An Imperial Scout

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Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!

Rudyard Kipling had India and England in mind when he wrote "The Ballad of East and West" in 1889, but it works as preamble to my ongoing saga of amateur maintenance, repair, overhaul, and upgrade of unlikely firearms from the back of the closet. In this case, we have a Scout rifle, creation of the late Marine officer Lt. Col. Jeff Cooper, produced from a 7.7mmx58 Type 99 Arisaka which was formerly the personal property of the Emperor of Japan.

Like a good bit of the rest of the collection, I inherited this from my father, who picked it up at a gun show, probably with the notion of making a sporter out of it. The East Normally, I’m disinclined to do anything irreversible to a relic. See my article "1871 Vetterli Conversion" (July 2017) regarding the conversion of a Vetterli from rimfire to centerfire.

At first glance, this rifle looked like it might have some intrinsic and historic value, being an early product of the Nagoya factory (series 1) with a four-digit serial number and other markings indicating that it is of pre-war production, possibly in the first Type 99 production run, and with the chrysanthemum insignia fully intact. The furniture is in good shape apart from a bit broken off of the bayonet stud band; all of the hardware is present except for the dust cover for the receiver and the cleaning rod.

It doesn’t appear to have ever been fitted with a bipod. However, somewhere in its history someone with a hacksaw and a vise took an inch or so off the front of the barrel, and the front sight went with it, along with any intrinsic value. On closer inspection, I came to strongly suspect that the stock—or at least, the upper handguard—is not original, and that the muzzle may have been damaged.

Upon taking the barrel and action out of the stock, I discovered a sizable dent in the barrel under the upper hand guard about 4" back from the muzzle—it carries through the barrel wall to create a bulge in the bore, something I understand to be generally viewed with opprobrium in better gunsmithing circles. Even so, the barrel is plumb and the stock undamaged. It clearly took a brisk hit under the stock—possibly from a passing American bullet?—so the stock must surely be a replacement.

Nonetheless the barrel, aft of the dent, is in good shape apart from some light exterior pitting, the bore is clean albeit worn, the action is tight, and the bolt is in good shape, but of a different serial number than the receiver. Thus, since whatever collector value the rifle may have had was a distant memory, and the barrel needed to be either cut back or replaced to allow bullets out the business end unmolested, I began to consider my options.

My first thought was to re-barrel the action in something appropriate along the lines of Winchester’s 350 Legend as the Arisaka Type 99 receiver is reputed to be among the strongest

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The Chrysanthemum is fully intact, with the Nagoya marking behind.. The back screw took some persuasion with an 1/8" milling bit, but the threads remained intact. bolt actions ever made, very similar to the K98 Mauser. But considerations of domestic harmony dictated keeping the cost down, so I decided to see what I could do with the existing barrel. This is where the Scout rifle debuts. The West Col.

Cooper (intoned with proper reverence) developed the notion of the Scout rifle as a short, light, handy, versatile utility rifle. Typical specs called for a bolt-action, usually chambered in 308 Winchester, with a total length under one meter (about 39 inches), an 18" barrel (mixed metrics are original), lighter than three kilograms (a bit over six and a half pounds), with both iron sights and a forwardmounted optical sight, and fitted with a sling. There were variations.

A rifle with a detachable magazine could have a rear mounted scope; the forward mounted scope allows a magazine to be charged with a stripper clip. While 308 Winchester was his preferred round, anything common and easily procured in a .30-ish caliber is suitable. He also allowed for semi-auto rifles, although he was apparently less fond of them on the basis of complexity and concomitant potential mechanical failure. And he disapproved of a front mounted front sight that might catch on something.

Armed with the Colonel’s specifications and a somewhat flexible mindset regarding strict adherence, I thought to perhaps create a Scout rifle from my bunged-up Type 99. It has a box magazine and provision for stripper clips, so a forward mounted long eye-relief scope is indicated, as is some method of mounting it. The 7.7mmx58 round performs within rounding error of the 308 Winchester, although it’s nothing like as ubiquitous.

The length was solvable with a lathe and a cutoff tool, something that needed to be done anyway. Weight can be a challenge, but I’m a big guy—I was the one elected to lug the M60 around, so anything shy of that is a bonus. The sling is a matter of preference. So the decision was obvious. Disassembly The first order of business was to unship the barrel and action from the full length military stock.

This is accomplished in a straightforward manner by removing the screws holding the barrel bands in place, sliding the bands forward off the stock, and lifting off the upper handguard. The action is very similar to the K98 Mauser, with a couple of interesting wrinkles. Like the Mauser, there is a screw threaded into the base of the recoil lug forward of the magazine and another aft of the trigger guard that engages the back of the receiver.

In addition, there is a tang extension that dovetails under the back of the receiver and extends back about another three inches; the tang behind the trigger guard conforms to the small pistol grip in the stock, with a hole at the very end to accommodate another screw that engages the tang extension. All of the screws except the very aft-most—engaging the tang extension—backed out in a gentlemanly manner. That last one proved insuperable, however.

It resisted several days of soaking and gentle persuasion, so I ultimately wound up drilling the head off with a letter "O" drill. With the head disposed of and the lower reaches of the receiver pulled out, the tang extension came off and the barreled action was free. As it turns out, the recalcitrant screw was stuck in the rolled steel hole liner—it backed out of the tang extension hole with thumb and forefinger.

The magazine is pretty much a duplicate of the K98, although the spring-loaded floorplate release is different, riding in a slot at the forward end of the trigger guard and being held in place by a screw protected by the magazine wall, which in turn is held in place by its own springiness forward of the trigger guard, and detaches with a squeeze and a gentle pull upward. With the wall removed, the floorplate latch retaining screw can be backed out and the latch and spring removed.

The floorplate comes off the trigger guard by driving out the hinge pin with a 3/32" drift pin. As the rifle came apart, it was apparent that it hadn’t been touched in along time. There was quite a bit of Cosmoline and varnish around the magazine well, the rear sight, trigger, and receiver.

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The rolled steel hole liners were all lightly rusted and had to be gently drifted out of the stock. The barrel had light pitting at about the middle all the way around, and at the very breech end. But overall, there was nothing particularly surprising or alarming, save the ding in the barrel. Stripping the rifle down to parade rest is essentially identical to the process for a K98 Mauser. The bolt is released by the ejector box on the back left side of the receiver.

This in turn is removed by backing out the hinge screw at the back, against a bit of pressure from the ejector box cover spring. It is then further disassembled by removing the ejector and spring, then sliding the ejector box cover spring out of the ejector box. All of the parts being well coated with Cosmoline, they all then went into a soup can full of solvent to soak for awhile. The last piece needing removal was the rear sight.

Like the K98, it mounts just forward of the receiver on the barrel, with an open battle sight at the base of the spring loaded ladder sight. Unique in my experience however, are two arms located on either side of the ladder sight. Spring loaded and hinged at the base of the main sight to swing down and out left and right, they have notches in the top and markings on back side to guide the intrepid— and highly optimistic—in- The ding is evident.

You can see where the ding on the outside carries through to the bore at the top. Far The shims protecting the receiver originally adorned Bailey as license plates on her collar. The author was relieved to find that the barrel was straight by dial indicating it at 1" intervals down its length. fantryman to a lead for engaging crossing aircraft.

When the shooter intended to be an anti-aircraft battery, he flipped the arms down and quickly estimating aircraft altitude, speed, aspect, and attitude, solved the fire control problem, aligned the proper notch on the target and pulled the trigger. This seems like a waste of ammunition based on the "big sky, little airplane" theory, but there it is. The base for the sight is essentially a tube sized to just fit over the barrel between where it starts to taper and the larger diameter base forward of the threads.

It has a machined top that includes a dovetail for the sight leaf spring and ears for the hinge pin at the back end and the rest for aligning the sight when laying flat at the front. It is kept in place with two screws— the forward one goes through the front of the leaf spring, threads into the base and inserts a short blind end of the screw into a hole in the barrel. The after screw threads through the back, again projecting the blind end of the screw into the corresponding hole in the top of the barrel.

This last proved to be a source of some frustration, as it refused to budge (the forward

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Top: S&K Mounts’ clever Picatinny rail for the rear sight base. You can see where the author had to relieve the dovetail nut to accommodate the slightly out of spec distance between the ears at the back of the base and the forward mounting screw. one having come out in a civilized manner). After considerable soaking and gentle persuasion, I was delighted when it turned, only to find it wouldn’t back out.

Some careful drilling into the sides of the slot with a #70 drill and subsequent attempts to use a couple of dental picks to apply upward pressure while turning failed utterly. I wound up machining it down with a 1/8" milling bit. Through what I will claim was outstanding machining enabled by a steady hand and keen eye but what was really at least an equal part dumb luck, I succeeded in freeing the broken screw while leaving the threads intact.

The blind end of the screw stayed in the hole and came out when I tipped the barrel upside down. This accomplished, it took just a little gentle persuasion with a brass drift pin to start the sight base forward—once about half of it had cleared the back of the barrel and was over the taper, it slid off with a gentle pull by hand. This revealed that the barrel had been blued after the sight base was attached; it was clean and bright as the day it was assembled.

With the barrel and action now stripped down, I was ready for surgery. Barrel Cleanup and Trimming The first step was to chuck up the action in my ancient lathe’s 4 jaw with a center rest downstream. Using past years’ aluminum dog license plates (please don’t mention to my wife that I saved them) as shims to protect the action, I got the barreled action in place and centered quickly with the center rest.

I was concerned that whatever force put that ding in the barrel might have imparted a curve in the barrel, so I dial indicated the barrel at 1" increments from the action to the muzzle finding no discernible variation. The Colonel’s spec for barrel length is 18". Not wanting to incur the wrath of the ATF, I checked the regs for measuring barrel length, learning that it is measured from the bolt face.

Exercising the better part of valor, I chose to measure from the face of the action, giving me about an inch of buffer as well as a simpler measurement. To this I added another half inch just for safety and then applied a cutoff tool at the appropriate spot. The remaining 6-1/2" of barrel dropped into the bin under the bed, and a short session with a bit of my brother John’s design (also a contributor to these pages) imparted an acceptable crown.

The remainder of the machining comprised addressing the barrel with increasingly fine emery cloth, then crocus cloth with plenty of oil to clean up the surface and mitigate some of the pitting. This completed, I took the circumcised barreled action off the lathe and set it aside in consideration of the next step.

Given the uncertain provenance of this rifle and its undoubted hard usage, I figured it would be a good idea at this point to take a casting of the chamber and the bore to confirm that they still showed some relation to the original spec before going further. I read somewhere that the Type 99 bore is not unlike its cousin the Ross in .303 caliber and exhibiting a wide variation to the norm across samples under the best of circumstances.

A couple of hours with my brick of Cerrosafe confirmed that, remarkably enough, the chamber was still exactly to spec as listed on the Ammo Guide site (AmmoGuide.com), and that the bore measured .312 despite the wear. I also rented a set of go/no-go gauges from 4D Reamer Rentals (4Drentals.com) which, when tried, showed that the head spacing, despite the mismatched bolt serial numbers, was fine.

Stock and Sights I gave some considerable thought to the stock, considering everything from a bespoke stock from a nice piece of walnut to a plastic stock

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It’s a model of simplicity and robust design. Far too much to try to extend the inletting in the composite stock, and not worth the effort. modified discretely with a Dremel tool and patience. Providentially, it turned out that Optics Planet (OpticsPlanet.com, carries a composite stock specifically for the Type 99 Arisaka, produced by Boyd’s Hardwood Gunstocks. They also had a sale in progress at the time of my need.

The stars thus aligning in my favor, I ordered the stock and started thinking about the sighting arrangements for my nascent Scout rifle. A combination of a forward mounted scope and preferably coincidental iron sights is the ideal, but one that’s hard to realize with an 18" barrel and a standard stock.

Fortunately, mounting along eye relief scope turned out to be the easiest part of the project with the discovery of a bespoke Weaver rail for the Type 99 from S&K Mounts (ScopeMounts.com, S&K makes a variety of scope mounts for military rifles designed to replace the typical military ladder sight using the existing sight mount on the rifle and requiring no modification to the rifle. Installation involves removing the original sight, leaving the base in place.

A nut with a dovetailed head fits into the dovetail where the leaf spring resided, resting over top of the forward screw holding the base in place, into which one screws a short flathead screw through the rail, securing the front end. The back end is secured with a pair of hex screws installed into holes that match up to the ears at the back of the base, with a vertical set screw to put the whole under tension.

Now in my case, it turned out that the distance from the forward screw hole (securing the base to the barrel through the leaf spring) of the sight base to the ears must be about 1/8" shorter than standard, as I couldn’t place the dovetailed nut centered over that screw (necessary to thread the screw) without the back of the rail being too far aft to attach to the ears.

I solved this by trimming the head of the screw a bit on top, then milling a notch in the wedge nut so it could slide over the screw head to the appropriate distance from the ears. This doesn’t affect its function as it just takes up against the dovetail when the Allen screw is tightened through the rail. Being as this is something of an experiment, I went with an inexpensive long eye relief scope to test the rig before investing in a really good piece of glass.

Far The inletting required a little relieving for everything to line up, including the space for the magazine wall. The cut off remains are on the pistol grip for reference.

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Having solved the scope mount part of the problem, the question of iron sights moved to the front of the queue. I think my ideal solution would be an Aimpoint-like zero magnification sight with some manner of flip-up magnification like that popular on black guns. But I couldn’t convince myself that any could accommodate the 10" or so of eye relief demanded by a forward mounted rail. I’d be delighted to be corrected. In any case, my solution is a bit of a kluge, but in practice actually not bad.

I found a cantilevered Weaver rail extension that sits a half inch above the base rail, with 25 slots along its 9" This shows the orientation of the offset iron sights and the height of the scope, which turned out to be okay for cheek weld. The cantilever and offset iron sights area bit jarring to the traditional mind, but they work. length. This allows mounting the scope on low mounts, leaving a couple of slots at the back.

To this I added a set of 45° offset flip up sights, offset to the right, with the rear sight in the rearmost slot and the front sight as far forward as I could go to allow some semblance of a meaningful sight radius. To one brought up with classically outfitted rifles, it’s a bit jarring but if one looks for the beauty in the function (as defined) rather than the form, it’s still ugly but it makes sense. More to the point, it works.

One could quibble that the cantilever creates as much a catching hazard as a proper front sight, but it’s set well back from the muzzle, ending a bit aft of the front end of the forearm, so there’s some mitigation there. Refinishing and Assembly The next consideration was the metal finish. I decided on Lauer’s Duracoat (DuracoatFirearmFinishes.com, 800)830-6677) in matte black using their clever aerosol can.

I’ve used Duracoat before and found it to be every bit as durable as advertised and, if one follows the directions, easy to apply successfully even when mixing it for an air sprayer. The aerosol can is easier yet: shake it for the prescribed time, attach the red button to the bottom and give it a push, then shake the can again and you’re ready to go. Plus you get a couple of weeks of working time.

I have a small paint booth that was designed for working on HO scale model railroad models, so it’s perfect for everything except the barreled action. The good news is that Duracoat is very forgiving. I coated the receiver and a bit of the barrel first, then when that was set after six coats, I was able to maneuver the remainder of the 18" barrel such that I could spray into the booth and still have the fumes exhausted.

Before assembling the rifle, I tore the bolt down to parade rest, figuring (correctly, as it turns out) that it needed to be cleaned, inspected, and lubricated. It comes apart very similarly to a K98 bolt, although the safety is different. In this, it’s even easier. Grab the bolt with your weak hand and shove inward on the safety knob with the other one and turn the knob clockwise, facing forward. Gently ease off the pressure and the safety will come out under spring pressure.

Remove the striker and the spring, and it’s done. Reassembly is simply the reverse, making sure to align the sear projection on the striker in the aft-most notch in the bolt body, and the alignment detent on the shaft of the safety with the corresponding notch in the striker. Very simple and elegant. Now it was time to fit the barreled action to the stock. As it turned out, the stock was not designed to ac-

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First round out the barrel in an unknown but likely large number of years. It’s a sweet shooter. commodate the tang extension or the corresponding long tail on the trigger guard. This necessitated a quick session with a cutoff tool to cut the trigger guard back to just aft of the middle (now aft) screw hole. I cut it a bit long to give myself room to fit the inletting on the stock, then started free-handing the radius on the back of the trigger guard with a Rockwell vertical belt sander.

When I got the radius right and was able to test the fit, I discovered that the inletting and the pre-drilled screw holes were slightly misaligned longitudinally both for the trigger guard and the barreled action. The space for the magazine well also needed relieved. Fortunately, the errors were all in the same direction and by the same amount. Remarkably, the holes were right, just the inletting was off.

The stock was not drilled to accommodate the rolled steel hole liners, nor was it set up for across bolt for the recoil lug. The hole liners were easily accommodated with a letter "O" drill for the forward recoil lug hole and a 5/16" drill for the receiver tang screw. After some consideration, I opted to forego the cross bolt as I expect that the composite stock is particularly strong in compression. Given the amount of shooting the rifle is apt to experience it probably isn’t worth the extra fiddling.

With these matters handled, it remained to relieve the magazine well space, the back of the inletting for the receiver and the trigger guard, and the face that mates to the recoil lug on the receiver. This was accomplished with a vast amount of patience with some good sharp chisels, and a bit of judicious application of the Dremel tool. After considerable minute cutting, cleaning, testing and repeating, I got it right and everything fell into place, all without damage to either the metal or wood finish.

Assembly of the barreled action to the new stock was straightforward. The only tricky part is inserting the spring loaded floorplate latch into its recess ahead of the trigger guard loop and holding it in place while inserting and tightening the keeper screw. This is easily accomplished with a large thumb as the spring is not particularly robust. I sprung the magazine well back onto the trigger guard, then attached the floorplate with the spring and follower with its pin.

The barrel is floated for the time being and the action is pillar bedded. After bore sighting the scope and iron sights there only remained the test firing of my new scout. Taking a box of Norma 174 grain soft point rounds to my favorite 100-yard range at the Fairfax Rod and Gun Club, I engaged in an internal debate about how to send the first round from this rifle in God-only-knows how many years downrange.

I considered strapping it to my rest and deploying a length of string to a discrete distance, but I ultimately decided to just shoot it. As you can no doubt tell, all turned out fine—even my target was unmolested. But some careful spotting and adjustments got me on the paper inside of ten rounds. I decided I like the load as the recoil was unexpectedly light and there was almost no rise with just a push back, making it pretty easy to keep an eye on the target.

I’ll work up some loads when my brass, dies, and bullets get here, but I think it’s safe to say I’ll stick with the longer, heavier bullet which that short barrel seems to like. I think I’ve been reasonably true to Col Cooper’s vision. The rifle’s overall length is 38", it’s .30ish caliber (7.7mmx58—basically a .303), the scope and iron sights are as required, and it weighs in at about 7 pounds fully loaded.

It’s quite handy, the sight picture for both the scope and the iron sights is excellent, it points quickly, is easy to control, and somewhat to my surprise, the cheek weld with a pretty high mounted sight is natural. Even canting the rifle left to bring the right-offset iron sights into play is intuitive and not uncomfortable. I do need to find a sling. And I may think about a plastic stock in the future to get the weight down.

I’m looking forward to finding the loads it likes and getting some more use out of the newly resuscitated and re-purposed Arisaka. Like Kipling’s Colonel’s son and Kamal, old foes are now friends, and a rifle taken from the service of the Japanese Emperor is now in the service of a recovering US Naval officer.

And another relic from the back of the closet has foundanew life. ‘…The Colonel’s son a pistol drew, and held it muzzle-end, "Ye have taken the one from a foe," said he. "Will ye take the mate from a friend?"…’ AG