Why? Because I can...

I spent today working on building a new rifle. This was an idea that came to a friend and I a while back, and seemed like a neat project. The 6.5 and 7.35 Carcano cartridges have virtually identical case head dimensions as the 7.62x39 cartridge (before the caliber was readily available here, people used 7.35 carcano surplus just to reform the brass for 7.62x39). That means that a 7.62 cartridge will fit a Carcano bolt with no modification. We also had a couple cheap sporterized Carcano carbines and a pile of Mosin-Nagant M44 barrels.

So...the idea was to trim down an M44 barrel, rechamber it for 7.62x39 (sanme bore dimensions), rethread the outside, and put it into a Carcano receiver. Then make a new stock with a semi-pistol grip (instead of the original straight stock), and presto! A cheap but effective truck gun or field carbine, and good gunsmithing experience too. A Carcano clip will hold x39 rounds well enough...it's like a bubba CZ527.

The stock was a hybrid of a Carcano front end and Remington 870 rear (I made one up with bondo joining the two pieces, and then cut a new solid one using a stock duplicator). We did the barrel chambering and threading a while ago, and I headspaced the gun today, did the final stock shaping, and got the new sights set up. Tomorrow I'll be drilling and pinning the sights in place, sanding the stock, and doing the first test firing. I love it when a project comes together!

Yes, it has a pretty good safety. It's part of the Carcano bolt, and basically allows you to de-tension the firing pin spring.

Well, here it is ready to use:



The stock still needs some finish work, but that's just cosmetic. Today I did the rough sanding on the stock, added the sling swivels and buttplate, mounted the sights (front is pinned, rear is soldered and pinned), and test fired it. The testing was just in a test-fire tube, so I don't have any accuracy info yet. It feeds well, extracts well, but only ejects about half the time. I think my ejector is worn, so I'll replace it with a better one to see if that fixes the problem. I'm really happy that it feeds well - I was concerned that the shorter round would need a guide block to work.

The stock is pretty amateur (you can see the gaps around the buttplate), but it should be perfectly functional (and it's long enough that I can cycle the action without losing my cheek weld).