Thanks guys.
Dog Soldier - nice pieces
The "extremely high" is all about a 6 o'clock hold and I've read they were zero'd at 200.. Put the sights on the belt buckle and you'll have a center mass hit out to 200 yds. That's the way the Japanese rifles that I have shot have all been set up.
Mstreddy, sounds like you are following (or leading) me to the same place. Too many Arisakas
Well there is no such thing really
For those interested in "dead barrels" - they are not shot out. They are mil-surp barrels that have been tamed down a bit. As I said above, I only have one in full mil-surp wood and bands and that's Pops. All of mine have been to the Bubba shed before I got to them. But they are not hard to work on. OK, maybe tuning the Arisaka trigger is not fun, but it's all doable.
So my barrels are good inside, but rusty or beat, or nicked, or cut, etc. The outside is not pretty. But what you notice right off about Arisaka barrels, other than the Type 44, is that they are "slender." They have a chamber and then immediately drop to tubing diameter and a taper to muzzle.I think that Japanese used the wood to dampen any ring ...
So there is a guy on here (or another board...) that shoots 600 yds with a modified Mosin. He had the barrel externally sleeved by an outfit in Florida. He shoots pretty tight groups for an old battle rifle. So it got me to thinking. These slender barrels are like wind chimes. Hold one up, tap it, and they will ring.
It has always been my contention that any rifle that "prefers" one load over another is really asking for a sonic tune. The load, the pressure spike delay, the pressure curve overall, and the bullet traveling down the tube all try to make the barrel ring.
What I don't know is "are successful loads" the ones that cancel out the harmonics, or do they play to the barrel in a major key? My bet was/is that they cancel and the barrel acts dead - no ring ... So how to get there another way?
I'm fooling with these inexpensive (relative) slender barrels by making external sleeves and filling them with stuff. I only have one done right now, a 6.5 with a 1" aluminum tube. The barrel was wrapped in Cero-Tek epoxy (same high temp epoxy they use to bed actions for wing mounted guns in aircraft) and S-Glass cloth. The sleeve filled to the muzzle with the excess. It cured hard and dead as can be - no ring. Once I get it into an action, I'll assemble and take it to the range. I expect pretty repeatable accuracy with store bought ammo(PRVI) . We'll see...
The guy I mentioned above paid $400 to have his Mosin done by a custom shop that builds carbon fiber wrapped bull barrels. I wanted to do it for less than a $100. I didn't make my budget as I have $75 in the sleeve and barrel threading at the local machine shop. The outfit in FL will not disclose their matrix, but I think it's about the same...
The next one will be a 99 with a simpler sleeve of 1" copper tube indexed to a flash hider lathe ring and sitting on the chamber front bevel. I'll use Tapp Plastics "Hi Temp" mold-makers polyurethane poured into the space. It's good to like 400*F and it's about the consistency of a rubber eraser when cured. I suspect it'll deaden the barrel pretty well? We'll see...
All these barrels are early production chrome lined bores. They are just ugly on the outside. They are not perfect, but if you take a 31" military barrel and cut it back to 26", you are well back from any muzzle erosion. Most of my barrels have come pre-cut to something. I'm just standardizing on 26". I might go back to 24" if I see results from testing. I have extra barrels from before the prices went nutz this year ...
OBTW - all these Arisaka barrels have Metford Rifling. So they all look old and worn when you look at them. They are not. Metford has much less pronounced lands w/o as much of a sharp edge. If the rifling looks to be there, it is. I suspect the Japanese adopted this so they could fire dirty or corroded ammo and the rifles would be easy to clean ... The chrome lining was to combat corrosive primers.
So if you have some Bubba'd ones, make some fun projects out of them and fire away. You may surprise yourself. I'm hoping I will
The proof will be that one of my experimental barrels will eat a half dozen different hand loads w/o really opening up the grouping. I expect POI to move as speed changes, but am hoping that the spread will still be smallish and somewhat consistent ...
