what's the deal with carcano rifles?

There are people who make money in part by denigrating the Carcano and Oswald's ability to shoot it.
There's also the same type of bigotry that made many people consider the Arisaka to be junk, because the nation/people that used them were considered inferior.

The Carcano I fired was reasonably accurate and easy to operate. That's pretty much the same thing I've said about comparable surplus bolt actions of the same vintage.
 
Just came upon this thread re the Carcanos. I don't know whats wrong with everyone....I have two of them a 7.35 carbine and a 6.5 long gun. The carbine does well at 50-75 yrds and I expect I can extend that out easily with some load noodling. Its very easy to handle, is reliable and a fun gun to shoot. The 6.5 was advertised as a WWII gun when I bought it but with research I found out it was built in Rome where they only built them two years 1917/18. Mine is a 1918 and is in beautiful condition. I still have to figure out pictures on this forum but hopefully will send some later. The gun is not a tack driver but it easily holds its own with my other 6.5s such as the Arisaka. Not as good as the Swede though. Again, its reliable, easy to sight and shoot and reasonably accurate. Not a piece of junk as some would say. Hey it is 96 years old what do you expect?
 
hehe, the irony, that I started this thread 2 years ago to learn about the design, to now answer the very same thread as a self proclaimed authority figure.

ShurShot,
I have come to seriously despise the Carcano, based on both the couple dozen handled in the OP, and several handled since then as well as some research.

1.biggest feature I hate is the wood. not one Carcano I've handled has had a decent stock, some were chopped, some were original, all were dried out chunks of driftwood. I've seen some pictures of carcanos with beautiful wood but I have yet to see one in person, leading me to believe that carcanos with good wood are more of a rarity than not.

2. they use non-standard bullet diameters. since what little surplus there was is now long gone, reloading for the carcano is a must and getting your hands on .268 and .299 bullets is a huge PITAx10^989879879879879, I won't get a carcano. I don't know why the Italians thought they were so special that they didn't have to standardize but when everyone else was using .264s for their 6.5s, Italy went with .268, and when everyone else was using 307-311 for their 30 calibers, Italy instead went with .299, the only rifles in history to use those diameter bullets.

3. they need an enbloc. at one time I didn't think that enblocs were such a terrible thing but now that I own two rifles that do use them(m95 mannlicher and M1 garand) I seriously hate the setup. I get that they are much faster and easier to use than stripper clips but they let dirt and dust in like crazy and it's really easy to lose them in the field. if all you're doing is shooting off a bench then that's fine, it's no big deal but I love taking my guns to the mountain and when you're moving around and shooting it's a huge pain to try and keep track of how many shots you've taken and when exactly your gun spits out the clip and in what direction.

the closest I came to ever buying a carcano, and the closest I will likely ever come, is a type I arisaka. they took a carcano action, which is one of the few features I am not adverse to, and gave it a Japanese style stock, japanese box magazine(fed from stripper clips), jap sights, and jap cartridge(complete with standard .264 bullet diameter). it's the perfect carcano, in my humble opinion.

age is no excuse for the carcano, my Swedish mauser will beat the breaks off just about any carcano and it's 114 years old. my 6.5 jap carbine is from the 30s, and is the most accurate milsurp I own. enfields, springfields, even mosin nagants, have a lot of saving graces to their designs, not one could be faulted for it's age, the carcano... least of it's worries are it's age.
 
...as a self proclaimed authority figure.
Click to expand...

Looks like you are basing your "expert" opinion on handing a whopping 20 or thirty pieces.

The fact that the Carcanos you have seen and deem all "junk" due to well-used wood, et. al. would tell me that these guns have had a long and very hard service life. Hardly the hallmark of a POS.

Perhaps if you look around at some gun shows or places other than Cabelas, you might see what a Carcano with nice wood and a decent finish looks like.

But, the bottom line is: If you don't like them, don't buy one.
 
I have a 6.5 Berretta ( spelling ) Carcano carbine, that is in very nice shape, with a very good stock, in original finish... it's actually one of my favorite milsurps... love the rear sight...

BTW... as far as the original post, Cabela's often buys collections of guns... I bought 4 exposed hammer double barrel 12 gauges that I shortened for CAS for dirt cheap, about the time this thread was started, & they had dozens of them in the local store, most were Husquevarna's which work just fine for CAS use... a couple months ago, they had a big collection of Remington 66's literally 30 or 40 of them in every conceivable configuration... I'm betting they bought a collection or "group" of Carcanos... back then ;)
 
Last edited:
Shoot, I was going to buy one just because I didn't have one, was ready to close out this and go to cabalas site until I noticed the post was two years old.

So it isn't the best rifle out there, who cares, I like history and the Carcano is history as any other old military surplus rifle.
 
Looks like you are basing your "expert" opinion on handing a whopping 20 or thirty pieces.
Click to expand...
actually I think it's closer to 40 pieces these days, but I hope you realize that I was being sarcastic when I said I was an "expert". :rolleyes:
 
Like a lot of old military designs, the Carcano has it's faults when you want to convert it to a hunting rifle. The split bridge sucks, unless you use a tip-off mount so you can load it easily. The clip gets some getting used to. Nothing wrong with the safety. BUT, if you think you (Russian rifle owners) have finally found a rifle more worthless to hunt with, you would be wrong. I have used both to hunt and the Carcano wins hands down as an adaptable deer gun.
 
2. they use non-standard bullet diameters. since what little surplus there was is now long gone, reloading for the carcano is a must and getting your hands on .268 and .299 bullets is a huge PITAx10^989879879879879, I won't get a carcano. I don't know why the Italians thought they were so special that they didn't have to standardize but when everyone else was using .264s for their 6.5s, Italy went with .268, and when everyone else was using 307-311 for their 30 calibers, Italy instead went with .299, the only rifles in history to use those diameter bullets.
Click to expand...

That is an interesting issue. Obviously they did not have any concerns about the use of the rifle in civilian hands 70 years after a losing war and civilian shooter's difficulty of reloading for the thing. Troops were to be issued with military ammunition and nothing else. Italy is a nation state so they had to be thinking that they could make all their own ammunition, and I am certain, they probably did.

I expect someone sat down, looked at a ballistic chart, looked at a pressure curve chart, and came up with those goofy bullet sizes.

Our own 223 was developed, basically, by a bunch of guys at Bob Hutton's Ranch in CA. They took an existing round, necked it down, got the velocities they wanted, shot through a couple of watermelons and helmets, which was accepted as proof of lethality, and that round became US military standard.

Now, the US is trying to figure out how to shoe horn rounds that equal the 6.5 Carcano ballistically, into military M16's, because the basic 223 round makes a good poodle round, but not on the larger French poodles, as French poodles don't drop as fast as desired.
 
I saw a special where they tested the rifle in a re-creation of the Kennedy assassination. The experts were amazed at its accuracy. Guess Oswald got a bargain at $19.88 with the scope. The same catalog had the m-1 carbine in it for $79. Wish I had a few hundred of them at that price.
 
Last edited:
Obviously they did not have any concerns about the use of the rifle in civilian hands 70 years after a losing war and civilian shooter's difficulty of reloading for the thing.
Click to expand...

LOL!! The 6.5 Carcano was initiated ca. 1891, long before the 6.5 Swedish, 6.5 Jap, the 6.5 Mannlicher, and even the 6mm Lee Navy. In it's day, it was cutting edge technology. Why later developers chose to pursue a slightly smaller diameter bullet is lost to history, but the fact remains that the 6.5 Carcano was the pioneer of small bore smokeless cartridges.
 
um... not really...
6.5 swede was invented in 1894, 3 years after the carcano.
6.5x54 mannlicher, also invented 1894
6.5x50 japanese 1897, 6 years after the carcano.
6mm lee navy, 1895
7x57, 1892

I would hardly call that LONG before anyone else. true they were the first. however in the case of 7.35... they were far from the first.
7.62x54R was invented 1891.
30-06, obviously, 1906
303 brit, 1888
7.65x53 1889.
7.5 swiss 1889
7.5 french 1929
one would wonder why they continued to not use standardized bullet diameters.
 
3 years or 6 years, the fact remains that the 6.5 Carcano was the vanguard for small bore cartridges.

And, regarding the .303 British, it was first loaded as a black powder cartridge, hardly a step forward.
 
The fact that the Carcanos you have seen and deem all "junk" due to well-used wood, et. al. would tell me that these guns have had a long and very hard service life. Hardly the hallmark of a POS.
Click to expand...
And yet the 'cream' of the WWII-era bolt rifles, the (unissued) Swedes and K31, saw no service if I am not mistaken :D. Things that make you wonder...

I personally ponder whether or not a lot of these 'odd' gun types that are so maligned in the states are such because of poor ammo selection. By which I mean that people shot 'standard' size bullets of approximately the right size from rifles ill suited to them for lack of any other projectiles. If you have a .312 bore and nothing but .308 bullets to play with, and little to no scientific background to fall back on (which Bubba does not have), you might well conclude the cartridge is inherently inaccurate ;)

one would wonder why they continued to not use standardized bullet diameters.
Click to expand...
Because they already had massive state-run/licensed factories producing umpteen millions of rounds. Why didn't we get with the (eventual) program and adopt 276 Pedersen, or at the very least, full power 30-06 for WWII? Logisitics.

would hardly call that LONG before anyone else. true they were the first.
Click to expand...
A few years of nation-level ballistics development and industrial espionage is more than enough time to perfect and optimize a break-through tech as simple as a small-bore bottleneck cartridge. During that smokeless transition period, things were moving really fast, so it's not surprising that something as brilliant as 6.5x55 would be developed through refinement but a few years later.

As far as 7.5x55; I'm convinced there was alien intervention involved in its development, since it was one of the earliest cartridges of its class, and has remained for 115 years very close to an optimum design for slinging a 30cal projectile of that class. To be fair, 7.5 Swiss was not perfected until 1911 when it became fully smokeless. I suspect the Italians were as late to the game as they were because they had more recently upgraded their ammo selection with the 6.5; 40 years isn't exactly out of the ordinary for a cartridge choice that doesn't have anything inherently wrong with it (even if it might not be the 'optimum' design solution) --just look at 30-06 and 45acp

TCB
 
The fact that the Carcanos you have seen and deem all "junk" due to well-used wood, et. al. would tell me that these guns have had a long and very hard service life. Hardly the hallmark of a POS.
Click to expand...
um, Mosin nagants, Springfields, Enfields, Arisakas, Mausers... all saw long service lives and VERY hard combat use, none are as bad as the carcano, seems to me like a hallmark of bad wood to me, but that's just me. they were improperly stored, drying out either in a million hunter's closets or in italian storage warehouses, doesn't matter the wood is junk at this point, right now.
Because they already had massive state-run/licensed factories producing umpteen millions of rounds. Why didn't we get with the (eventual) program and adopt 276 Pedersen, or at the very least, full power 30-06 for WWII? Logisitics.
Click to expand...
I was talking about when Italy decided to replace the 6.5 with a 30 caliber and went with a bullet that only italy would ever go on to use.
 
Really, the "non-standard" diameter is a foolish argument. It was standard for Italy, and the Italians really couldn't care less if it makes it attractive to reloaders in 2014.
The fact is, the 6.5 Carcano is an excellent, well balanced cartridge. If it were invented today and put into a modern semiauto rifle, the combination would rock.
Really, what made me buy and shoot a Carcano cavalry carbine, was the book "Testing The War Weapons" by Timothy Mullins.
In it, mullens shoots and evaluates a multitude of firearms and discusses them from the standpoint of the soldier.
The Carcano carbine surprised Mullins with its ease of use...he concludes that the little Carcano would be his first choice in a bolt action fighting carbine.
After shooting the one I owned, I had to agree. Previously, I would have said the Enfield No.5 I owned for a while.
 
ok well since I am not an italian soldier and the year is not 1934, the fact that they once had ok wood, and the government would have supplied all my ammo is pretty irrelevant.

the wood is bad NOW.
the ammo does not exist NOW
the only maker of proper diameter bullets is not making them NOW

that is why, for my purposes, and the purposes of anyone thinking of buying them, they are JUNK NOW!!!!!!

The fact is, the 6.5 Carcano is an excellent, well balanced cartridge. If it were invented today and put into a modern semiauto rifle, the combination would rock.
Click to expand...
no... no it is not. and no it would not.
6.5 carcano is nearly a direct twin to the 6.5 jap. I've hunted with jap and it's not in any way shape or form "a great cartridge"

with a 140gr bullet, from a 21 inch barrel, the 6.5 carcano is only able to push about 2200FPS. about the same as what I was able to get a 140gr from a 20 inch jap carbine.

looking at other 6.5mm cartridges which use easier bullets to get ahold of and use less powder than the carcano.
6.5 creedmore gets 2700FPS
6.5 swede gets 2500FPS(but can be pushed 2600 with more powder)
6.5 grendel can push about the same 2200FPS with close to half the powder. all with 20-24 inch barrels.

there are plenty of 6.5s that are much easier to load for, that are much more efficient.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top