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Old July 28, 2014, 12:13 AM   #43
tahunua001
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Join Date: July 21, 2011
Location: Idaho
Posts: 7,839
hehe, the irony, that I started this thread 2 years ago to learn about the design, to now answer the very same thread as a self proclaimed authority figure.

ShurShot,
I have come to seriously despise the Carcano, based on both the couple dozen handled in the OP, and several handled since then as well as some research.

1.biggest feature I hate is the wood. not one Carcano I've handled has had a decent stock, some were chopped, some were original, all were dried out chunks of driftwood. I've seen some pictures of carcanos with beautiful wood but I have yet to see one in person, leading me to believe that carcanos with good wood are more of a rarity than not.

2. they use non-standard bullet diameters. since what little surplus there was is now long gone, reloading for the carcano is a must and getting your hands on .268 and .299 bullets is a huge PITAx10^989879879879879, I won't get a carcano. I don't know why the Italians thought they were so special that they didn't have to standardize but when everyone else was using .264s for their 6.5s, Italy went with .268, and when everyone else was using 307-311 for their 30 calibers, Italy instead went with .299, the only rifles in history to use those diameter bullets.

3. they need an enbloc. at one time I didn't think that enblocs were such a terrible thing but now that I own two rifles that do use them(m95 mannlicher and M1 garand) I seriously hate the setup. I get that they are much faster and easier to use than stripper clips but they let dirt and dust in like crazy and it's really easy to lose them in the field. if all you're doing is shooting off a bench then that's fine, it's no big deal but I love taking my guns to the mountain and when you're moving around and shooting it's a huge pain to try and keep track of how many shots you've taken and when exactly your gun spits out the clip and in what direction.

the closest I came to ever buying a carcano, and the closest I will likely ever come, is a type I arisaka. they took a carcano action, which is one of the few features I am not adverse to, and gave it a Japanese style stock, japanese box magazine(fed from stripper clips), jap sights, and jap cartridge(complete with standard .264 bullet diameter). it's the perfect carcano, in my humble opinion.

age is no excuse for the carcano, my Swedish mauser will beat the breaks off just about any carcano and it's 114 years old. my 6.5 jap carbine is from the 30s, and is the most accurate milsurp I own. enfields, springfields, even mosin nagants, have a lot of saving graces to their designs, not one could be faulted for it's age, the carcano... least of it's worries are it's age.
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