Type 38 without the danger or expense of using real bullets (and they were cheaper to produce).

The "tube" you see in the barrel of your Type 99 is actually the lining of the barrel. In the 1950's many Type 99 rifles were rechambered for the 30-06 bullet which was the standard rifle round of the US military. These were intended for use by the South Korean army until US supply could catch up and supply them with the US M-1 rifle. China also re-chambered Japanese Type 99 rifles to .30-06. I think the US/Japanese re-chambered rifles were marked "US CAL .30" on the right side of the receiver. I'm not sure how the Chinese rifles were marked. It is possible if it was a Chinese re-chambered rifle it could have been recovered during the Korean War or even Vietnam.

Of course, many were re-chambered here in the US because the .30-06 bullet was cheaper and much easier to get than the Japanese 7.7mm bullet. The problem is they still used the original Japanese barrel which is a hair bit larger than the US round so the accuracy really suffers.

[pdawg1911]

2

Hi,

It is a series 5 (ho mark) Nagoya arsenal rifle.

Thanks,
Pat