The Arisaka is probably the strongest bolt action ever made. There was an article in an American Rifleman magazine from the 50's that was quite interesting. It seems that a fellow had a sporterized Arisaka that he had taken deer hunting. But, the recoil was rather severe with the 7.7 Jap ammo he was using. So, after taking his deer with it, he brought it to a gunsmith. The gunsmith test fired it and discovered that the rifle had been rebarreled to a .25 caliber wildcat. The bullets were swaged down from 7.7 mm to .25 caliber in the barrel. The very high pressure that resulted accounted for the severe recoil. But, when the gunsmith checked the headspace on the rifle, it proved to be still normal. The rifle had absorbed rather terrific pressure levels without being damaged. Along with the article were pictures of a normal 7.7 mm bullet and one that had beenj fired in the Arisaka in question. The bullet from this rifle was quite noticeably thinner than the normal one.nobearsyet wrote:Yeah, I just got my hands on sporter number 2, that Arisaka came home yesterday, along with a well beaten M38 Mosin, the Mosin is waiting on a stock from Richards, and I am not sure what to do with the Arisaka as I have been unable to find anything relating to action strength on it, and a mslightly worried the 22-250 may be too much for it if I feed it some factory ammo, never know, I had a buddy that did a 338 Federal on a 96 Mauser and couldn't feed it factory ammo when it came out for fear of blowing it up.
So I wouldn't be overly worried about pressure levels that the Arisaka can handle. Just keep your loads within SAAMI specs and you'll be fine.
