M1 Rifle fans?

[Puller]

I bought this rifle through the DCM program, the precursor to the CMP, back when you could only purchase one M1 rifle per lifetime. Back in the late 1980's it was not uncommon to get a unissued or fresh from the arsenal Garand.

I think Garands are just grand. Anyone else into M1 rifles?

 

[armorer951]

Love them....truly a "timeless" design. Mine is a Springfield from the CMP, purchased several years ago. Receiver # 3215331. (Dec '44 I believe). Still shoots 1" groups at 100 yards with service ammo. It would do much better in the hands of someone who knew what they were doing. Mine has also been re-barreled.....dated March-1960, with a VAR (Denmark) MFG barrel.

Assistance dating individual parts:

How to Determine the Vintage and Origin of M1 Garand Components

USRifleCAL30M1.com

 

[David.Hylton]

I am a Garand fan, I ordered my first from the DCM and received it from the CMP. It's an all original 1955 Springfield. A beautiful rifle and a great shooter.

 

[jdlii]

To say that they are great rifles is a gross understatement!
I have owned five, including an M1D however, a Garand, in any configuration is a formidable weapon!

Lock and load.

I still have two and one is in .308. It has been glass bedded, has national match sights and a Barnett barrel. It is my "go to" M1 for vintage matches and pure fun.

 

[kbm6893]

I've had three, all from the CMP. I have two now, a WWII Springfield and an HRA from 1954. My favorite rifle now and forever. I wish I had gotten in on the carbine lottery the CMP has a few years ago. I did get one of the CMP 1911's though.

 

[lrrifleman]

I am a fan of the U.S. Rifle 30M1. While I was waiting for my application to purchase to be approved by the DCM for my one-and-only $128, I came across a very nice H&R at a local shop for about $300.

The H&R was then shipped off to be match accurized as an M1MkII (308) while I patiently wanted for my DCM M1. I was rewarded with a very nice six digit Springfield.

In my opinion, Garands are like K38 Masterpieces, one is never enough!

 

[viceunit]

Got mine through the DCM around 1985? I remember picking it up at the Post Office. Winchester receiver with SA replacement parts.

 

[krsmith58]

Garand

I have a 5,000,000s serial that i got from DCM . awsome . rifle and spam cans of ammo on clips and in bandoleros delivered to my house . how could you beat that , other than someone gifting you . stock looks pieced together but Springfield seem complete . i like shooting it . when i bring it to our local gun club all the young fellows gather around in awe without a clue as to what is making all that noise . lots of fun . thanks for bringing the subject up . i guess , just cost me another 100 rnds or so on my next days off . kenny , mauriceville texas , USA

 

[mckenney99]

First M1 Garand I bought was a Springfield Armory from the "BlueSky" imports. On the outside metal looked pretty good, I should have paid more attention to the barrel. When I got home and started cleaning and cleaning and cleaning, I was rewarded with the proverbial sewer pipe. You could almost drop a bullet through from breach to muzzle. The stock was grease covered / saturated and took a bunch of days in a hotbox covered in "whiting" trying to get it cleaned up, but the results were less than satisfactory. Finally decided to send the rifle to have it completely rebuilt into a full match rifle, new stock and all. Beautiful and great shooter now.
Had a collector friend that travels to Lake Erie throughout the summer and he stops at the CMP North Store on his trips and tries to look for rifles to upgrade his collection. I was the recipient of one of his replaced for upgraded rifles that also happened to be another Springfield Armory.
Love the engineering that went into these rifles and am amazed at how they were manufactured one at a time on man run machines with gauges and still produced rifles with interchangeable parts. No CNC here.
Also impossible to shoot one without a healthy respect for the history and without a HUGE respect for the Soldiers and Marines that put them to use.
Also encourage anyone who is a fan of the M1 Garand to look into joining the The Garand Collectors Asso. They are a wealth of knowledge of all things Garand that rivals the knowledge here for Smith & Wessons.

 

[Grayfox]

Is there anybody who doesn't love the Garand? I doubt it. I love 'em! I have two.

Back in 2007 I made the trip to the CMP South store in Anniston. I picked out a Danish return 1942 Springfield. I was marked as a rack grade due to a really dirty stock. However, the muzzle and chamber speced out as a Service grade. Took a bit of work to clean the stock up, but it came out just fine.

A couple of years ago, my best friend passed away. His wife, knowing my love for the Garand, offered me his 1955 H&R at a price I just couldn't pass up.

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that Ping!
Do wha, do wha, do whaaaaa!

 

[Patrick L]

Oh yeah, this fits with the recent M1 carbine thread!

Yup, love garands too. I have 2. 1 is a CMP field grade I left "as issued". Other is one set up for match shooting. Rebarrelled, glass bedded, front end unitized to avoid poi shifts. Both shoot pretty good, even with cast bullets.

 

[HOUSTON RICK]

Very few here probably would not want an M1 of some kind, only the price and other guns that we want first stops most of us.

 

[STCM(SW)]

Got mine while on active duty in Desert Storm.
S/N has it as 1944. Rather beat up but shoots fine with Mil Spec ammo with clips I got.
I had my Gun Smith replace the barrel I got from Numrich because the org. one was so bad.

 

[DWalt]

I bought a Springfield M1 some years back for $250 from an acquaintance who had financial difficulties. Definitely an import, probably Korean but I don't know for sure. It cleaned up fairly well, but the rifling at the muzzle was wallowed out by excessive cleaning rod use. Rifling seems OK. I countersunk the muzzle about 1/8" with an 11/32" drill bit. It groups respectably well using M2 Ball ammo (around 3" at 100 yards), not so well with any reloads I have tried so far. As I don't shoot it in any kind of competition, that's good enough performance for my purposes. No plans to ever send it off for any custom work.

 

[bmcgilvray]

A DCM World War II Springfield lives here. I ordered it December 31, 1985 and received it March 21, 1987. That was a long wait.

Meanwhile I was seeing all my high-power buds getting their DCM M1s. Stinkin' new, super nice. Wouldn't you know when mine came in it looked like it was dragged behind a truck by comparison.

Still it was a mostly correct 1944 rifle. Trigger group was a mishmash of World War II parts and it is wearing post-war rear sight and gas plug.

Spent a lot of happy years on the firing line of the local high-power match with it. A good accurate rifle.

Was a "deal"!









Had a spontaneous opportunity to go deer hunting on the last weekend of the season here.

A local friend offered to let our son hunt on his nearby place Saturday. I'd intended to drive him out and have a visit at my friend's house while he hunted.

My friend had been wanting an example of an M1 Garand for some time. I'd seen one at a gun show so pointed him in the direction of the owner/exhibitor. He contacted the owner several weeks after the show and picked up the nice rifle. I thought I'd just bring my M1 out and we'd sit and drink coffee and talk about all things M1 while our son hunted, but then my friend texted me suggesting that I hunt as well as his wildlife biologist son who works for the State had told him that five more does needed to be culled from the place before end of season if possible.

So, I just loaded up a clip with eight 150 grain hunting hand loads and took the M1 afield. Took the deer at 58 yards (steps).

 

[Charlie Foxtrott]

I currently own seven of them.

And none of them are for sale. Most of them are in unissued condition. (late production). I am partial to the HRAs as they appear to have the best fit and finish of any of the manufacturers.

Thinking about fitting one of them up as a sniper model for my older eyes, but mostly just for fun.

 

[jake1945]

I have a WW2 era Springfield that Deans Guns reparked and added a new walnut stock/hand guards. It is mostly correct and is a beauty. I had an all correct WW2 Winchester which came from Denmark. Sold it to a friend for 2 grand.

 

[cmansguns]

IHC postage stamp unissued since 1966

Mine is a International Harvester Co. 1953 that was rebuilt by Red River Army Depot (Texarkana, Texas) in January 1966 and was one of the last M1 rebuilds before the whole rebuild program changed to M14 overhauls in 1967.

The rifle has a August 1965 Springfield barrel, original IHC trigger group, NM rear and front sights, Box P (one leg open) cartouche stock and came to me showing no signs of having been fired since the arsenal rebuild. The trigger group fit to the stock is as tight as any NM I've had the pleasure of holding. The stock finish appears as hard as a Buddy McCoy original and is the way it came from CMP way back when. The buttplate pics confirm that this rifle didn't get back to the troops after overhaul and the butt appear to have never smacked the asphalt at the command......Order...……..Arms!

It is amazing to me that many of these iconic rifles were sold in pristine condition, and even more amazing that on CMP these days, M1 rifles are bringing thousands of $ from the CMP Auctions. Long gone are the days of the $600 Garand from anywhere.

Even the enbloc clips (I found a couple Borg Warner clips in my stash) if original OEM's are bring substantial dollars these days.

I have one buddy who has a genuine "Winny 1" all correct, and a SA M1 D mostly correct, and he has north of $4k into each rifle. I just like the M1 for what it is...THE iconic battle rifle of the 20th century.

 

[kmyers]

Always a nice rifle for a shooter to have around.

 

[JohnRippert]

I have had several over the years, all from the CMP. Most have been sold. Here is a pic from when I had half a dozen.

I have one left right now. I do have enough parts kits, stripped receivers/barreled receivers and wood to make/assemble a couple more. My Winchester was put together from a stripped receiver I bought at the South Store on my way back to Texas from North Carolina. Also picked up a few cases of the Greek .30-06 on enblocs they were selling. Still have most of it. Here is the Winchester.

 

[Puller]

I have a WW2 era Springfield that Deans Guns reparked and added a new walnut stock/hand guards. It is mostly correct and is a beauty. I had an all correct WW2 Winchester which came from Denmark. Sold it to a friend for 2 grand.

A few years before Dean sold his business to a protege (and Dean has since passed away), he reparked and refinished the stock on a Springfield M1903 for me. Dean's Gun Restoration certainly does excellent work.

 

[ACP230]

I bought mine in the early 80s from Woolworth. It has outlasted the store, I think. It was a re-import from Korea and shoots better than it looks. Different color wood in the stock and handguard. Scratches and nicks in the wood. Re-parked metal. I was going to have it fixed up
but decided to call it "The Old Veteran" and just get the trigger smoothed a bit.

I used the rifle in NRA Highpower Rifle Matches for a few years. Turns out the M1A worked better for me.

One thing I like about the M1 is that loaded en-bloc clips can sit for
years, ready to go. There's a couple of bandanas with en-blocs
sitting around here now.

 

[AManWearingAHat]

Somewhat. Ive had two. First one was a CMP gun that I ended up selling at a healthy profit to build my competition AR-15. It was an early fifties Springfield Armory gun.

Second I got in a trade for a beautiful DCM 1903 Springfield with paperwork that I absolutely hated shooting. I still have this one. '42 Springfield on the receiver, bit of a mix master on parts. It shoots okay. May re-barrel it to get it shooting better. Garands these days are expensive to feed so it doesn't get out as much. However I don't think Ill let go of this one!

 

[BLACKHAWKNJ]

I have two, Springfields, one made in May, 1942, the other-September, 1941.

 

[Walter Rego]

I have a nice Springfield manufactured M1 that was made in late 1952. It was purchased in the early 1980's through the DCM. It was all original except the trigger housing group was a mix master of WWII Springfield and Korean War era IHC and HRA parts.
The stock was birch and missing a big chip at the toe and the buttplate was beat to heck. I'll bet it saw service as a parade rifle and had the butt smacked down on the asphalt way too many times. I restocked it with a nice reproduction stock set from Fajen when they were still in business, found a new in the wrap buttplate and later took it to the late Don "Mac" McCoy, a retired Navy armorer and wizard with M1's. He went completely through it, tightened up the gas cylinder and replaced the springs and smoothed the trigger. I added an NM rear sight aperture but am not sure if my eyes can appreciate it any more and may reinstall the original. It would be a hard one to ever part with.

 

[clang444]

I've still got 6 of them, all purchased at the CMP North Store. I used to have to travel to OH for business and would stop at the North Store in Camp Perry to browse the racks on a regular basis.

It wasn't too long ago that you could get a decent Danish or Greek return for less than $300. And ammo was 20 cents a round. It was hard not to buy something on a visit.

 

[Nedroe]

1941 Springfield Lend-Lease, all numbers match. Somehow avoided the armory.


A fantastic shooter.

Ned

 

[Glashaus]

I am in the club as well.

The top M1 came from the CMP a couple of years ago. It was a service grade that came with new CMP walnut. The receiver is April 1941 and it was rebarreled with a September 1943 barrel, the bottom M1 I have had since the late 80's

 

[Mike SC Hunter]

My best one is an H&R that looks like it was never issued. I once bought a barreled action from the CMP and built a complete rifle from parts on hand(head space was good). A Springfield out for the day.
I also shoot 150 gr cast gas checked spitzer bullets loaded in Greek XTP brass with no problems other than these create some smoke when fired.

 

[GypsmJim]

Is there anybody who doesn't love the Garand? I doubt it.

With all the kids carrying black plastic, I'm sure there are a bunch of detractors.

Mine is a 1943 Springfield, repatriated from Korea. It appeared unissued and never rebuilt. Even the stock was not dinged.

Because of the import marks, I got it for a reasonable price. One of the nicest and most accurate rifles i ever owned.