If people and gunstores sporterized surplus military rifles post war to make them lighter to carry and easier to handle, why weren't they made like that in the first place? Why waste the additional resources and give soldiers the extra weight? It also seems to me that bayonets are still very useable without the long wooden fore-end one the rifle.
Also I know that in some places this was done to comply with local laws but it also happened a lot in places where 'military style' bolt action rifles were legal to own.
Hunters and Soldiers have different needs and use cases. A hunter carries their rifle all day and shoots it once or twice. They don't have to worry about heat or durability. They care about carrying the damn thing. So a lighter rifle is preferable
Soldiers have to shoot more. The rifle is also more likely to get damaged or used roughly cause war. So that full length stock helps protect you from the hot barrel and also protects the barrel from impacts.
This. And to add to that, a lot of it is those old rifles were designed with bayonet fighting in mind. They were built to be a melee weapon just as much as a rifle. When you aren't using the rifle to stab a dude or bash his head in with the stock you don't need that extra strength and weight.
>stab a dude or bash his head in with the stock you don't need that extra strength and weight.
This 100%, if you no longer need to be able to use a rifle as a hammer and expect it to continue cycling perfectly after a 1000 bashes, it leaves alot of space for a weapon to not only get lighter, but become more complex since it no longer has to be made as simple as possible for the original target audience of millions of illiterate conscripts
you overbuild critical systems whenever possible. back in the day, nobody knew how to autistically minmax on material with computer-aided optimization antichrist techniques. across most fabrication in society, you saw the same thing. worshops full of tools that were absurdly overbuilt and bizarrely heavy by modern standards. buildings with an order of magnitude more structural support than they actually needed to stay standing.
Why indeed OP. Why indeed
bubba thread?
>why weren't they made like that in the first place
Barrel protection.
>bayonets are still very useable
But are they useful?
i dont mind it when its on a rifle where its done well or was already mangled.
i picked up a sporterized arisaka that didnt have the mum, some boomer paid a lot of money to have it sporterized and cleaned up really nicely.
the thing in OP is kind of a shame
There's a nicely sporterized Arisaka for sale here - as in it retains the original configuration but was converted to .308. It has drilled and tapped scope rails and a bent bolt handle but those are kind of easily restobubba'd if you want to retvrn to tradition
>bent bolt handle
hmm, sounds familiar. but mine was kept in 6.5 jap
The one I'm talking about has all the original bits (except the front sight blade)
That one's actually tastefully done. I want to get a sporter-saka and convert it to 6.5creed
yeah, i thought so too. i picked it up for like $150 a few years ago. it was completely spotless and shiny. someone took care of it
Sounds like a fun project, I don't see anything wrong with that so long as you're starting with a gun that's already been sporterized or bubbled in some way.
I'd actually prefer to do it on an unsporterized Arisaka, that way I can larp as a jungle jap without having to track down 6.5jap or spend a bunch of time reloading specialty brass. I'm curious if the stripper clips will work on 6.5creed
because military rifles needed to double as baseball bats, for obvious reasons
This used to be a Lee Enfield No.5 mk1 Now it's a $300 rifle in a dead caliber
Because of this thread, I searched why did the Mannlicher rifles have full stocks? Love the Mannlicher Schonauer. According to opinions found on the internet, they were for mountain hunting, it balances better. It allows to rest the forearm on tree limb or post to assist in aiming while not interfering barrel harmonics. And they look lovely.
The Mannlicher stock was mostly a regional style more than anything else. A fad from a particular time and place. There are plenty of guns developed elsewhere for "mountain hunting" which don't have full stocks, and other guns which do have full stocks but weren't for mountain hunting.
>why did the Mannlicher rifles have full stocks
That's called a Stutzen stock. It's meant for mountain hunting. Offers additional barrel protection.
>, it balances bett
Possibly, yes.
>And they look lovely.
Full stocks were offered by many companies, from Westley Richards to Sako. Serbian Mausers come with those from factory.
The balance thing isn't particularly significant. Does the long stock shift the center of balance farther forward? Yes. But so does a longer barrel, thicker barrel, or lightening the butt. So there are plenty of ways of achieving that goal.