Calibre switch

N

Navy joe

New member
With a sported up Jap type 38, what calibers can anyone think of that I can convert to and maintain the current bore? As in similar case head size to feed properly, ream chamber to new size and headspace and shoot. 6.5 Jap ammo has been a little expensive lately.
 
That's a tough one. Most of the calibers with the same bullet diameter are also obsolete. I would slug the bore and measure the groove diameter. You might be able to use a .264" diameter bullet. If so then the field opens up but I can't think of any that wouldn't require opening the bolt face a little. George
 
Many were converted years ago to a wildcat made by necking up the 257 Roberts to 6.5. This is almost a duplicate of the European 6.5 x 57.

Bruce Pryor
 
That would be the thing to have if you were a handloader (and didn't want to just reload the 6.5 Arisaka.) Frank deHaas said that in spite of the slightly larger head size and longer case that it fit the bolt face and magazine without alteration.

It looks to me like a .260 Remington reamer would clean up the chamber and provide .264" bullets in factory ammo. But deHaas said that reboring or rebarreling them to .300 Savage or .308 required magazine work, so I would expect the .260 to, also.
 
I tend to agree with Jim W. that if you are going to reload anyway, why not just buy some Norma ammo, and reload the 6.5 Jap. It is capable of some pretty good performance when loaded hotter than the military round (though it can't match the 6.5x55), and you can load it hot in the Arisaka action.

It is a puzzle why the Japanese produced one of the world's strongest rifles, and then used one of the world's most anemic cartridges in it.

Jim
 
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