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I just wanted to write a little shout out about Royal Tiger Imports, since they don't seem to approve any negative reviews. I ordered four milsurp rifles from them this summer; the first two arrived fairly quickly which was nice. However, both were non-functioning in terms of overall damage or mechanical function. RTI customer service during this time was acceptable but they refused to accept a return of one rifle which absolutely did not meet its website description. Later, after over a month of trying to get a hold of them, I received the other two rifles. Neither rifle had been padded in the box... no bubble wrap, nothing. This resulted in damage to both rifles, which are both quite collectable. Oh well. I just wanted to put it out there that I did not have a good experience with RTI, and neither did my FFL dealer. Hopefully you have better luck than I did.
 
Well the name alone and the 15 year old outdated looking website would have me running to the hills

8. Returns

All sales of , Parts Kits, Accessories, Military Collectibles, and clothing are FINAL, and returns are NOT ACCEPTED.
Firearm return policy is a case by case basis. We do offer exchanges or store credit if there is an issue with your firearm if approved by management. Any refunds/store credits will be minus a 20% restocking fee. We DO NOT typically issue refunds.
If a defect is discovered by the customer after shipment and transfer of ownership, the customer must contact the firearm manufacturer directly for replacement or repair.
Please contact customer service for more information on returning an ite
There you go....that means F U we dont really care about you only the money...
 
Interesting website.

Where did all the Carcanos come from? There seems to be a flood of cheap Carcanos recently. Does anyone have experience with these? Everyone I have talked to says they are complete garbage.
 
Interesting website.

Where did all the Carcanos come from? There seems to be a flood of cheap Carcanos recently. Does anyone have experience with these? Everyone I have talked to says they are complete garbage.

They're fun to shoot, but ammo is unobtainium and they're not any more fun than a Mauser, Enfield, etc. They seem well built from the two I've handled.
 
Where did all the Carcanos come from? There seems to be a flood of cheap Carcanos recently. Does anyone have experience with these? Everyone I have talked to says they are complete garbage.

My understanding from Ethiopia and in that general region. Considering the history of that country, it isn't surprising Carcanos are showing up from there.

No personal experience with them. Historically neat-o of course. From what I've seen ammo is scarce and expensive. YMMV.
 
Interesting website.

Where did all the Carcanos come from? There seems to be a flood of cheap Carcanos recently. Does anyone have experience with these? Everyone I have talked to says they are complete garbage.


All of these weapons including the mausers and carbines not just the caranos came out of Ethiopia . Uli negotiated a huge buy much like IMA did several years ago with Nepal.

Buyers of these weapons should not really have expectations of expecting awesome looking or functional guns given where they are coming from. From what they were initially saying back when these guns went on sale there would not be returns allowed. Just as an FWIW RTI also known as Inter Ordnance .


Truthfully the pickings are probably as good as it will be for quite some time or maybe forever considering the age of the rifles and all the good stuff showed up decades ago.
 
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They're fun to shoot, but ammo is unobtainium.

From what I've seen ammo is scarce and expensive. YMMV.

^^Ultimately that's why I sold my Arisaka. My safe is high priced real estate and all my guns are shooters.


Truthfully the pickings are probably as good as it will be for quite some time or maybe forever considering the age of the rifles and all the good stuff showed up decades ago.

Like Merle Haggard said, the good times really are over. A few months ago @Nibbs showed me a beautiful Enfield Jungle Carbine, I have no idea where he got it. Unless you have time to scour gun shops and gun shows and keep up on the classifieds building a collection is hard work. Unmolested milsurps are like Easter Eggs. Anything good online vanishes instantly.
 
^^Ultimately that's why I sold my Arisaka. My safe is high priced real estate and all my guns are shooters.




Like Merle Haggard said, the good times really are over. A few months ago @Nibbs showed me a beautiful Enfield Jungle Carbine, I have no idea where he got it. Unless you have time to scour gun shops and gun shows and keep up on the classifieds building a collection is hard work. Unmolested milsurps are like Easter Eggs. Anything good online vanishes instantly.

Yep and I know it sounds crappy especially if you are a young fella or new to shooting even at an older age , but my grandad said it best when I was a kid. If you want to get there quicker you should have started quicker.

I took that to heart and bought early and bought often back when there still was some good pickings to be had. Of course I was in a family of shooters and hunters ...

Fear not shooters new to the game more old guys will die soon and their inheritors will sell off the old guys prized possession sooner rather than later. I buy things all the time this way.
 
My encounter with RTI was very strange. I ordered a Carcano 91 TS carbine but was called a couple of days later and told they were out of stock (the website still listed it as in stock but I guess that could have been out of date) and they asked if I might consider one of the long rifles as an alternative. I wanted the carbine so I asked if other carbine models would be coming soon. They told me no, that was it for Carcanos. So I told them, "I guess let's cancel the order then"... (all of this was very polite from both sides)... but then a couple weeks later they started getting all kinds of Carcano carbines. 91/24's, Cavalry carbines, 91/28's, etc, etc... which was weird as they told me they were out and wouldn't have more. Now several months later they still have several options of Carcano carbines. I don't get it. They didn't want my money I guess?

Later on, I did end picking up a couple of rifles that they imported, with pretty mixed results.
 
Interesting website.

Where did all the Carcanos come from? There seems to be a flood of cheap Carcanos recently. Does anyone have experience with these? Everyone I have talked to says they are complete garbage.
Carcanos can be found at Gun Shows (if you can find a Gun Show). Hornady does make ammo for them and of course you can reload if you have the brass AND the correct diameter bullet (load data is found in the older Lyman reloading manual -spiral bound). Two things to keep in mind: they have to use the clips (brass or steel) for multiple rounds and the barrel rifling is 'progressive'! BUT, I would not pay what Tiger is asking for them, since I have seen excellent condition ones for half their asking price.
I did 'sporterize' mine when I got it and now wish I hadn't.
 
A true horror story. In 1966 I was flown to an airbase in Vietnam to try to repair a radio. While I was there, I ran into a high school friend. It was nice to see him. I asked him what he was doing at the airbase. He took me to his work area and showed me piles of M-1 carbines. His job was to cut the barrels off with an acetylene torch! Initially, they had him demiling them by cutting through the receivers, but that took too long and he had hundreds of these things to destroy. Many of them were still in their wooden shipping cases packed in cosmoline.
 
A true horror story. In 1966 I was flown to an airbase in Vietnam to try to repair a radio. While I was there, I ran into a high school friend. It was nice to see him. I asked him what he was doing at the airbase. He took me to his work area and showed me piles of M-1 carbines. His job was to cut the barrels off with an acetylene torch! Initially, they had him demiling them by cutting through the receivers, but that took too long and he had hundreds of these things to destroy. Many of them were still in their wooden shipping cases packed in cosmoline.

This reminds me of when I first got out of the army I was working at the local Army Ammunition Plant as a DA civilian , one of the jobs they assigned me was at the DRMO we were going to igloos and getting racks of M16A1 rifles and M60 Machineguns . We would lay the M16A1 rifles on a concrete pad and they would run over them with a Caterpillar dozer .

We were laying the M60's on a table and cutting up the guns into 6 pieces , we also chopped a huge number of bayonets into two pieces.

I did that for almost a year before they assigned me to another job demilling equipment
 
I just wanted to write a little shout out about Royal Tiger Imports, since they don't seem to approve any negative reviews. I ordered four milsurp rifles from them this summer; the first two arrived fairly quickly which was nice. However, both were non-functioning in terms of overall damage or mechanical function. RTI customer service during this time was acceptable but they refused to accept a return of one rifle which absolutely did not meet its website description. Later, after over a month of trying to get a hold of them, I received the other two rifles. Neither rifle had been padded in the box... no bubble wrap, nothing. This resulted in damage to both rifles, which are both quite collectable. Oh well. I just wanted to put it out there that I did not have a good experience with RTI, and neither did my FFL dealer. Hopefully you have better luck than I did.
If you paid by credit card, you might have some recourse there.
This reminds me of when I first got out of the army I was working at the local Army Ammunition Plant as a DA civilian , one of the jobs they assigned me was at the DRMO we were going to igloos and getting racks of M16A1 rifles and M60 Machineguns . We would lay the M16A1 rifles on a concrete pad and they would run over them with a Caterpillar dozer .

We were laying the M60's on a table and cutting up the guns into 6 pieces , we also chopped a huge number of bayonets into two pieces.

I did that for almost a year before they assigned me to another job demilling equipment
My friend Bob passed away recently. He was a Marine that served in WWII, Korea and Vietnam. He told me about hauling cases of 1911a1 pistols out in the middle of Manila Bay and throwing the entire load into the sea! I asked him he'd managed to keep a couple for himself and he went into his bedroom and returned with three of them. They were brand new.
 
His job was to cut the barrels off with an acetylene torch! Initially, they had him demiling them by cutting through the receivers, but that took too long and he had hundreds of these things to destroy. Many of them were still in their wooden shipping cases packed in cosmoline.

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A good friend of mine spent some time over in the sand some years back, with the USMC. He told me that one day they happened across a cache of "FN rifles". After some discussion we determined that they had been pristine, Belgian made FALs.

He said they had no use for them, couldn't leave them there, and couldn't take them along, so they wrapped them in det cord and destroyed them!
 
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A good friend of mine spent some time over in the sand some years back, with the USMC. He told me that one day they happened across a cache of "FN rifles". After some discussion we determined that they had been pristine, Belgian made FALs.

He said they had no use for them, couldn't leave them there, and couldn't take them along, so they wrapped them in set cord and destroyed them!
If they didn't have full auto capability then they should have been able to bring them home as war trophies. Back during my time, a lot of us brought home SKS carbines. Perhaps the rules have changed. What a shame to have to destroy fine rifles.
 
Interesting website.

Where did all the Carcanos come from? There seems to be a flood of cheap Carcanos recently. Does anyone have experience with these? Everyone I have talked to says they are complete garbage.
Mine is fine. Made in 1894, Cycles smooth and shoots more or less where I point it. Ammo isn't all that hard to find, either, in my experience, nor expensive. Roughly the same as .308. For me, the point is all in the history and having a working rifle older than anyone alive today. Can't complain about it
 

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