carcano, what is it?

[444ttd]

i ah....wow.......i've seen some bores before, but this one takes the cake. after i was done soaking the barrel overnite, i ran thru some patches thinking that it would be blue-green.....i was wrong, the patches came out dirty grey. alright, so i have to clean some more. then i pick the rifle up to see what the bore looks like..........well to put it mildly....it was a piece of trash. the rifling went from pretty good to chunks of the rifling were blown out(3 of them). i can see "chattering" marks on the bore near the muzzle.

i am seriously thinking about rebarreling it. i will clean it and put it into my safe and she''ll be no 7 or 8 of rifles i have to fix.

[Uncle Grinch]

Carcano’s can be rebarreled to 35 Remington or 7.62x39 easily due to the bolt face size being close to these two cartridges.

[444ttd]

i'll keep that in mind.

[Pressman]

I liked the nice stock on mine so decided on rebarreling. I was working with a gunsmith in New York, an Italian heritage guy. He moved to North Carolina so I sent the action to him along with a Gain Twist Barrel Company .308 blank.

As he got the barrel on and I let him keep the reamer and headspace gauges. He did say that it was a bit frustrating as there was no square place on the receiver to index from, quote: "I am Italian and this thing embarrases me."

He did not mark the barrel for caliber and that was a mistake that I never fixed either. I located a gentleman in New Jersey who forged the bolt handle for scope clearance, and I drilled and tapped for a cantilever scope mount.

Next I used Brownell's Steel Bed to form a feed ramp to convert from clip fed to single shot as I didn't feel like fussing with the clips to get them to feed 7.62x39 rounds. Their short length won't allow them to feed reliably.

I managed to fire only a few handloads using 308 bullets before a major life style change hit me and all the guns were sold. I should have kept the Carcano for this reason alone.

The one round of surplus military 7.62x39 I fired really drove the pressure up, locking the bolt to the point I had to use a large plastic hammer to get it open. There was no apparent damage to the bolt of receiver and later reloads worked fine.

Ken

[444ttd]

i've always wondered why the custom barrel manufactures always said do not fire any steel cased ammo. now i might know.

[Pressman]

444 It's not the steel case but the size of the bullet in that case, to us 7.62 is a .308 bullet, to a Russian 7.62 is a .312 bullet.

[444ttd]

i've read that MGM tells you no steel cases in the .311" but is ok in .308". (7.62x39 and 7.62x54R)

matchgrademachine.com/chambers-list/

i've got a hankering to buy the sks and factory steel ammo, but now with biden, its dang near impossible to buy it.

[444ttd]

i can see "chattering" marks on the bore near the muzzle.

my eyes must be bad, "chattering marks" are gone. the rifle has been cleaned and put away into my safe. someday i'll take her out to shoot her.

[swheeler]

Try this instead of ordering clips. It’s a single shot adapter and works great.

<ebay links are verboten here sorry>

Thanks, I've got one on the way just for grins.

[dbosman]

Handloader has had articles on the Carcano's. Some specific to one cartridge and some that touched on the variations.

[Buckshot]

.............I had an Italian Carcano for several years, chambered 6.5x52. Shot it enough to prove that it was a capable firearm. Not long after I sold it I acquired another Carcano, and this one was 7.35 x 51. I forget who made the 6.5mm but this one was made by Terni in 1939. It's in excellent condition, and as such must not have seen much fighting? Some folks have a hard time with, or bad mouth the fixed sights. In all truth, the sights were very well thought out, and show a bit of intelligence for a few reasons. It's SA stamped so it went to Finnland.

The sights work great out to 400 yards, and their intended target was a tall(ish) narrow target about 18" wide or so. Depending upon the estimated range, you would hold your front sight in varying positions to hit from 50 yards to 400 yards in about 4 positions IIRC. In real world combat, the Italian sights were really all that was required for 98% of a soldiers' shooting requirements. The 7.35x51 was definitely enough of a cartridge to take an opponent off the battlefield for quite some time, if not forever, with a hit.

It's been quite some time since I discussed it but if memory serves, holding the top of the inverted 'V' front sight even with the top of the rear sight, at 100 yards holding 6 o'clock on a 6" bull your shot would be in the top of the black. So you could use that hold easily out to 200 yards and still land in a 6" bull. Or out further and make a torso hit.



.................Buckshot

[swheeler]

Buckshot what bullets you using in that 7.35? Did you make a sizer to draw down standard .308 bullets, I draw down .338 bullets for 8x56R use.

[Der Gebirgsjager]

That's one of the nicest specimens I've seen, Buckshot. Really a collector's item.

DG

[Buckshot]

...........I believe those jacketed slugs I'd used were from Hornady, and were made FOR the 7.35 Carcano. At the time, Dave Emary at Hornady was doing quite a bit of work with some of the Milsurp rifles' requirements for odd bullet ODs coming back by the boatloads. Another one was the M95 Straight Pulls (8x56R) from Austria and Hungary.

You 'could' run a .308" jacketed bullet up through a Lee Type push through die to re-size it to .302" or so. The issue is jacket separation (copper jacket 'Springback' away from the dead lead core). They were better then nothing. Hornaday no longer lists a .302" bullet for the Carcano or a .332" for the 8x56's.

.................Buckshot

[swheeler]

...........I believe those jacketed slugs I'd used were from Hornady, and were made FOR the 7.35 Carcano. At the time, Dave Emary at Hornady was doing quite a bit of work with some of the Milsurp rifles' requirements for odd bullet ODs coming back by the boatloads. Another one was the M95 Straight Pulls (8x56R) from Austria and Hungary.

You 'could' run a .308" jacketed bullet up through a Lee Type push through die to re-size it to .302" or so. The issue is jacket separation (copper jacket 'Springback' away from the dead lead core). They were better then nothing. Hornaday no longer lists a .302" bullet for the Carcano or a .332" for the 8x56's.

.................Buckshot

I guess those bullets were'nt big enough sellers to keep making them, they made .268" bullets at one time also, I'm still, shooting some. When they're gone I may try running some .277 Speer hot cores into a .270 push through just to see how they work.

[444ttd]

.............I had an Italian Carcano for several years, chambered 6.5x52. Shot it enough to prove that it was a capable firearm. Not long after I sold it I acquired another Carcano, and this one was 7.35 x 51. I forget who made the 6.5mm but this one was made by Terni in 1939. It's in excellent condition, and as such must not have seen much fighting? Some folks have a hard time with, or bad mouth the fixed sights. In all truth, the sights were very well thought out, and show a bit of intelligence for a few reasons. It's SA stamped so it went to Finnland.

The sights work great out to 400 yards, and their intended target was a tall(ish) narrow target about 18" wide or so. Depending upon the estimated range, you would hold your front sight in varying positions to hit from 50 yards to 400 yards in about 4 positions IIRC. In real world combat, the Italian sights were really all that was required for 98% of a soldiers' shooting requirements. The 7.35x51 was definitely enough of a cartridge to take an opponent off the battlefield for quite some time, if not forever, with a hit.

It's been quite some time since I discussed it but if memory serves, holding the top of the inverted 'V' front sight even with the top of the rear sight, at 100 yards holding 6 o'clock on a 6" bull your shot would be in the top of the black. So you could use that hold easily out to 200 yards and still land in a 6" bull. Or out further and make a torso hit.



.................Buckshot

vary nice rifle!!!!

[444ttd]

I guess those bullets were'nt big enough sellers to keep making them, they made .268" bullets at one time also, I'm still, shooting some. When they're gone I may try running some .277 Speer hot cores into a .270 push through just to see how they work.

just some reference points......

https://www.gunboards.com/threads/he...=deer#37;20225

https://www.gunboards.com/threads/bu...-9-3x57.49260/

and don't forget about the copper jacket, it will spring back about .001", if you want a .270" bullet, then you need a .269" push die(it will come out .270")

[GregLaROCHE]

Trivia. A Carcano is what was used to allegedly assassinate JFK.
https://catalog.archives.gov/id/305134

[swheeler]

just some reference points......

https://www.gunboards.com/threads/he...=deer#37;20225

https://www.gunboards.com/threads/bu...-9-3x57.49260/

and don't forget about the copper jacket, it will spring back about .001", if you want a .270" bullet, then you need a .269" push die(it will come out .270")

I think maybe the Hornady bullets are more prone to this than Speer Hot Core bullets. I do have 20 loaded with drawn down Speer 200 GR Hot Core and it seems like I also have a box of 50 of the same ready to go from couple years ago. When I get time I will take a cast bullet and one of the Speer and see if the Speer are .001" larger dia than a freshly sized casting ran through the same die.

[fgd135]

i recently bought(surprised me) a 6.5x52 carcano at an online auction.
...on the barrel is 1947XVIII...

Might want to reexamine the date, as in Il Duce's Fascist calendar - "Year XVIII" is October 1939- October 1940.
No Carcanos were produced after WW2 ended.

Many of the 7.35 Carcano M38 short rifles were given/sold to Finland; Italy converted production of the short rifle back to 6.5 mm to ease logistics.

Too bad about that barrel...I'd consider 7.62x39.