Early Type 38 short rifle questions.

Hello everybody. Just picked this up at the local gun show. It's an earlier one pre-WW1? Someone duffle cut it, shellaced the stock and put a mark on the mum but otherwise pretty nice shape. Question I had was once I stripped it down, everything seemed to match until I saw that some of the arsenal numbers are 2 digits apart. Same symbol, so it makes me think it would be hard to piece together like that later. Has anybody ran onto this before? Early Jap rifles are new to me so not sure what is going on. Thanks, Carl.

I can't help with your questions but I can tell you the Mum was struck by the Japanese before the rifle was turned over to the Allied forces. The Japanese thought it would be dishonorable to the emperor to surrender their weapons with the Mum intact so if they had time they ground it off, if not they simply struck through it.

Really nice rifle! Definitely parts from several guns but your most important parts (bolt, barrel, trigger,receiver) all appear to match. It even looks like you have an original cleaning rod. The fact that you have a rifle from the 1920s that went through 10+ years of combat in China and the Pacific Islands with that many original parts is pretty cool. When I picked up my Type 38, I started the refurbishment and conservation process. I noted that the numbers were all matching until the very end when I found the magazine floor plate and safety knob had different numbers. I was still very happy that, outside of those two parts, this rifle was pretty much all original. Good find!

Nice find! Others know far more about this than I, but I was enlightened on these very pages about certain assembly numbers that don't appear to match others on a particular Japanese rifle, but are completely original to it. Can you tell if the shellac is recent? It could have received a coat of urushi in the 1930's.

Thanks for the info guys. I did some more looking Low & Slow after reading your message and the varnish seems to be put on before it was duffle cut because there is none on the cut surface. So maybe it was Urushi when it was cut down to its short configuration. Since the bolt, front band, trigger and sight numbers match, would they have been pit on during the rebuild? The main parts and stock match #663. Just such a coincidence that the arsenal symbols are the same and with the original early #665 and rebuild #663. But stranger things have happened. And I'm new to the prewar arisakas. What does the Arsenal mark in front of the number signify? My type 44 made around the same time-ish has a different symbol.

Those numbers should match on those parts, of course, but as you say oddities can occur. I've got a 1916 No. 1 Mk III* whose bolt is four digits off the receiver's, but that is more easily explained. I also have a Carcano 91/38 cavalry carbine whose receiver had #4652 over struck to 51, the tang still bore 52, and the stock 4651. Something interesting happened there.

After doing some more looking it's a carbine, not a short rifle. Haven't handled enough to spot the difference. I kept reading about the turned down barrel for the band and mine didn't have that so took another look at the band and noticed the difference. Still confused to the numbering though.