Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Garand KABOOM!

The whole deal gets a wee bit more complicated than JUST geometry, IIRC, I think that a Brinnel Indent will be found on ALL original Arsenal Built Op Rods, and that would have to do with "Springiness v Hardness" engineered for the Time / Pressure event.........

Of course, being a Government deal, the mantra was to REPLACE the Op rods. Lots WERE replaced, and NOS is looking fairly scarce, I sure hope alla' those depots in Korea are not going to be trashed, and that some NOS will turn up.

A bud and I kinda' share a copy of Jerry K's book,....lemme see what's in there for specs, and I WILL get it over your way.



That casual advice "Oh just use the lighter bullet Sporting loads" has done a lot of old M1s no favors whatsoever,.....

GTC

Other than doing oddball work for M1 owners the extent of my knowledge about the rifle is that you point the skinny end at a target, pull the trigger and it goes boom. I stick to simple things like bolt guns...

I have a Chinese knockoff of an M14 (it was too cheap to pass up) I was going to load for in the coming months. Besides headspace checks I will only load moderate loads, with powders of correct burning rate recommended for it. I've always heard the same warnings about Garands.

This will make sense to only one other member of the 'fire, but that's Wilma Kaboom.

That looks like way more than an excessive port pressure issue from firing a heavy 180gr load with a powder in the 4350 range or slower. I'd expect a broken op rod from that, but not other parts flying all over and a snapped stock! Slamfires abound with thin walled primers,high seating and old parts, but the shooters said it was factory ammo in the comments on the video. Even with an OOB fire, I'd expect an oprod break and brass blowing out, but not the barrel,stock and handguard damage that I'm seeing in that video. To me, a round following a squib stuck in the barrel seems most likely. Wish I could see the rifle remains.

I THINK it was either a recent Handloader or Rifle magazine that had an article on the DCM and talked about a boatload of NOS parts and rifles coming back from Greece and had a picture of an unopened case of IH Op Rods.

Ed

it dident blow until she pulled the trigger,cannot be a slam fire. a slam fire wont blow up the rifle just shoot extra rounds.I had a worn out remington semi 22 rimfire it would sometimes empty all 15 rounds from the magazine tube in less than a second.

My godfather bought a brand new Springfield Garand about 8 years ago. We were out at the range shooting it and my little brother who was about 6 at the time, just got done shooting it. I got a good rest on the bags and shot two rounds, and on the 3rd round, the rifle blew apart just like in the video. Blew the stock in 13 pieces, knocked the bullets out of the live rounds in the magazine, and scared everyone to death. I just got a little powder burn on my hand and a bruise on my cheek from something. My godfather got a cut on his cheek because he was sitting on the other side of the bench to my right spotting for me. Springfield replaced the rifle but we never found out what caused it. I have no problem shooting any rifle but wont touch another garand.

Looks like maybe the bottom-line answer is "yes", even a new one will blow like that. Not good.

I had an old fn49 do that to me one time.turned out the firing pin had broken on the previus shot,and was jammed in the "fired" position.It fired the next round out of battery,with predictable results.

I would do a little research into the norinco, i had one for a very short while, gave it back to the retailer, and bought a early springfield with military parts, the exception being the reciever.
As I remember, the barrels are pinched in, and the bolts are soft. I think smith here in phx has a cottage business correcting some of the deficiencies.
As to the op rod, without pulling the reference books, they went through revisions too. Almost all of them were either made with a stress relief cut, or were later cut that way mainly due to issues with rifle gernades.
An unaltered WWII op rod commands a pretty good premium these days, enough that i have replaced the ones i have and set them aside.
Some source i was reading stated that at springfield during production of the garand the highest paid guy in the factory was the one working with op rods.
As i have stated in this thread, I HAVE several rather special garands, one of which was a mid 50's springfield set up for camp perry, it was previously owned by a nationally ranked perry shooter, and was built by an old army armorer in a little town outside of Fort benning.
I tripped accross a couple of "white bag" garands last year, now mine, that were arsonel redone in the early 50's put in white bags, and have stayed that way up until this day. And no, i ain't gonna shoot them.
I have others pre WWII, up until about the end of the Korean war. I am not afraid of them.
But i am sensitive to their working condition, and the stuff they eat.
I have pulled fire control groups and found cracked parts, barrels that would swallow a bullet, op rod springs that were scrap 50 years ago and so on.
As to a guage for the op rod, i have heard of them but haven't seen one. There is a guy I know that has torn literally thousands of them apart, built them, rebuilt them etc. When I can catch him i will ask him as to that question. I know he has a lot of tools that i would love to get my hands on.
I have a m1A sitting in the shed that is one of only a few hundred built by a california company long time ago. Military parts but a cast reciever. When i first pulled the op rod back, it slipped out of the channel. oops!! it is going to sit there until it gets checked out by someone better than me.
As to a new springfield blowing up, remember those are cast reciever, or were, made i believe in lithgow australia. Ain't the same as a U.S. army.
One other thing that i am pretty sure about, my first two garands came from the D.C.M. back when you could only have one per lifetime. About 175 a piece if i remember right. Had my wife qualify down at three points to get the second rifle. Those two rifles obtained back in the 80's are by far head and shoulders above in quality what are being distributed today from returns from greece etc.
You are getting the bottom of the barrel more and more.
the exception to this are the italian and german return m1 carbines that were really well maintained. The german ones other than being reblued, stocks varnished, look pretty much the way they must have looked in 1945 when patton turned them over.
I have several carbines in the white bag too. They are MUCH different than the south Korean blue sky ones you see floating around these days, or those released through the NRA years ago that were considered shot out by the army.
I also do know a lot of people will buy one of these rifles, too many WWII movies, and then run out and buy commercial ammo not suited for the old girls. Or reload, with no idea of what the original military specs to powder and so on were. These are available by the way on the internet.

these rifles have been messed around with so much very few have seen an original condition garand. They are scarce as hens teeth. There is ONE in prescott, that i have had the chance to handle, never been fired, absolutely brand spanking new. And he won't sell it to me. Nor could i afford it. In the last few years some of these have surfaced as returns from greece, and at cmp auctions, they have brought prices with quite a few zero's attached.

by the way, i am not trying to play "see what i got" when i mention some of these rifles. But it does give one the chance to see what they are suppose to look like and how they are suppose to function.
I have one that stumpted just about every one including canfield. A local guy who at various time provided the rifles for the pictures in a lot of the reference books on garands finally told me what it was after trying to buy it from me.
A pre wwII springfield, later taken into the italian army, and return here, how, I don't know. Pretty special because of all the prewar parts.

If i wanted a good garand by the way, for around 1000 bucks i would go for one of the cmp garands with new wood, new barrel, and put together by one of their armorers with military parts. I would be pretty comfortable with that. Also knowing i could hardly duplicate the price doing that myself.

Just say no to op rods.

All that PLUS a squib in the bore would surely look like that.

I have indeed heard about the soft bolt bodies on some of them, so the headspace gauges will check it. My first times shooting it it did nothing great, so if I decide to rebarrel it I'm sure I'll just have the bolt done at the same time.

This guy seems like a good smith for Garands, and similar critters...

http://www.warbirdscustomguns.com/

http://www.m1-garand-rifle.com/garand-troubleshooting.php
this link goes into a number of the malfunctions and causes from the original tm's.
The two areas that i think are of interest in this discussion:
BOLT FAILS TO CLOSE TIGHTLY AND LOCK INTO PLACE
a. dirty chamber
b. dirty locking recesses
c. lubrication
d. damaged /deformed bolt or reciever
e. extractor/ejector
f. op rod binding
g. weak or broken op rod spring
h. damaged or or bolt/reciever
i. insufficient head space

SLAMFIRE IN THAT GUN FIRES ON ITS OWN AS BOLT CLOSES OR OUT OF BATTERY:
OR UNINTENDED FIRING WHEN BOLT NOT CLOSED
a. defective ammo/wrong ammo
b. incorrect head space or chamber demensions
while it is doubtful to me it would be present in the kaboom, the forestock was modified on these rifles with a little cut to prevent op rod binding with the cut on the right rear.
what is interesting is that the shooter admits brothers rifle was having seventh round issues.
Which made me wonder if it was one of the first 30 000 or so that had the recesses cut too deep and later corrected with a little weld. Probably doubtful.

I haven't had any work done by him having had access locally to garand cranks as i call them, but he has been around for a while, i remember him from quite a few years ago. There are not many around so they get pretty well known if they do it right. I do notice he mentions smith enterprises. DGR is another one
here is a link to his site:
http://www.dgrguns.com/

check out some of the wood:
I had my gerbiled greek return HRA done by him. All parts checked and reparked, douglas .308 barrel, french bastogne wood, It is PURTY.
he doesn't show the bastogne wood anymore, but here is a link to the wood he has now: Some of these are really nice:
http://dgrguns.com/New-M1-Garand-Stocks.htm

Damn, I though MY lathe looked a little "rough".

NEAT site, thanks.