99 ariska

[buntingmiester]

hi, kinda new here, I,'ve gotten a type 99 Ariska w/ end of war bolt, but stock, barrel, reciever are from earlier as far as I can tell, stock is in fair shape. It had a light coat of rust, probably not shot since mid 50's, will try the electrolsis method of rust removal, w/gentle clean-up of wood no refinishing, have not cleaned barrel yet, but it looks pretty good!, suprisingly good. I plan to shoot is gunw/ cast boolits, and have about 200lbs. w/w. My questions are A. what should I add to the w/w? and what would you recomend for sizer/mold? (Ihave a couple of Lee 6-cavity molds now). any recipes I should try? Thanks ,buntingmiester

[buntingmiester]

sorry, can't post pic's, ground off mum, numbers do match

[Scharfschuetze]

As long as your velocity goal is moderate, say 1800 fps, I'd try casting your WWs as they are and see how they do. Older clip on WWs had a reasonable tin content (maybe 2% or so), but for many years now they've been light on the tin. If your boolits don't fill out well, then you'll probably need to some add tin so that you have at least a 2% to lead and antimony content. As you have about 200 pounds of WWs, and you're not getting well filled out boolits, you might try adding at least a pound of tin and hopefully this and the tin already in the alloy add up to about 2% of the mix.

Be careful that you don't have any zink WWs in your stash as they can ruin your alloy.

[runfiverun]

the arisaka's have a lee metford type of rifling so they will like a boloit that's slightly oversized and fairly hard.
they also seem to like either long parallel sided boolits [314299] or loverign designs that fill their throats well.
you'll also want to check the diameters of the barrel most of the ones I have checked have 311-312 groove dimensions but bore dimensions do vary a bit, just, well, because, I guess.
also check the muzzle for cleaning rod wear, the emperor didn't like his guns being dirty.

[TCLouis]

Bore diameter varies all over the place on these things.

I have one that I use .308" coated and .311" cast, but some are very much larger.

[Legion489]

No one has added "just shoot the bullets as cast", so I will. As reported in the latest (just got mine as of July 14, 2014) GUNS Mag, the 7.7 Jap uses the same head size as the .30-06/270 Win/etc (12mm) but there was no mention of the case body just in front of the rim being slightly (to much) larger. You can use .30-06 cases, but watch out for head seperations.

[bruce drake]

My T99 Last-Ditch uses .314" boolits. .312 jacketed for decent 4 MOA accuracy at 100 yard. I can't wring more than that out of that rifle but I may have to take it out again soon to play around with it.

[Safeshot]

You might want to "slug your bore" first. Then determine the largest cast bullet that can be loaded in your brass and chamber without binding. Then check the cast bullet in a fired unsized case to be sure the bullet will enter and leave the case mouth easily. I have had the best accuracy with a larger cast bullet WITH a gas check.

[leadman]

I have 3 Type 99s, 2 are sporterized. All have bores around .314" so I shoot .315". The bores are chrome plated on mine but don't know if this was carried out to the end of the war.

I use 8X57 Mauser brass and just full length size, load and shoot. I use a 303 British Lee collet die with washer under it to just size the neck. The brass is just a tad short (1mm) but this causes no harm.

[303Guy]

It sounds like a paper patch project.

[Eddie2002]

I shoot my two Arisakas with boolits as cast, not resized. I'm using WW's for a little 100 grain boolit made for a .32 caliber and it drops from the mold at .312 which is a little small for one rifle but just about right for the other. The boolits are water dropped for a little more hardness to grab the metford rifling and I'm getting 2-3 MOA at 50 yds using 5-6 grains of bullseye. The load drops about 6 inches at 50 yds but it is accurate enough except for a flyer here or there. It's like shooting a .22 rimfire on steroids and costs about the same. I just cast some range scrap and hard solder mix to see if a harder boolit will help but haven't got out to the range yet.
I'm using resized 30-06 and 270 brass and don't have any problems with the cases bulging. Also shoot 150 grain condom bullets out of them but that's a different thing altogether.
They are a fun rifle to shoot and can be as accurate as any other Milsurp out there.

[303Guy]

buntingmeister, you don't say what sort of velocity you hope to get. Lower velocity should be quite do-able if the boolit fits the throat well enough.

I have a 1896 Lee Enfield action that had a Martini carbine barrel on it (they do not fit right). That bore has shallow and rounded rifling and the throat is sort of non-existent but it shot PP's very well indeed. The bore is something like .311 and groove around .315 (I'd have to remeasure it) so I would say it resembled Metford rifling. In fact, it could even be Metford rifling. The muzzle end looks like it should be cut back to better rifling but it's a collectable barrel so I won't. Point is, any worn bore can be made to shoot, even it it takes paper patching. Paper patching is fun in itself and so is making a very worn bore shoot.