It's another oldie, one that saw use well into WWII, and several changes... Made in the 1870s at the Torino Arms Factory in Turin, Italy, as a singleshot 10.35x47Rmm blackpowder round, Italy redesigned the mag for enblocs in 1887.. then Italy changed to the 6.5 Carcano on 1891 and the M91 Carcano came on the scene, these rifles faded in to obscurity.. Fast forward to 1915... WWI gets cranked.. Italy is caught with limited small arms, so they dust off and drag out these already 40+year rifles. Now in a poor nation with limited resources they took these 10.35mm barrels and relined them to 6.5mm, a process known as the Salerno method. Now if one is really up to date on older stuff, Finland used this same method on P series Mosins in the 1920's. A slight alteration to the magazine allowed the use of the 6.5mm round and enbloc clip.
These were in Italy mostly issued to rear line troops after their modifications, more like an emergency last ditch weapon, but, they found their way and were used during the Italian invasion on Ethiopia, they have even been found to be used during WWII. So for, by the time WWII rolled around, they were already pushing 70 years old, it's a rifle that literally has been around the block. Most have probably seen quite a bit of use, which given the questionable strength of the weapon is both shocking and kind of a testament to workmanship back in the early days.
This one takes the cake for my longest barreled rifle, the barrel it's self measures in at 33 1/4 inches.. it's almost 54 inches long, and weighs just over 9 pounds. Capacity is 6rds.
Would I shoot it.. probably not, like my Swiss Vetterli, I think this 140'ish year old veteran has earned the right to be retired.
You van see where the modification for the more narrow magazine was done on the stock, they filled in around it.
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