Hey all,
I am in possession of a LATE war Arisaka. I took it to the range and proceeded to fire 8 rounds down range to test it. The fixed sights made it difficult to determine the zero point, but it is somehwere about 1.5' up and 2.5' to the left of where the fixed zero is.  Now this is a somewhat valuable collectors piece with all matching and original parts(stock included) and I am a history buff, so I will leave this rifle alone, but it got me thinking about future rifles- I would like to get a functioning Arisaka with a decent zero- but be an original WW2 rifle and not a "Sporterized" version brought home and chopped up into something that looks like the poor 1950's man's Rem700.  If I bought a decently shaped Arisaka and it turned out ot also have crap accuracy, would there be any way to take it to a professional gun smith and have them bore out the barrel, then pour in say chrome(any other metal but for sake of argument) and mill out a decent bore?

Could I take an old gun to a smith and have them make the barrel accurate, or do I really have to just purchase an incredibly valuable Sniper Arisaka and then continue to fire through it, 70+ years later? Because I would prefer to NOT take a real collector's piece and continue to use it. I appreciate any responses,
-Neutron

I'm not a gunsmith, but I'd say the cost of improving the accuracy of a rifle such as an Arisaka will exceed the value of the rifle and possibly detract from the value of it.

With a old barrel there are really only a couple of things to do to "fix accuracy"

Clean the dickens out of them . Many times a hurt looking barrel will return to decent shooting if the copper and powder fouling is cleaned out .


Many times the crown is messed up and recutting the crown or backcoreing the barrel will improve the accuracy .


If the barrel is really shot replacement of the barrel is the only repair .

Lots of the old milsurp rifles were not tackdrivers when brand new and many shoot fairly high as they were intended to be zeroed at 300 yards (or meters) as a starting and the sights are not realy set to go lower .

Many of the milsurps had coarse sights , heavy triggers and available ammo is mass produced ball ammo that wasn't match grade when new .
I believe the Arisakas slipped in quality as the war ground on

About the only thing I think can be done is to make sure the crown is good.

Reload with cast bullets.......

First clean the hell out of that barrel and try to get out all the copper fouling. Then shoot it again.


If you have a bore scope then take a look and see what condition the barrel really is in. Alternatively you can slug the barrel to see what the true bore diameter is. If the hire ID is a bit on the large side you can try reloading with some slightly larger cast lead bullets to see if that improves it at all.




If the crown is trashed you can recrown it, or the rifling at the end is all worn out you can try to counterbore it and see if that helps.




That's really about it short of putting a new barrel on there. Don't forget to check out the stock to action lockup and also make sure the barrel is set in the barrel channel of the stock peorperly and has the correct ammount of upwards pressure on the barrel (if applicable. Don't know much about Ariskas)