Ready on the Right--Ready on the Left--Ready on the firing line
Yes, nothing special, but you may have an honored combat veteran of World War Two or Korea, and that is special in my book.
Speaking of the clip making noise, there is a story, which may be an urban legend, that Marines in the Pacific used to have a rifle with full magazine in one hand, a bayonet with an empty clip hanging from it in the other, fire one shot, flip the clip into the air with the bayonet, enemy soldiers nearby would hear the noise, spring out of hiding and be blasted by the other rounds in the rifle. Like I say, probably an urban legend.
Another plus, it's rediculously simple to field strip without tools.
If it was sold outside the country and came back, post-1968 regulations require that the importer mark it with their name. They usually put it on the gas cylindar I believe.
As for Garand's indoor skating rink, I call that more than a little eccentric!
Take good care of that Denise, it's a treasure. I've been drooling over an occasional one at Four Seasons kicking myself I'm on a right budget.
Hi Seth,
My Garand's a real piece of history and I'll be taking good care of it. I actually bought it at Four Seasons when I lived in Massachusetts. One of the good things I got out of living in there.
We used the Garand on our ship in Vietnam, and I fell in love with the gun (of course next to the BAR, which was my favorite). When I went to a Naval Air Station in Newfoundland after Vietnam, I was in charge of the armory. When they closed the base, they took hundreds of Garands (WWII vintage) still in cosmoline and wax paper wrappers out 6 miles and dumped them in the Atlantic. If you don't think that brought tears to our eyes, we even offered to buy some of the rifles, but no go.
I just purchased one of the new Springfield Armory Garands in .308, I wanted it in the .308 because I want to match it with one of their M1A's when I can get my hands on one. I'm going to have to put a couple of hundred rounds through this baby to loosen her up, boy this rifle is tight!!!
My Springfield Armory M-1 was built
in January, 1944, so it may indeed have seen some action in either Europe or the Pacific. These are
historic artifacts and I would never part with mine.
THats a real pretty looking garand. Are those birch stocks? Are they the ones that came with it?
Mine has a birch stock with a walnut top and foreend stock. I'd like to get the whole thing in one or the other (preferrably walnut).
Anyway, its gorgeous!
Dumping Garands at sea? I'd call that destruction of a national monument!
I gotta agree with Seth, dumping M1s into the ocean is pure vandalism.
Countertop, I'm pretty sure the stocks are birch and the fore-end is walnut. All the wood is original to when I bought it about four years ago. There is a P in a circle indicating that the stock came from a US arsenal (probably). I doubt it was original to the rifle itself.
When I got it, the stock had a ton of old cosmoline and crud on it. Given the lack of cartouches and other evidence that the stock was original, I stripped all the old crud off and polished the wood with 0000 steel wool (not recommended for original stocks). I put a little tung oil on it to protect it.
I was surprised how pretty the wood really is. Also, the gun is quite accurate and works flawlessly. It's one of my favorite guns.
Four Seasons has a Springfield M1 complete with National Match sights for which they want the king's ransom of $1,049. Oh, the pain! Wish I wasen't on a super tight bueget right now!
ACK! You're killing me!
A Garand is the one thing on my Christmas list I *didn't* get. Well, actually, I sorta got one..... a 7inch long plastic model! :P
I really need to tell the kid to be more specific next year in his letter to Santa.
By the way, a couple more tidbits about the Garand. Some people speak of the "Tanker Garand", a carbine version of the Garand. There are exactly two genuine examples, both are in the collection of Springfield Armory National Historic Site. That is as far as the program got before the war ended and the program was cancelled. There are a few out there, but they are all built from surplus parts by custom gunsimiths. I've never seen one.
You may also encounter Garands which accept Browning Automatic Rifle 20-round magazines. These too are comercially modified out of surplus parts after the war and were never genuine military items. I believe if you look in the small ads in the back pages of 1950's American Rifleman magazines you will see ads for a shop in the southwest which made a specialty of them. There must not be many because I've been haunting gunshops for 30 years now and have never seen one.
I actually did see one example of a sporterized Garand. Did not get to handle it, as it was hanging on the back wall of a booth at the New England Sportsman's show in Boston, a good 20-25 years ago. I also recall 30 or more years ago seeing a cover story in a gun magazine, Gun World if I remember correctly, featuring such a project.
I knew that "tanker Garands" in gun stores are about as real as jackalopes in taxidermy shops.
When collecting, I tend to avoid carbine variations of full-size rifles. There're too easy for someone to cut down and pass off with a big price tag. I would buy one only if the serial number fell in a range referenced by a reliable source.
The Springfield Armory Museum has some examples of Garands equipped with a BAR magazine. In at least one case, a Marine Armorer in the Pacific put one together and made an unofficial prototype of the M14--years before the real prototypes were made. John C. Garand is supposed to have seen it or one like it and that helped lead to the real M14.
The Museum gives tours of its holding areas that are well worth the time.
"Real as jackalopes" I'll have to remember that for future use. I like that!
I was not a fan of the Garand, initially. It's big & heavy, limited by the 8-round en-bloc clip, unsuitable to optical sights, and not known for tack-driving accuracy. But I qualified for a DCM Garand by shooting in an affiliated match, and I had some spare cash, so I bought one.
I liked it so much I put a new stock on it and refinished it. It's now one of my favorite "take to the range" guns. No safe queen!
And that clip ejection noise? It gives real meaning to the word "Bling!"
I read that originally the Garand was designed to use a box magazine, and the original cartridge was a .280 caliber. The Powers That Be didn't like the box, and decided they rifle should stick to the .30-06.
Yes, it was intended for a .270 caliber cartridge (which the army called the .276). Aparently General Douglas McArthur, who was commander of Ordinance at the time, decided cartridge development was delaying the project too long and ordered it to take the existing cartridge. In fact, another interesting piece of trivia is that one of the competing designs, I believe designed by Remington's chief designed Pederson (who was responsible for the Remington slide action rifles of the period as well as the "Pederson Device" of World War One fame), used a Luger style toggle link!
If you want the full history, 'The Book of the Garand', Julian Hatcher. Full development from beginning to end, including shots of the original cartridges in a stripper clip for reloading.
Bruce Canfield's book "The Weapons of World War Two" is a great overview of all US weapons which might be available to collectors.
There are also two collector organizations, the Garand Collectors Association, and The Garand Stand, both of which issue magazines.
I have heard it told as well that the Garand was originally designed to accept a box magazine, but the Army brass felt that use of magazines would create "just another piece of equipment the soldiers would have to worry about" and expressed concern about the utility of the rifle if all the magazines were lost.
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