Carcano Review

howdy folks it's angel the hunting gear guy have you ever heard of john f kennedy [Music] this video is going to be about the carcano this one carcano carcado i'm going to say carcano don't hold against me i'm also going to say carbine because i'm in canada and that's the way we pronounce it you could just imagine i'm saying carbine every time uh this is a carcano most mochetto carbine cavalry it's a short rifle it's a very short rifle short and handy it's got a 17.7 inch barrel fires the 6'5 carcano round which you can see there are none in this gun around me right now uh though i will show you some range footage shooting this rifle and it's a pretty neat little rifle so i've already shown you that the chamber and magazine is empty uh let's take a closer look at this thing so just starting from the back we've got a plain metal butt plate and as you can see the screws and whatnot are kind of sitting proud uh it's a little bit rough this one as you can see uh there is a little spot here where you'd put your cleaning rod because there's no room for up front because of this bayonet uh so they would have had like a two-piece cleaning rod in here this one doesn't have it a lot of them don't uh just because of the age and misuse and whatnot we've got side sling attach points which i really like you can see that other slide sling attach point there i really like those because when you carry a rifle like that look at what you're carrying against it's all flat it's all flat so if you carry this on a sling and it's on your back it's comfortable there's nothing poking into your back there's nothing uncomfortable about it it's a nice little small rifle too so that's all really nice because these sling swivels or sling attach points are both on the left hand side the other way you can carry it is just across your chest like this you've got a two-point sling you've got them attached and it'll just roughly carry like this and you can leave enough slack in that you can easily pull it up and take aim at game animal or whatever so um i really like that there's a couple of things that will really blow your brains blow your mind about this rifle uh that i think you'll really enjoy now one thing that's not very good is the safety the uh you see this big paddle over here and the idea is that you push that guy in and you turn it and then you decock the action uh and that's uh that's how the safety is supposed to work and usually it will but sometimes when i go to put it off safe it lets the sear go forward like i can push the sear forward which if you did it slowly maybe it would be okay but i don't like that at all it's just doesn't feel safe so um don't use a safety don't use a safety which i mean if you're going to take this thing hunting it wouldn't be the best because using the safety is usually something you do when you're hunting some people opt to just leave their bolt open and rack around in when it's time to to shoot a deer but that makes noise most people use a safety not it's not very safe safety so i wouldn't recommend it if you do go hunting with these things potentially take another person so that you can both shoot at exactly the same time and uh uh and then no one will know which shots uh were which and how many shots were fired they'll be a big mystery for that now a couple things i really enjoy about this rifle one the bolt is not that bad uh compared with a lot of the others like keep in mind these things were originally made in like the 1890s uh all the way through world war ii this one in particular is is 1942 so it was made during the war you could see it's kind of rough it's got a kind of a rough finish on it um but it's still a lot faster than like a mosin nagant it's still much better than that uh so i don't mind the bolt it's not as fast or nice as uh something like the lianfield like a 303 or something like that but it's perfectly serviceable it's nice and light and small it's got a turn down bolt it's actually pretty good for again for for garbage it's pretty good now one of the interesting things about the carcano is how it's loaded uh you load in a end block full of rounds into the magazine well i'll just roll ins a clip of me doing that right now [Music] okay i put ammo inside the clip you can't snap it from the top it's got to go in and if you notice these grooves on the side there those actually hold on to the rim here so you can't just put them in through the middle they won't go in you need to go at the top and then slide them down so i found that technique works fairly well to load up these end block clips and if they're not aren't in you'll know because they'll just come right out so they do need to be snapped in there that top one just kind of snaps in and that's how you load a 6'5 carcano or 735 same clips and as you can see there you can load a full clip you can load a partial clip and you can eject a clip by pressing down on the clip and then pushing on this button in the uh trigger housing here so that will let the clip out and let you take a clip with with ammo completely out of the gun and when uh you're all out of ammo with when you rack the last round the clip falls out the bottom or at least it should uh these clips are bendy and they're like there's not really a lot of clearance in there so they might not want to fall out in which case you would just take your next one full and just jam it in there and then that'll push the other one out but uh this is probably one of the reasons why these weren't like fantastic in wartime because it's just got an open slot on the bottom like if you were ever like pop that on a berm or like a grassy knoll or something like that you might get some dirt in there and that might cause some some failure to disassemble your carcano first make sure that your chamber is empty and your magazine is empty as well next pull your bolt back press the trigger and then remove the bolts the trigger actually actuates a little uh it might be hard to see but a little part right in there and that lets the bolt go next we've got two action screws that we need to remove uh make sure that your flathead bit is going to get all the way into the bottom of the screw because a poor fitting bit will uh will definitely mess up the uh the screw and uh these are these are hard screws to find i don't know if you know that but they're not making these anymore so just carefully pull those out without doing any damage to it and we've got the long one that goes on the back and we've got the short one that goes on the front once that comp is complete you should be able to pull off this magazine well housing and clip attachment right there next we're gonna have to remove this screw up to the front we need to get this cap off because it's holding these two things together on here once that screw is loose you should be able to pull it off then this cap here should be able to come off the front just carefully move it forward then this front uh upper hand guard here can come off we'll just need to move the rear sight out of the way and then it will come off and there's one more thing holding this thing in there and that says bayonet so we'll just need to get that out of the way and then the action should be able to come off out of the stock now there's not much to show about the stock something i found kind of interesting see that kind of ring in there and you see that ring in there and when you look on the bottom you see it too these things are like pillar bedded they have little metal uh uh tubes in there that make these things pillar bedded and that's kind of interesting to me we've also got a little metal reinforced lug here that mates up with this lug right here so uh that's also a very interesting great way of connecting the stock to the uh barreled action not much going on here i just want to show you something interesting how they get like a a two-stage trigger pull out of this thing if you look inside that little crack there you see those teeth that's how they're getting two stages out of this thing so there's our first stage hits the second tooth and then there's our last stage kind of an interesting idea um i kind of like this trigger it's not good it's a really rough trigger but i kind of like the design of it i kind of like how many things it does there's our sear at the back there so you can see that there's the the last bit of it uh we've also got the uh that plunger on the side that kind of holds the bolt together so a couple of things that are that are happening with this uh in a nice simple little assembly uh that are kind of interesting so looking at this magazine assembly uh we can see a couple of pins here we can kind of see this is that action i was talking about that was uh holding on to those clips so the clip goes in here and it kind of grabs at the back right there and then when you want to release it you press that in so that's one reason why you'll have to push down just a little bit before you let that guy go because you can see it's got a bit of a hook on it so you can't just push this thing and get something out now to disassemble this we're just going to turn on turn it over and we can see these little screws here screw there screw there and those are used to pull these apart screw it until it doesn't want to unscrew anymore and then use a pin punch to just lightly press from the other side and it should just come out if you've got it all the way undone now the bolt is super interesting this one looks rough this is a 1942 rifle they were cranking these things out when you know uh the allies were at the door and they needed rifles tooth sweet quick um i don't know how to say too sweet in italian anyways rapido rapido maybe there's our there's our extractor that goes along there you can see just a simple two head uh assembly here uh some of the way that this comes apart kind of make me think of a little bit about the mosin nagant um just nicer just a lot nicer on this tail piece here we can see there's this little detent we have to push that in that actually holds on to this thing and keeps it from going side to side push that guy in and we're able to unscrew this cap a little bit once the cap's off we can start taking off more parts so we can pull off this uh little guidy piece there and then this took me a minute to find it but you see that little detent in there i was like how do i get it out it it won't come out i'll just press this in here it's like oh it's impossible but actually there's a super secret little pathway right there so what we're going to do is push it in take it down there and then i think it is there is it oh there it is see super secret path boom and we've got it out uh and this is definitely again something you're going to want to clean i'm going to roll in a picture showing what this looked like and how much i needed to clean it when i first got this thing so again you're going to want to clean that you're going to want to get all the crud out of there pipe cleaners are your friends they're they're really great for getting into areas like this and cleaning it up so next we have to put it back together so i'm just going to go ahead and put that firing pin in there now one thing you'll notice this firing pin here let me just take the spring off so i can show you this firing pin has a flat on it and that flat corresponds with a flat that's in here see that little like dent right there that's where that flat's got to go so that's kind of interesting right and the way to line it up is to use this little arrow here there's a it's kind of hard to see through the rust and the corrosion but that arrow is going to line up with another piece here shortly so all that being said we're going to take that little detent there and we're aiming for right there it's going to get it all lined up here push it in and turn it and we can see that guy right there so now we can turn it in and lock it in place now we need to line up that little arrow with the piece that's on the firing pin so we can just turn it and there it is there's the little arrow there and there's the arrow there so we've got them lined up and because they're lined up we should be able to get this guy on fairly easily and because they're lined up we should be able to get this guy on just like that that piece is going to be facing away from the flat and we can screw on the tail cap and we want to go all the way in until we can't go anymore and then back out to wherever the next step is so that it locks in place finally the last thing we need to do before we put it back into the gun we need this straight piece here to be on the top of the bolt so we're going to do is grab the back here pull and then turn it until it goes up on the top it's actually going to fit on that notch right there so pull and turn until it goes in just like that and it's sitting at a 12 o'clock position on where the bolt's going to go all right let's get our rifle into the stock and to do that we're just going to move that front piece there we're going to aim to get our trigger in sitting it firmly in place then we can move this and we can move this guy oh forgot almost forgot we need that put that in place you can choose to use the rear sight to hold that uh that piece of wood in place and just hold it firmly there and then we can you pop this guy on correct side the smallest screw we've got is going through there with it upside down we can take the magazine well and plate pop that on there short little action screw goes up front long one goes in the back so i want to talk a little bit about the ammo that's uh that's used in this gun this is a 6'5 car connell there's also a 7.35 carcano and one of the things that they did around the 1890s and then countries just did didn't care about standardization with other countries so when they made a six five carcano they used .268 inch diameter bullets now our modern bullets for six five are point two six four which is smaller by quite a bit by four thou and if you buy commercial ammo it's probably using two six four inch bullets which aren't going to give you very good accuracy in this thing so that's issue number one uh the bullets are kind of hard to find a lot of them and a lot of the manufacturers just don't bother just like no just deal with deal with a little bit of inaccuracy uh it's a carcano who cares um if you want to get optimum accuracy out of these things you'll need to reload um prvi has some 139 grain bullets that are two two six eight um i think they make some factory stuff that uses those same bullets as well so those will give better accuracy out of this thing now one thing to that is to be said is that this rifle was made to fire a 162 163 160 grain bullet it's huge it's like a javelin coming out of that thing uh crazy crazy uh weight on it if they had gone with like a 139 green bullet this would have been an 1890s 6'5 creedmoor practically it's practically the the right bullet the right cartridge size like everything would have been the same and they would have had it in uh in the 1890s if only they had gone with a lighter bullet uh but anyways um i actually really like the cartridge the cartridge is is super practical for uh for a small rifle or even for like a regular rifle uh back in the day and uh aside from the the bullet diameter thing like super super practical size and whatnot um if you're going to use this thing for hunting again it's a practical size in terms of a cartridge it's a practical size if you wanted to go shoot matches with this thing if you wanted to shoot like a mill cert match or something like that it would be a practical cartridge to use the reloading thing though is a bit of a pain in the ass and because they're made for those 160 grain like super heavy bullets uh and the sights on some of the older ones use these like roller coaster style sites that's really made for sending a big fat heavy bullet really far and it means that the sights you're almost always going to be shooting really high some guys will put some jb weld on the front sight some guys will use the tip of the site and they'll put it like right in the tippy bottom of the of the v-notch on the on the rear sight and that might get them in where they need to be um it's kind of there's a couple of kind of weird options the rear sight itself is pretty cool so there's our battle site and you can see it's just like a fixed rear and when they went to the more modern ones they would just would have kept with that but they've also got this other site that you can flip over and that's our adjustable site so now we have a different zero and we could also move this up uh to these different ranges that um i'd imagine no one was actually shooting at i imagine they're they just never use these and they just kept them always flipped over to the front and then at some point someone said why do we pay for these everyone just like flips it over to the front and uses the crappy like little fixed rear one why don't we just make that for everyone so let's show that bayonet so there's a button on this side here you press the button in and you pull the bayonet down that unlocks it then you throw it out front and you pull it back and that locks it in place it's not a particular like i don't know what it looks like on camera here it's not very sturdy it's not like a super sturdy kind of a kind of a mount the bayonet itself is not very sturdy either it's got a flat top on here and a rib on the bottom so it'll like poke someone it'll be good for that you wouldn't want to like sword fight with anyone or like try to try to joust with uh with your bayonet because just not very good but that's not really the point of this rifle either right like this is a lightweight rifle that would be good for cavalry troops bicycle mounted troops or trump troops that just had to be mobile because it's a nice lightweight little rifle this like i would much rather be running one of these things uh than one of the like super long monstrously heavy and awkward rifles like this is actually like really light and fun to shoot so what makes the carcano cool in canada in 2021 the price i mean we've had other mill serps in the past a lot of red rifles that have been really cheap sks is for 200 for decades uh moza nagant's for 175 200 for the longest time uh we had k-31s here for right around 300 bucks we had svt-40s for three 350. not anymore all that stuff is a lot more expensive the s cases are 450 mosin's 400 plus you can still get lee enfields at 200 for a sporterized version uh if you want the full wood one they're going to be 650 800 kind of a thing they're they're get up getting up they're quite expensive you could always buy the wood but by the time you get there you're right around that 650 700 mark anyways uh whereas for right around 300 bucks you get something that is in its original military configuration and in condition that is rough very like rough rough condition but usable and uh fun and uh kind of cool looking especially these little carbines uh super duper handy very very handy when i compare this this is the shortest rifle i own right now i stick this in the safe next to my my other centerfires even next to my 22s and it's uh it's very short and compact lightweight really cool for the for those reasons really cool as a mill syrup so uh if you've been in the market for a mil syrup and you're looking for something and you don't mind reloading take a look at the carcano thanks for watching [Music] it was right behind it well nothing it's empty i was definitely you

Channel: The Hunting Gear Guy

Views: 18,460

Keywords:

Id: QK923rnRwM4

Length: 22min 9sec (1329 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 27 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/Krazee9]

NOTHING BAD EVER HAPPENS TO THE KENNEDYS!

[u/_MlCE_]

One thing that struck me is that Carcano sights are great compared to say... A Kar98k or even Mk 3 enfield sights. The V notch is deeper and easier to see.

Theres basically only one source of ammo though (prvi)...

[u/thehuntinggearguy]

These are on the market and they're some of the most inexpensive milsurps around. But are they any good? Watch to find out. Or read the article if you prefer that kinda thing: https://www.huntinggearguy.com/rifle-reviews/91-38-carcano-carbine-review/

[u/AndreiHoo]

JFK would approve

[u/basshead1395]

So what's the legality of that M Block Clip? It's shown with 6 rounds but isn't the mag limit 5? Or would it be considered like a SKS stripper clip?