Japanese Militaria at Castle-Thunder.com

[Steve]

I have an Arisaka type 38 barrel that I believe might be a rare one. The barrel has not been sporterized, however it is only 25 1/4" long. The standard type 38 barrel is 31 1/4" and the Carbine measures 19". I tried to research it a bit and there's not a lot of information about it other than a Wikipedia site that mentioned a "short barrel" variant (below).

Main article: Type 38 rifle

Developed by Major Nambu Kijirō. Chambered in 6.5×50mmSR Type 38, Type 30 cartridge is also useable. A short variant exists for ease of handling, its length is between the basic rifle and the carbine.

Is this a scarce Arisaka barrel?

[gwsiii]

Welcome to the forum. It is likely a Short rifle barrel, or possibly a Chinese Communist conversion. Post some pictures if you can. Trey
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I didn't pay to much for that old Arisaka, I just bought it a little bit too soon!

[Steve]

[gwsiii]

The front sight is too close to the muzzle, so its been moved. Have you got a picture of there series/serial number/arsenal area? The mum is elongated like the later Kokura guns, but the short rifles were almost exclusively made from early non series guns. The muzzle doesn't look like it has been crowned so it may be that it is just cut off. I'll have to go find my short rifle and see if the muzzle was recrowned. I know there is a step milled in the barrel around which the front band sat. I can't see that on this one, but it may just be the angle. The pitting looks pretty severe so even with a mum, it may not be worthwhile to even try to restore. Is the under side of the barrel import marked?
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I didn't pay to much for that old Arisaka, I just bought it a little bit too soon!

[Steve]

[gwsiii]

I think that's a kokura 26th series so it would have probably been produced too late to have been converted to a short rifle configuration by the Japanese. You can take a look at the Type 38 datasheet to confirm the series (left of serial # in a circle). The mailing address on the datasheet is correct, I have not updated his email address though, but I believe Frank is away from a computer at the moment. I'm kinda busy this weekend, but I'll try and get a picture of my Short rifle posted to compare. Trey
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Fill out a Japanese Rifle Datasheet.
I didn't pay to much for that old Arisaka, I just bought it a little bit too soon!

[Steve]

Trey, Thanks for taking the time to research this for me. As you probably know, information on the Arisaka "short barrel" is scarce. Even Wikipedia has the "short barrel" listed as a variant meaning that there could be several different versions of the shortened rifle depending on where the work was done. I'm not giving up on this one yet.

[DEFUC]

the japanese ones were done at chigusa arsenal and run very very typically to form,wikipedia is a lousy source for information,theres not much variation among them...the chinese shortend guns ran to a lot more variations from the really good to the really awful . the guys here or at gunboards "rising sun" forum have saw,handled and owned dozens and in many case hundreds of japanese rifles, the writters of online sites like wiki have usually never saw any but copied what was posted by others elsewhere,often inaccurately.

[Steve]

DEFUC, I could'nt agree more, that's why I posted here looking for experienced opinions. However, there is no doubt in my mind that there are variants of the "short barrel". The reason I say this is because I have a much more common type 99 (see picture) and there are variants on this type depending on time of manufacture date.