I recently picked up, through auction from a gunshop, a Nagoya 27 Series Type 38 that I've been cleaning up. When disassembled, it looked as if it had not been cleaned in a very long time. There was a lot of surface rust and solidified gun oil on the metal parts. The stock was extremely dirty as well.
I followed the advice of Mark on C&Arsenal and boiled the metal parts, then cleaned with 0000 wool and a toothbrush. I then conditioned the metal with Balistol. Everything turned out well and I was able to start looking at numbers on the parts.
My research question involves whether any new information has turned up concerning the dates that the rifles in this series may have been rearsenaled at the Chigusa plant. While disassembling and cleaning the rifle, it appeared that all of the parts had been together for a very long time. However the actual numbers of the parts varied in an extremely odd manner. To give you an idea, here are the parts by number.
Receiver, bolt, mag/trigger guard and wrist tang: 27th Nagoya series 17763 with Mum (763)
Stock: 779 or 79 with Nagoya and Chigusu factory stamps
Handguard, front barrel band and floorplate: 484
Rear sight base/ladder and bolt release: 471
Bottom of receiver/barrel: 859
Dust cover with riveted stop: 858 or 868 (hard to tell)
So it appears that this rifle was rearsenaled and is made up of parts from 6 different rifles. It was then ridden pretty hard, possibly captured, then put away for many years without much care in a humid location.
There is mention in both the Honeycutt/Anthony & McCollom books about Chigusa serving as a primary rearsenal location for the Type 38's, but no real dates available at the times of publication. Is it possible that a rifle as stout as the Type 38 manufactured in the '30's could have also been rearsenaled in the 30's with so many replacement parts?
Just trying to make sense of what I'm working on here...
Thanks for any comments,
Greg
