Bolt Action Rifles. Wayne Zwoll

version) rifle carries the imperial seal, but has no type or year markings.

      On all 6.5 and 7.7 Japanese bolt-action rifles I’ve seen, the serial number is stamped on the left side of the receiver, below the groove for the sliding breech cover. I have no information on the serial numbering procedures followed in Japan, so the serial number in itself means little. The Type 38 action pictured in this chapter has a serial number well over 5,000,000, which may be some indication as to the number of these rifles produced.

      One or more various small markings often precede or follow the serial number marking. These marks may be arsenal identification marks and/or arsenal proof marks. On Type 38 actions part of the serial number is usually stamped on the underside of the bolt handle base, and on some of the other parts as well, such as the trigger and trigger guard.

      I will end this chapter with a description of perhaps the rarest and most unusual Japanese military rifle action of all.

      I have never seen or examined a Japanese military rifle which, because of its hook-like safety, is usually called the Hook Safety Japanese rifle. I have seldom read anything about it either. Therefore I can write only about the action, an action which I obtained on loan from a kind reader, an action which originally had the bolt handle replaced. The most I have ever read about it is in the book Shots Fired In Anger in which the author, Bradford Aniger, describes this rifle he obtained while in the service in the South Pacific during WWII. He identifies it as the “Thirty Year” Japanese Carbine. It evidently was a forerunner of the Type 38.

      Left side of the Japanese Hook Safety action.

      The receiver of the Japanese Hook Safety action is of one-piece construction probably being machined from a forging. It is basically round except for a flat area around the magazine box and on both sides of the front guard screw stud. There is no recoil lug worth mentioning, although the stock may have been fitted with a separate steel lug into which the guard screw stud fitted. The receiver tang is several inches long, the loading port opening about 2”, with the receiver proper minus tang 8 inches long. The top of the bridge is nicely contoured and its forward edge has a cartridge clip slot similar to that of the Model 98 Mauser military action. A bolt-stop similar to that used on the German Model 88 Commission rifle and on the Mannlicher/Schoenauer action is fitted in the rear left side of the bridge, and the right side wall notched deeply for the root of the bolt handle. This notch is similar to that found on the Japanese Models 99 or 38 Arisaka actions. The rear end of the tang is squared off.

      The inside of the receiver is machined to accept the two-piece bolt with its dual-opposed forward locking lugs, and this means that raceways are cut to allow passage of the locking lugs and shoulders machined inside the receiver ring for the lugs to engage with. Both locking lugs are solid. A separate quick-detachable bolt head with a flat face is fitted into the front of the bolt body and held in place by a small lug on the bolt head engaging in a matching slot inside the bolt body. This bolt head does not rotate with the bolt body. Fitted in a groove in the right side of the bolt head, and between it and the bolt body, is the simple one-piece spring steel extractor, while the sliding ejector is fitted on the left side in a dovetail. The arrangement of the bolt head, extractor and ejector is almost identical to the system used in the German M-88 Commission and early Mannlicher/Schoenauer actions. And as on these rifles, the breech of the barrel is recessed and slotted on both sides to accept the front end of the bolt head, extractor and ejector. There are no gas vent holes in the bolt body or head, but there are two small angled vent holes in the top of the receiver ring in junction with the breech of the barrel.

      The bolt handle (Note: the original bolt handle on this action has been replaced with a modern-styled one) is an integral part of the bolt and its root serves as the safety locking lug which fits into a deep notch machined in the right receiver bridge wall. A flange encircles the rear end of the bolt and serves to seal off the locking lug raceways. Just ahead of this flange the bolt is machined to provide a preliminary cocking cam for the firing mechanism.

      While the front end of the bolt with its separate bolt head arrangement is a familiar one, not so the arrangement of the parts on the rear of the bolt. To say the least, it is a very odd arrangement of parts that make up the safety, cocking piece and other parts to cock the striker. I was puzzled by it and I had the bolt on my desk for ten days and still could not discover how to disassemble it to find out just how it worked. It was not until I read about this action in Bradford Aniger’s book did I get the striker mechanism disassembled. I wondered just what the designer of it had in mind because it was surely one masterpiece of incompetency.

      The bolt is drilled and bored out from the front to within about 1.5” from the rear end, leaving a collar at that point through which the rear end of the striker projects. The one-piece striker also has a collar near its tip and the coil mainspring is compressed between these two collars.

      Thus far it is simple enough, but wait, it gets complicated. The rear end of the bolt is also machined out for the collar and a safety/half-cocking cam opening made into it while still leaving a collar.

      What follows is reassembly of a completely stripped bolt, in proper order. Taking the striker with mainspring slipped over it, position it into the bolt. Next comes the part which I will call the striker sear, a small part which has a triangular sear projecting from it and which has a hole through its center partly threaded. This striker sear is then positioned inside the rear end of the bolt so that the rear end of the striker can pass through it.

      Next comes the hook safety, a part that can also be called a cocking piece because the striker can be cocked with it, and it is slipped into the rear of the bolt, with the hook opposite the bolt handle. This part has twin projections on its forward end that engage in matching notches in the rear threaded end of the striker sear, the purpose to be explained later.

      Next comes the striker head. It is a split two-piece part threaded at its front to slip into the safety and threaded into the striker sear. The rear end of the striker has two grooves turned into it, and the inside of the two-piece striker head has two matching collars so that the parted halves can fit over the rear of the striker and engage with it with the two halves held together by the safety and the threaded end. Now, to assemble it, the striker must be pushed back into the bolt to compress the mainspring fully. The two halves of the striker head are slipped onto the end of the protruding striker, and the striker is allowed to go forward again, drawing the striker head partly into the safety. To finish the job, the striker head is then turned clockwise until it is fully threaded into the striker sear, which will require about four turns. There is a small plunger in the knurled end in one of the striker head halves, and it must be depressed on the last two turns in order to slip past the safety. To disassemble this creation, remove the bolt head first, and with a metal rod which will slip into the bolt body held in a vise (Note: the cleaning rod in this carbine has a head specifically made to serve as this tool), and with the bolt in one hand and the striker tip on the end of the rod, press down on the bolt to push the striker in as far as it can go. The rear end of the striker will then project far enough out of the bolt and safety to allow the two halves of the striker head to be slipped in place; that is, if your fingers of the other hand are adept at handling two parts. When in place, relax the pressure on the bolt and the striker head will move into the safety and the threaded end will contact the striker sear. Now turn the striker head clockwise until tight. The striker head is fitted with a small spring-backed plunger, and it has to be depressed to slip under the safety on the last two turns. Conversely, this plunger has to be depressed on disassembly. The procedure for complete disassembly is to turn the striker head counterclockwise until the threads are out of engagement, and using a rod as mentioned before, push the striker into the bolt as far as it will go, remove the split striker head, and presto, everything comes apart.

      How does the bolt and striker arrangement function and how is it operated? To replace the bolt in the receiver, the safety (the safety-lever is the larger hook) must be to the left— opposite the bolt handle. Cocking occurs on closing the bolt, and on turning the bolt handle down the action is locked and cocked. Pulling the trigger will release the striker