Ivy Mike
Member
Quarantine does funny things to a person with lots of time and not much money for expensive rare ammo. I was looking at my old Type 44 6.5mm Japanese carbine and at ammo prices. I've shot the gun before and she's a great shooter, but ammo cost and spotty availability has made it a bit of a safe queen. I discovered that 6.5 Grendel shares some cases dimensions with the 6.5 Arisaka round, specifically, they are very close in terms of rim diameter, base diameter and they use the same size bullets. 6.5 Grendel is a hell of a lot cheaper than 6.5 Arisaka.
To my eye, it appears that one could use a Grendel reamer on the Arisaka chamber and shorten the chamber, rethread it and have a very nice shooting classic rifle with the benefit of modern ammo that is, ballistically, pretty close to the cartridge it replaced.
I've included drawings of the two cartridges and I think I may actually have an answer to that old question of what to use if you want to rechamber an old Arisaka rifle. Pressures for the Grendel are higher than the Arisaka, but that also may have to do with the older round being used in machine guns back then. The bolt rifles are plenty strong with people converting them to use necked-up .257 Roberts ammo without ill effects. I measured the thickness of the chamber walls and there is plenty of steel there. In fact, its thicker than my Yugo Mauser in 8mm Mauser.
What do you guys think? I am not a gunsmith but it looks to me like this could be a very straight-forward conversion. The extractor might need a little work and perhaps a change to the magazine floorplate to aid in feeding from the factory magazine with the shorter cartridge.
To my eye, it appears that one could use a Grendel reamer on the Arisaka chamber and shorten the chamber, rethread it and have a very nice shooting classic rifle with the benefit of modern ammo that is, ballistically, pretty close to the cartridge it replaced.
I've included drawings of the two cartridges and I think I may actually have an answer to that old question of what to use if you want to rechamber an old Arisaka rifle. Pressures for the Grendel are higher than the Arisaka, but that also may have to do with the older round being used in machine guns back then. The bolt rifles are plenty strong with people converting them to use necked-up .257 Roberts ammo without ill effects. I measured the thickness of the chamber walls and there is plenty of steel there. In fact, its thicker than my Yugo Mauser in 8mm Mauser.
What do you guys think? I am not a gunsmith but it looks to me like this could be a very straight-forward conversion. The extractor might need a little work and perhaps a change to the magazine floorplate to aid in feeding from the factory magazine with the shorter cartridge.