BarryinIN

Instructor Louis Awerbuck wrote a book several years ago called "Hit or Myth" that mostly concentrates on what is wrong with the majority of our practice methods. He also includes instructions for one of the most clever target ideas I've seen. You start with a regular old paper grocery bag, make five straight cuts, and end up with two targets that fairly well represent the head and upper torso. First, you cut the bag in half by cutting vertically down the middle. Then you cut along the crease where the bottom meets one side. Stop at the end. Make the same cut where the bottom joins the opposite side of the bag. Open it up... And you have a target! That Louis Awerbuck is a genius. He has sure saved me a lot of money on targets anyway, since these are what I use for pistol practice almost all the time. The bags from my Kroger store give me a target that is almost identical in dimensions to an IDPA or IPSC target except for being a little shorter. If you want, you can clip or fold the corners at the shoulder to get it more realistic looking. I put a cardboard sheet backer behind them and replace the paper bag as needed. By stapling it up so the sides are pulled in toward the centerline a little, it curves it some to take on a more realistic frontal surface. That's harder to do with cardboard. A curved target is a helpful training tool when you turn the target sideways a bit, showing that aiming right down the line of shirt buttons can cause a grazing hit if the target is turned. Sometimes you have to hold off center to get the bullet into the middle of the recipient. Earlier today I took old wheelweights that were a somewhat hard to dispose of waste material, and turned them into therapeutic sporting projectiles. This afternoon, I got six paper bags to convert into 12 targets. I love recycling. Hey! Earth Day is coming up. Do your part, save those bags, and take out the scissors and re-purpose them on Earth Day!

I like to tell about when I took a Garand to a carbine class a couple of years ago, and some of the other students commented about it's weight. After some "show and tell time" on breaks, it was clear I did not have the heaviest rifle there. Far from it. Hmmm. I have learned to like a couple of goodies on some ARs, but even then, the goodies go on according to the planned use. For example: The "house gun" gets a light but the "truck gun" or "walking around gun" does not. I think the trend is getting away from trying to get as much junk on there as possible, but some people do need to stop and think about what they might actually need. Someone has looked at that picture and wanted to duplicate it. When I saw the bayonet attachments for pistol rails for the first time, I laughed. I got the joke. Then I heard another guy exclaim he had to have one. He didn't get the joke. He was the reason for the joke.

I didn't realize Savage was making a right bolt/left port single shot action. The port location doesn't make the action stiffer; the lack of a magazine cutout in the bottom does. The port location would be a pain with a repeater away from the bench, but makes things easier when shooting at the bench. Run the bolt with the right hand, and pluck the empty out with the left hand. When loading, you drop a new round in the port with the left hand and close the bolt with the right. No reaching over, and you can leave your hand on the bolt.

Electronic muffs. I wouldn't go to a class without 'em. Instructors talk all through the class, including while shooting. Louis Awerbuck is creepy in that he not only has eyes in the back of his head, but he has them on all sides and can see, analyze, and discuss the entire line's issues at once. You need electronics to keep up with him. Seriously, a typical drill in one of his classes goes like this: He will tell you beforehand what you will do ("fire two to six rounds, your choice, while stepping right") then give the command to shoot. By the time the first shots ring out, he will have corrected two or three things, saying "Tom, don't pop the safety until the muzzle is on target; Dick, step and draw at the same time instead of stepping then drawing; Harry, you almost mashed the trigger that time." And not everyone has their first shot off yet. He is talking about people located all along the line, not standing together. I don't know how he can see this much at once, let alone analyze it, form the words, and speak them, all the while he's analyzing what is happening at that moment to talk about in the next half second. It's creepy. I've seen him tell people after a drill how their gun malfunctioned, and the shooter is standing there trying to remember if the gun even stuttered. Creepy. I'm not sure what Top Shot has to do with a carbine class, but that show is just plain silly. It has about as much to do with shooting as American Idol. Or maybe as much as Ice Road Truckers, Ax Men, and UFO Files has to do with history. But don't get me started on how The History Channel has gone down hill.

I was informed of this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGJJl6spb8k Check out the dork on the left through most of this. The one in the light colored shirt. What a Maynard. Why is this in the Semiautomatic Rifles section? Because it looks like he has an M-1 Garand. He brought a Garand to a carbine class, the goober. Yeah, I like Garands.

I know what you mean. It's as if it was written on with a stainless steel Sharpie marker. It's so eye-catching because Colt polishes their slide flats and that's a big flat billboard that shows it so well. A less polished slide like an SA, or polished but rounded surface like a revolver barrel won't show it as much. I don't know what to tell you because I like character wear and my suggestion would be to carry it all day every day until it was evenly covered with it!

Ooooooooh, the home site. I looked in once, but didn't register. This time, I saw the firearms section. Now I registered.

OK, I saw that once before and couldn't figure it out then or now. What's a BITOG? I know of KTOG (KelTec Owner's Group), but can't figure out BITOG. Built-In Toy Owner's Group? Bullets Is Tops Owner's Group?

I always thought the 5-1/2 barrel SAs looked the best but didn't care for it other than looks. I felt it was a compromise length and wanted a longer barrel on some guns/calibers and shorter on others. Then after having some SAs with longer barrels (up to 12" Dakota) and some with shorter ones, I got the .44 Spl with the middle-of-the-road 5-1/2" barrel. I had wanted a 4-5/8 barrel on that gun, but the 5-1/2 was all I found at the time. Beggars can't be choosers, so I took it. Now I like that length best. Maybe compromise isn't so bad. I want a 5-1/2" .44 Spl/44-40 USFA pretty bad.

I don't have one and never have, but plan on getting one sometime (I like the heavy barrel .308 with about a 20" barrel). Those I know with Savages love them.

Thanks! I think it's a more involved story than most people realize. It was a huge achievement to come up with a semiauto battle rifle for general issue. It didn't come easy, and could have been a disaster if they didn't get it right. I know I keep comparing the way the two were developed, but what if the Garand rifle had been sent off to fight with limited testing like the M16? Instead of pre-war fine tuning, what if the Garand had been sent into battle exactly as it had been adopted, like the M16 was? When weapons are rushed into service without proper testing, terrible things happen. The M-16's early problems were in many ways simpler than those of the Garand. If the Garand had been sent to Guadalcanal in the form it was adopted, things could have been awful ugly. Who knows- Maybe the entire Island Hopping strategy would have been reconsidered out of necessity. Thankfully, they did get the time to do it right. When you look back, there never were but a handful of full-power cartridge (.30-06, 7.92x57, 7.62x54, etc) semiauto military rifles that saw service. Ever. Aside from the FN-49 which came a decade after the M-1, I don't know if any similar rifles were standard issue in their respective armies. The Soviet SVT 40 was limited issue, as were the German G-43s and K-43s. Perhaps the Swedish Ljungmann AG-42 falls into this group, but relative to the Garand it saw limited service also. Some say the full power semiauto rifle was not further developed by the Germans and Soviets because it didn't fit their doctrine, but I don't fully accept that. I think they didn't build an army around them because they didn't have them, and not from lack of desire. I doubt those countries would have invested the time and money in the semiauto rifles they did make if they didn't want to use them more. They didn't have the resources (time, materials, or money) to throw into what in reality became supplemental weapons. Thinking further into this- As hard as it was to come up with a good semiauto battle rifle at the time (or now), it's all the more impressive the USA had TWO to choose from before the war began. I'm speaking of the Johnson semiauto rifle. I bought an M1941 Johnson a couple of years ago, and have since spent a lot of time researching them and shooting mine. Aside from it going along on every range trip, I've let others shoot it and even used it in an IPSC 3-gun match once. As a Garand nut, I had to know firsthand how they compared because I had heard and read all sorts of claims over the years. My opinion now is that we could have entered the war with either one and been just fine. I doubt the war would have lasted one day longer or shorter had, for example, the Marine Corps issued M1941 Johnsons instead of Garands. Most countries didn't have any semiauto battle rifles, and we had two to choose from. But the Johnson is another story. I was just about to put those Garand articles up here, then you put the home page up with the other things I did and I didn't want to flood the place with my ramblings. But I had been wishing I had posted these Garand stories online somewhere back in January, on the 75th anniversary of it's adoption. I couldn't wait anymore and posted them anyway. Hey, I waited a couple of days! Maybe now I'll finish Part 3. I hardly more than started it. It is supposed to be about how clever some components of the Garand are. John Garand was good at making one part do multiple things, especially springs. I think both the bolt assembly and trigger assembly are each near-masterpieces.

It is late 1939. The U.S. Rifle, Cal .30, M1, or simply "The Garand" had been adopted almost four years prior. After a lengthy production setup period, new rifles have been coming off the line at a regular pace for several few months. It's just starting to trickle into the hands of troops. Also, problems are showing up, and complaints are being heard. None of this is a surprise. There will be problems with any new rifle no matter how long it was in development. Complaints were expected also, because even if the rifle had been perfect, some people were going to be unhappy about it because it was a semi-auto. But several things were working together and piling up that would make it look rather grim for Garand's rifle for a while. The entire muzzle area of the early issue Garand was different from what we know now. As adopted, it used a different system of capturing the gas at the muzzle. It used a "gas trap" rather than a gas port in the barrel. And it wasn't working well. The Garand we are familiar with taps gas pressure through a tiny hole in the barrel, sending it into a gas cylinder to push against the gas piston on the operating rod. That's not how it started out. The Garand as it was adopted used an undrilled barrel. The gas cylinder went over the muzzle end of the barrel and enclosed it entirely except for an opening for the bullet to pass through. There was a gap between the "false muzzle" of the gas cylinder and the actual muzzle of the barrel. This space was called the "gas trap". Picture slipping a fired shotgun shell over a rifle barrel, with the primer drilled out for a bullet to pass through. Don't slide the shell all the way down until it stops, but leave a space. That space is the gas trap. This gas cylinder was fixed to the barrel about like the later design, and used gas pressure to push the operating rod back...it just got it's gas pressure from that empty space at the muzzle instead of from a hole in the barrel. It sounds like it should work, and it did. Mostly. The gas trap space would collect carbon and unburned powder. This could give exciting results when this accumulated powder ignited from a shot. It also hurt accuracy. It almost had to be removed just to clean the bore, since cleaning patches would sometimes fall off the cleaning rod into that gap and need to be dug out (if they were known about). It never had a very solid attachment since there was less spline area than the later gas cylinder, and it didn't take many removal/installations to loosen the fit and make it wobble. This may not be noticeable or even measurable at first, but the effects would add up over time and make a "wiggly" gas cylinder. With the front sight mounted on the gas cylinder, this play affected accuracy. Since the Garand rear sight moves .008" to change the point of impact one MOA, you can see that enough play in the gas cylinder to be felt by hand could open groups dramatically. This instability also made it appear to be a pretty unsatisfactory bayonet attach point. John Garand basically redesigned the front end of the rifle. He changed the barrel, gas cylinder, and front sight. All together, this was a pretty major change to a rifle that had spent nearly two decades in design, development, and testing. The Army probably screwed up here by not informing the public, or at least the military establishment, right away. Either the Army or Springfield Armory was rather secretive about the gas cylinder change, even though they were on it pretty quickly after realizing it. I suppose they wanted to avoid controversy, but it looks like they only succeeded in creating it. The problem with the original design was becoming known, yet nobody knew they were fixing it. They were still cranking out rifles with the old design, with the plan of retrofitting new barrels and gas cylinders later. And the NRA was curious. I should explain that the NRA and the armed services were pretty close back then. The president of the NRA was usually an active duty Army General, the NRA's matches had courses of fire designed with input from the Army and Marine Corps, and they coordinated on programs like the DCM arms sales. Nobody would let the NRA test a Garand rifle, which only made them wonder why. The reason was probably that changes were coming, so there was little point in letting the NRA have a rifle that did not represent the final product. But the Army didn't tell them that. They wouldn't tell them much of anything. When the Ordnance Dept demonstrated the Garand at the National Matches at Camp Perry in 1939, they knew about the gas cylinder problems. In fact, the new design was approved within six weeks following the matches and the changeover began. But not only did nobody tell the NRA this at Camp Perry, the Army kept the rifles very closely guarded. Any competitor could fire the new rifle, but an Army Ordnance representative stayed at their side. The NRA headquarters staff was turned away and not allowed to fire one at all. As I said in Part 1, the NRA smelled a rat. This was also where the Army hid the seventh-round-stoppage scare, which was really why the rifles were closely watched. The Army Ordnance man was standing by to make sure the rifle was loaded in just the right way. But curiosity had been aroused. When the gas cylinder problem became known, they probably feared the worst if news got out. How they planned to keep that a secret with rifles in the hands of troops, I don't know, but they must have thought they should try. Something else happened around this time to hurt the Garand's image. It shouldn't have, but it did. People began to wonder if the rifle would handle the full power .30-06 military cartridge. Some events have to be known to see the entire story here: -In WWI, the standard load for the .30-06 was the M1906 round: a 150 grain bullet at 2,700 fps. -After WWI, there was a lot of studying done on machinegun tactics, and one result was the desire for longer range from the .30-06. So in 1925, the Army changed to the .30M1 cartridge: a 174.5 grain bullet at 2,647 fps. -Some National Guard ranges weren't long enough to handle the range of the new cartridge, so the Guard asked for more of the old cartridge to be loaded. After some development (they never were pleased with the old 150 bullet's cupro-nickel jacket) they started making another loading called the .30M2: a 152 grain bullet at 2,700 fps. -After playing around with the Nat'l Guard's new "training" load, regular Army machinegunners found that it's more curved trajectory worked better for sweeping the back side of hills since the trajectory allowed them to drop rounds in. After raising the velocity of the .30M2 152 grain bullet to 2,805 fps, it was adopted as the standard infantry round in 1940. The Garand had been designed around the .30M1 (174 grain @ 2,650) cartridge, but would work fine with the .30M2 (152 @ 2,805). But somewhere, somehow, someone got the idea that the new "light load" was made for the Garand because it couldn't handle the "more powerful" .30M1 cartridge. That made no sense, since that load didn't even exist when the rifle was adopted, let alone while it was being developed, but that's what some thought. And it wasn't just being tossed around as gunshop gossip. High ranking Army officers who should have known better believed it. A Major General who later commanded the 29th Infantry in Europe was one of the biggest, and wrote at least a couple of articles about it that made newspapers and The American Rifleman. "The M2 ammunition...is specified for the Garand because the Garand will not operate satisfactorily with the more efficient M1 ammunition....which is inferior from many angles...The Garand, because of its mechanical faults, cannot satisfactorily use the M1 ammunition...and is restricted to the use of M2 ammunition, throwing a projectile of 150 grains, with a lighter powder charge (which was incorrect)..." And he wasn't the only one. It was off to the races in 1940, and there would be a congressional investigation before it was all over. People questioned the "reduced power ammo it required". The gas cylinder was becoming a known problem, but the fix wasn't. "Time" and other magazines and newspapers were running articles about the "failed" new rifle. The NRA was asking questions. I have one issue of the American Rifleman where the Rifleman's tech expert F.C. Ness finally gets to test an M-1 Garand for a long weekend, and I can only describe it as brutal. From Aug 1938 to Jan 1940, the NRA had published at least four articles either questioning the Garand or praising the new Johnson rifle which wasn't even being tested yet. And that rifle of Melvin Johnson's was yet another threat. The Johnson Rifle. The Johnson semi-automatic rifle is usually talked about as having been a threat to the M1 Garand. I don't think it was- at least not much- because the Johnson wasn't really ready until most of the Garand's problems were fixed. Whether it was or it wasn't a threat to it can be debated. Personally, I feel the Johnson's existence helped save the Garand rifle. The Marine Corps was not yet interested in a semi-auto service rifle, and after testing some semiautos was happy to stay with the M1903 Springfield. But partially out of their own desire for information, and maybe partially due to pressure from outsiders to "catch up", and certainly partially due to pressure from Captain Melvin Johnson, UMSCR, the USMC conducted a pretty in-depth evaluation of available semi-auto service rifles in late 1940. Headed by a board of six USMC officers, the test was done on several M1903s, M1 Garands, two different new designs from Winchester, and the first truly serious look at the Johnson. Forty enlisted men, from new recruits, to WWI vets, to USMC rifle team members, did the shooting. They tested for weeks, fired at least 12,000 rds through each design. They ran at least 38 tests, testing for accuracy from 200 to 1,000 yards, reliability, ease of training new recruits, endurance, field firing under ideal and under adverse conditions, etc. Everyone knew the M1 was having trouble. Everyone thought they knew the Johnson was at least as good as the M1. Some people were pushing for a change, even in mid-stream, to the Johnson. And it was no secret that Melvin Johnson had friends in the Marines and Congress (maybe not as many as people were saying, but he wasn't about to stop them from thinking it). I think knowing this was taking place help light a fire under Army Ordnance to correct the M1 Garand's problems. That's only personal opinion, and one big guess, but it sure looks that way to me whenever I read all the separate stories and put them all together. The final result of that Marine Corps test was that the Marine Corps would stay with the M1903 as was expected, but the "test conclusively proved that the M1 rifle is the most satisfactory semiautomatic rifle available." The M1 was the highest placing semi-auto in most categories (though it should be remembered that only the M1903 and Garand were fully developed rifles and the others were basically prototypes). Aside from maybe causing the USMC to warm up to the idea that a semi-auto might be OK, it vindicated the M1 Garand. The test results came at a great time. The new gas cylinder changeover was well along (and working), production was growing every day, more troops were getting the new rifle and liking it, it was doing well in the field. All the fixes were working. One last big problem haunted the M1 Garand. The rear sight was an improvement for combat use over the M1903 sights, but the rear sight of the M1 wouldn't hold elevation adjustment. It would "jump" under recoil. The original sight had a slotted nut you could tighten after zeroing, but it was too small to hold, and was easily lost besides. I have one, and snapped one combination tool trying to keep it tight and was always worried about losing that nut on the nice clean range. I can only guess how one might look at it if heading into a war. The first rear sight change was to replace that slotted nut with a bar shaped nut, or lockbar. You didn't need tools, and could get a grip on it with your fingers. You backed it off, made the adjustment, then tightened it. But you had to keep it tight, as it also tended to loosen under recoil. It was not captive, so if it came off, it was lost and there was nothing to hold the sight together so the parts would work their way out and be lost. The next change was to make the sight's pinion shaft longer, then after the lockbar nut was threaded on, this end was staked to keep the nut from coming back off. Now the lockbar nut was mostly safe from loss, but you still had to back it off each time you wanted a sight adjustment and remember to tighten it back. This was the common sight during WWII. While it now had a locking system, it was still a mystery as to why the sight would "self-adjust" under recoil to begin with. The knobs were spring-loaded into matching receiver serrations, and if set correctly, took a reasonably strong grasp to turn. The recoil should transmit less force than a strong grip would, so what was going on? It was late in WWII before it was figured out and a fix was designed. Essentially, the sight was backwards from how it needed to be. The spring-loading parts were under the elevation knob on the left side. This gave that knob a little more mass than it would have by itself, and that was enough. Under recoil, this mass increase was enough to make the elevation knob bounce out from the receiver serrations under inertia, where it could move, then snap back. So they put the springs, clips, etc under the other side under the windage knob. It would still hold the knob against the serrations since they were joined by a common shaft. This made the actual moving part lighter, and that was light enough to keep it from developing enough inertia under recoil to unseat from it's serrations. Though developed right before war's end, this sight design was adopted in 1947 and retrofitted in postwar rebuilds. It's a really great sight, but you still have to keep the screw tight or the aperture will fall to the bottom of its travel under recoil. As we all know now, the M1 Garand went on to be the best battle rifle of WWII in the opinion of many. But it was touchy for a while. If you talk to people about the M1 now, and all you hear is how wonderful it is. A lot of people didn't think so back about 1940. Many don't realize that now. John Garand started making prototypes around 1920, the M1 was adopted in 1936, and the final gas cylinder design was in production in early 1940. That is twenty years of development...20 YEARS!...and it still needed some small bugs chased out. I like to think about that when I read about this or that gun having problems after being made five years. It's nothing new, and it will always be this way. Development takes time. I think about this when someone talks about early failures of the M16. The M1 Garand also underwent changes all throughout production. One thing about having a rifle built by a gov't armory is that they aren't so concerned with profit margins. SA made a lot of changes for various reasons. Some were to streamline production, but most were to make it stronger or better in some way. The other WWII manufacturer, Winchester, made very few changes until the very last rifles they made. Yes, there was war on, but Winchester still had stockholders to please. SA changed the receiver in small ways many times. If you look at an early one, then look at a later one, the contours show the later one is beefier. The bolt was changed at least six times during production. There are at least 19 dash numbers on bolts (D28287-1SA, D28287-2SA, etc) but we only know of about six or eight that made it into production. The rest probably couldn't get into production before another revision came out. There are five different follower numbers, 10 to 12 trigger housings, seven or eight operating rods, and even the safety was changed several times. That's just part of it. General Patton may be correct that the M-1 Garand was the "greatest battle implement ever devised" but it took a long time to get there.

This is another piece I wrote for a now-defunct forum/RTKBA site. It was sitting idle in my computer, and this year marks the 75th year of the Garand's adoption, so I thought I'd post it. This was going to be a short article on how long it took the M-1 Garand to come into being. It quickly grew because I can't shut up. I split it into two parts, then had to make it three. I never did finish the third part. I was kind of hoping that by posting the first two parts, I would fire myself up to finish it. *********************************************** Whenever I go to the rifle range, I take at least one M1 Garand. I have several AR15s, think the FAL is great, enjoy playing with lever actions, and have fun trying to get the most accuracy from a bolt action. But my favorite rifle has to be the M1 Garand. However, contrary to what many of us would like to believe, the Garand was not an overnight success. John Garand did not climb down off Mount Sinai with the blueprints, hand them to the Ordnance Corps and with a nod of approval from General Patton, send it on to immediate and faultless general issue. It's a more involved story than that. Before I go on, the proper way to pronounce Garand is not "Guh-rand" like most people do. It should sound sorta like "parent" or "errand". That's one of the first pieces of info in "Hatcher's Book of the Garand" by Gen Julian S. Hatcher, and since Hatcher knew Garand well and worked with him in the Ordnance Dept, I'll take his word for it. John Cantius Garand was Canadian-born, and like many brilliant people...was a little eccentric. It is said he once owned a house in which he had built an indoor ice skating rink. But I'm getting ahead of myself. John Garand has often been compared to John Browning, and while that is understandable, I don't see they have a lot in common besides firearms. It looks to me like they went about things in very different ways. I've read that Browning would get an idea or order for a certain gun, work it out in his head, then go to the bench and make one. He seemed to go with his instincts and make something based on an idea that came to him. It might need a little fine tuning, but that was all he gave it. If it needed more than that, he often just tried a different way. It is said that once he had a gun ready, he was done with it and never looked at it again to think of improvements or changes. Once he was done...he was done. Garand, on the other hand, seemed to be more methodical and would start on the drafting board, work out every little detail, and was constantly changing and improving. The M1 Garand rifle we now know took around 20 years to come into being. Browning would have designed 40 guns in half that time. But Garand was employed by the gov't solely for the purpose of designing a semi-auto military rifle, so who knows how he would have worked if he had been freelancing. One thing many people don't realize is that along with the Garand rifle, the gov't got an entire manufacturing process. John Garand not only designed the rifle, but the tooling and methods to produce it. He was a tooling designer with Brown & Sharp and the US Bureau of Standards before coming to Springfield Armory. A lot of thought went into how each part would be made in addition to how it would function. Many parts were made by the broaching process, which was rather new at the time. I'm no machinist, but as I understand it, a VERY simplified explanation of broaching is pressing or squeezing hot metal into shape by the use of great pressure. A lot of the M-1 receiver machining is done by broaching. Garand designed the entire production process, in some cases right down to where machinery should be located on the factory floor. Yet, after his design was officially adopted, some tried to squeeze him out. He was treated as an inventor who they had bought a patent from, and whose services would no longer be required. Thank you, run along, we'll handle it now. Some people even suggested letting him go to save his $3,500 per year salary. As a result, he was not consulted on some of the finer points when starting production. They ran into numerous problems with the early production guns that just didn't happen on the original 80 toolroom assembled rifles whose construction John Garand supervised. But again, I'm getting ahead of myself. It's easy now to miss what a huge deal the adoption of a semi-automatic service rifle was at the time. If you think about it, there were very few semi-auto rifles at all back then, let alone any that were one fit for military service. The only ones I can think of off the top of my head are some .22s, the Winchester M1905 and M1907s (firing catridges that were hardly more than stout pistol rounds), Standard Arms' oddball pump/semi-autos, and the Remington Model 8. Interesting side note: Some Remington M8s were bought by the gov't in 1921 and fitted with peep sights and military-type stocks for infantry evaluation of tactics using semi-automatic rifles at Ft Benning. People had been trying for decades to make a successful semi-auto rifle for military use. Through the 1930's, the military evaluated dozens of rifles that were either submitted to them or they had sought out, including designs from familar places like Winchester and Thomspon, and some not so familiar like Bang and Liu. If they could get one to work at all, it was way too big and heavy. If it was small and light enough, it wouldn't last. Most of these were recoil operated, because the powder used in the gov't .30-06 round burned differently from what we are used to now. It tended to have a peak in pressure over a short span, then drop off. If you tapped the gas off toward the muzzle like most did later, there would be insufficient (and very erratic) pressure. If you tapped it off close to the chamber, you got very high (and erratic) pressure. Garand started out with a primer-operated rifle around 1920. In this rifle, the primer was allowed to partially back out of the case when fired, which pushed a rod back that operated the locking/unlocking system and allowing the bolt to cycle. It sounds odd, but evidently it worked pretty well. Then around 1926-27 they changed the ammo on everyone by making two changes that affected semi-auto designers. First, they went to crimped in primers, which pretty much killed Garand's primer-actuated rifle. And, they switched to IMR-type powder, which burned at a more steady or gradual rate. While those early blends peaked earlier than later types, they didn't peak as rapidly or as high as the old powders and still had plenty of pressure at the muzzle. This made gas operation feasible and gave Garand another direction to go. Another factor in here was the possibility of a complete caliber change away from the .30 US Gov't Cartridge of 1906 (.30-06). J.D. Pedersen, who designed several guns for Remington and the military's "Pedersen Device" from WWI that was meant to convert the 1903 Springfield into a mini machinegun, had been working on a .276 caliber cartridge. It fired a 125 grain bullet at approximately 2,700 fps (originally 2,500 fps) and many in the military, and especially in the Ordnance Dept, were in favor of it's use in the next service rifle whether it was a semi-auto or not. It was considered to be such a sure thing that many designers chose to design their rifles around that .276 rather than the then-standard .30-06. Pedersen was working on a semiauto rifle for his .276 cartridge. Garand worked on a semi-auto rifle for the .276, but kept a .30-06 version simmering on the back burner. By the late 1920s, the Ordnance Dept had decided they wanted either the Garand or the Pedersen rifles. Both were in .276 caliber. The Garand was gas operated, held 10 rounds in an expendable clip, and weighed about 8.5 lbs. The pictures I've seen look pretty slick. It looks about like an 80% scale M1 Garand. You have to wonder about the possibilities had we adopted that rifle. With a smaller, lighter rifle that held 10 slightly less powerful rounds- would there have been a Light Rifle Program after WWII that led to the M14? The Pedersen was recoil operated, using a toggle locking bolt (think Luger), and weighed about the same as the Garand (although it ended up being heavier, or the Garand lighter, or both). Different types of magazine systems were tried, including a 20-rd detachable magazine and a Mannlicher-type 10-rd rotary, but it ended up with a 10-rd mag that used a clip sorta like that of the Garand... but not exactly. After a lengthy comparison and trial period, the .276 cal Garand (T3E2) was recommended for adoption in Jan, 1932. To give you an example of how advanced the Garand was in its day, consider two things: 1) These two rifles were far ahead of anything else at the time. 2) The rifle considered "second best", the Pedersen, doesn't sound very good. The Pedersen lost out to the Garand because, among other things: - It required lubricated cartridges. Yes, you read that right. It had pads in the receiver to hold lube so that as the cartridges fed through the magazine they got a swipe of lube. -The toggle breech action caused the bolt to swing upwards when it unlocked. Besides getting in the line of sight, it would whack the shooter's helmet or hat. "Sometimes makes holes in the hat" read one report. -There was some question of how easily some parts could be interchanged between Pedersen rifles or as spare parts. I would like to know more detail here, but have not found it. -When the rifle was empty and the bolt was open, the action was not only exposed but this actually caused the bolt to hang out of the action. And with the action open, the lubricating pads were exposed to attract anything and everything. -Other lesser items include a poor trigger pull (long multi-part linkage), unimpressive sights, oh- and a pesky tendency to go into full auto if small debris entered the action and/or "fires upon closing of the bolt without touching the trigger". And this was the closest competitor to the Garand. While it may appear that the Pedersen wasn't that great of a rifle, I think it also shows how hard it was to make a good one. Pedersen stood to gain a lot if his rifle had been accepted. Since he wasn't a government employee like Garand, he could have negotiated a pretty lucrative contract. The royalties alone could have been worth a bundle. I'm sure he gave it his best shot. On Jan 4, 1932, the Ordnance Board turned in it's report recommending adoption of the .276 caliber Garand rifle T3E2. It was considered a mere formality that it would go to the Ordnance Dept heads for approval, then on to the War Dept, and we would have a new rifle. It was a such a sure thing that people started preparing for it and began work on how to allocate funds (which in the early days of the Depression would have been quite a job). But the report never even made it from the Ordnance Board to the head of the Ordnance Dept. Some officer named General Douglas MacArthur, Army Chief of Staff, said "No". He sent a letter back to the Ordnance Board about the "commitment to the .276" caliber being "not...wise or desirable". It's usually said that he opposed it due to the amounts of .30 caliber already in Army stocks, and that is true, but he also had the feeling that adding another cartridge to the inventory would "introduce an element of chaos, confusion, and uncertainty, which, magnified under war conditions, would more than counteract the beneficial effect of any semiautomatic rifle". He then ordered those concerned to "Make no further obligations with reference to the development of the caliber .276 semiautomatic shoulder rifle." In the same letter, he also recommends intensifying development of the semiautomatic .30 caliber shoulder rifle and tells them how he wanted it done (get the .30 cal version tested, fix what is found, build approx 77 rifles for extended test). The .276 semi-auto was dead. The .30 semi-auto got kicked into high gear. Things started happening fast now. Garand had a jump on this, since he had kept working on his .30 caliber semi-auto all along, but at a slower pace than the .276 that seemed so promising. The .30 cal Garand rifle was being tested four months earlier at Aberdeen and cracked a bolt lug, which caused some redesign for strengthening. It was back at Aberdeen in the middle of re-tests at the very time MacArthur's letter was written. Those tests went well, but John Garand wanted to make a few small changes while he had the chance, and had it back at Aberdeen on March 21, where it must have worked fine because Springfield Armory put in for the money to build the 80 test rifles. So within a month of MacArthur ordering work to go full speed ahead on a .30 cal rifle, Garand's was ready for extended test. Springfield Armory got $80,000 to make 80 .30 cal Garand T1E2 rifles on a "semi-production basis". They wanted them "semi-production" rather than hand-built so they could test the new manufacturing methods. These are what collectors now refer to as the 80 toolroom rifles. Over the next two years, John Garand designed, built, set-up, and tested most of the machinery and tooling to build the rifle. The 80 rifles were done in May, 1934. All things considered, 26 months from the time the money was requested until 80 rifles were built was pretty good considering a factory was equipped in the process and one man designed most of it. Fifty of the test rifles were given to the Infantry, and 25 to the Cavalry for test. They didn't just go to a bunch of guys in a lab, but were issued to working soldiers, ranging from new recruits through WWI veterans. Supposedly, they weren't just used to beat the guns up to see if they could break them, but actually asked to offer suggestions. The rifles were dragged all over the field, spread across barracks floors, and shot on ranges. Three months into it, the evaluation/tests were stopped. There were complaints and concerns about the strength of the operating rod, so the rifles were called back in August 1934 to be fitted with a stronger op rod. They were returned in May 1935 when tests resumed. Tests ended in October. Both the Infantry and Cavalry approved the rifle and recommended it's adoption. The asst Secretary of War OK'd it's procurement on Nov 7, 1935. Standardization was approved by the Adjutant General on Jan 9, 1936. Most consider this to be the M1 Garand's "birthday". Garand had been at Springfield Armory working on the rifle for 16 years at this point. It took some time to get production set up, and make money available (Great Depression and peacetime), but it appears Springfield Armory more or less got regular production going in August 1937. Different books give different figures, but most say they hit a rate of 100 rifles per day on the day Germany invaded Poland- Sep 1, 1939. They reached 200 per day Jan 22, 1940. Of course, they were building thousands per month within five years. As I said earlier, John Garand was kind of pushed aside once the gov't got it's rifle. While he designed most of the tooling and machinery, they didn't bother to have him there to set much of it up. Once production got underway, this bit them. Probably the most infamous example was the "Seventh-Round Stoppage". This is a case where two events mixed to create a train wreck. There was a lot of apprehension over a semi-auto service rifle among the Army's "old guard". Along with fears of any semi-auto being a malfunction-prone contraption that would cause soldiers to waste ammunition when it did work, they were all convinced you "couldn't hit nothing with it"...usually before ever firing a shot from one. So someone at Springfield Armory decided to take a bunch of the fancy new rifles to the National Matches at Camp Perry and let the competitors shoot them and see for themselves. The military was loaded with competitive shooters in those days, and many of these had a lot of pull within the military establishment. Their opinion of the new rifle could make or break it. By letting these old salts see how well it worked, and well it shot, it would be the best public relations demonstration they could possibly put on. But... Right about the time they were to head off to Camp Perry, they discovered that sometimes the seventh round in the clip would fail to feed. This never happened in any of the pre-production test guns. Now they had a mystery on their hands, almost literally on the eve of the most important demonstration they might ever do. If they had a lot of seventh round failures, word would spread, and the M1 would be doomed. An M1 clip is reversible in a couple of ways. There is no "top" or "bottom", so it can be loaded into the rifle with either end up as long as the bullets point forward. The other thing that doesn't matter is how the cartridges are loaded into the clip- with the top round ending up on the left side of the stack or on the right side of the stack. However, it IS easier to load the clip into the rifle with the top round on the right, so that's how they usually get loaded. Some experimenting showed that when the top round was on the left, the seventh round failure never happened. So SA went to work. They unloaded and reloaded every clip they were sending to Camp Perry with the demonstration rifles so the top round was on the left. They modified all the followers so they wouldn't accept a clip loaded unless the top round was on the right. Then they held their breath. Everything went fine as far as that went. Hundreds of people fired the new rifles and nobody reported any seventh round (or other) malfunctions. They didn't escape that demonstration without harm, although they didn't know by how much at the time. People smelled a rat and would keep looking until they found one. I'll get deeper into that in Part 2. The 7th round problem was traced back to a deviation from John Garand's design...or lack of consulting him when setting up production. They found that a rib inside the receiver that kept the clip from flexing had been milled away thanks to how a machining operation had been set up. There were some other little things that were found and corrected along the way, but the seventh round stoppage malfunction was probably the major one, and potentially the most costly. I find it both interesting and frustrating that even though this only affected the first hundred or so rifles, I still run into people today who swear up and down you absolutely positively cannot load an M1 clip with the top round on the left or you will die immediately. This is the source of it, and it was corrected 5.5 million rifles ago. I'm sure people have had seventh round stoppages, and I'm equally sure that loading the clips differently "fixed" it, but its only because there was something else wrong with the rifle. Its now 1939 and WWII is about to begin in Europe so it's a good time to end this part. The M1 Garand rifle had been in development for around 19 years. It didn't happen overnight. And it's not over yet. Part 2 will cover some early problems, changes, and criticisms of the new rifle. Some of these criticisms are appropriate, and some were completely without basis. I find it interesting that the rifle that many put on a pedestal today was attacked and ridiculed by so many at the time. Many people don't know about that, but it's proof that some things never change. It probably happened when the Brown Bess was replaced, and it will happen when the M16/M4 is replaced.

I just remembered hearing some say they helped accuracy on Minis by loosening the screws clamping the gas block to the barrel and allowing the operating rod to center up on it to eliminate any side pressure or twisting, then re-tightening the screws. I have zero personal experience with this and haven't even seen it done, but from goofing around with Garands, I can see that it could make a difference. I have seen the operating rod piston end bearing hard against the gas block in one direction or another, which makes me think the gas block is installed the same way on every rifle using an alignment fixture, then the op rod is installed without checking for the actual relationship between the two components on that individual rifle. It sure couldn't hurt anything to tune this a little.

Because I have the chance, I will slip in the wise guy answer to the oft-asked "How do you accurize a Mini-14?". That answer is: "Trade it for an AR-15". Sorry. Had to. I've had two Mini-14s, both standard .223 caliber non-Ranch models. One was fairly accurate though nothing great, and the other was terrible. Both of mine came to me used, but one guy who is a Mini fan tells me that if you can buy one brand new so you know some joker hasn't taken it out and shot a bucket of ammo through it in an hour, they can shoot pretty well. I don't know about that. Maybe. In my experience, Ruger rifles- regardless of model- tend to shoot really well...or not. When I was both shooting rifles and trading guns more, I would buy a Ruger 77 that shot great, then try another that would not shoot very well at all even though it was nearly identical. From paying attention at the gun shop, that was typical. Just counting the ones I owned or were owned by people I knew and trusted, it ran about 2/3 success/failure rate- meaning that two would shoot great then the third wouldn't do anything. I have no explanation for that. I know all companies make a lemon now and then, but there seems to be an average you can count on. Ruger tends to be all or nothing. Ruger made three of the better shooting rifles I've ever owned. They've also made some of the more frustrating. As far as the Accuracy Systems Mini-14s go, I've thought about them and decided that I could buy any number of AR-15s for the same money or less that would shoot just as well. That's as far as I thought about it. If you really want a .223 semiauto that is different, but shoots well, have you thought about an AR-180? That's pretty offbeat, and they can shoot pretty well.

Another fwiw item: The S&W 52 had the standard barrel to slide locking system as the 9mm Model 39 it was based on (plus a barrel bushing, unlike the 39), but I think the Colt used some grooves cut in the chamber to slow the action opening. So with the case "gripping" the chamber walls, I guess it's not a true blowback as I described it.

Thanks. I tried to educate myself some about 38 Spl autos after getting the S&W 52s I had, but that was a while ago. Luckily I was in a club with an active bullseye program then (as active as bullseye is anymore) and had some old timers to ask.

They were for bullseye competition and shot wadcutter rounds only. In fact, I am pretty sure the Colts were blowback with a fixed barrel, so they could only handle that pressure level in addition to bullet. So it's even more specialized than a full blown .45 match gun. They were from before my time, but in addition to being pretty specialized guns with few people needing one, I have another educated guess as to why these faded away. Even among those who could use one, not that many bought them. If one was a super serious bullseye shooter, they would rather have gunsmiths like Clark and Giles make one up from modifying an existing gun as they always had. When the S&W 52 came along, it took a big chunk of what small market there was. It's like selling a factory-made NHRA Funny Car. Few could use one, and those who did would make it from the ground up or close to it. Even with a .38 Special wadcutter-only gun (that I think only held five rounds) being a gun for a pretty limited market, there was another thing. Even among bullseye shooters, not everyone used a .38 Spl when they started using autos (or now). If you shot the entire match, you had to shoot .22, Centerfire, and .45. The Centerfire course could be "any centerfire cartridge .32 and larger", though the .38 Spl was almost the standard. A lot of people just shot their .45 in Centerfire. I've been in two clubs that had an active bullseye program (active as bulllseye goes) and while it seemed like most of them wanted a .38 for the Centerfire portion, few had them. I don't know how true this is and I do have doubts on some of it, but one old-time bullseye shooter told me that back when the .38 Spl autos were made, they achieved what popularity they did because of the switch from revolvers to autos in bullseye. They shot Colt Woodsmans or High Standards in .22, and there were some matches that called for the 1911 ,45, so they had been shooting them for quite a while but most only shot the .45 then, and only because they had to. Otherwise, it was a revolver game. He said when the big shift to autos came, they had done little work loading the 45 ACP for match use. The .38 Spl autos let them work with a cartridge they had been using for over 50 years and had refined about as far as they thought they could. It was enough to switch to an auto without having to learn a new cartridge too. With a .22 and a .38 auto, that only left one third of the match as relatively new ground. Once they got the .45 ACP match ammo developed to where they had good light loads, the 38 autos faded. I'm not sure I buy all of that because they had been loading the 45 Auto Rim for revolvers for decades and some of what they learned there had to have transferred over to loading the 45 ACP for match use. The magazine might be the most interesting part of these. It probably took the most work to get right. I've never had a Colt .38 wad gun, but I had two S&W 52s (though I don't know why) and the magazines might be best described as having two sets of feed lips. The .38 AMU cartridge tried to help that, as it was basically a .38 Spl case with the rim machined off, making it similar to a regular rimless auto case. I think they finally decided it was easier to get a .38 Spl magazine made right to start with than to re-machine a bunch of empty cases. Oh yeah... I am pretty sure the Colts were all called the Mark III National Match. I checked my Blue Book and it says they were made from 1961-1974, but I would bet they stopped making them earlier and only left them in the catalog until 1974 because they still had some to sell. Although they made some prototypes and experimentals before, I think the regular production S&W 52 came out in 1961 also but don't know if they were actuallly available until later.

I guess you need to find out what distributor he uses and see if the problem is there or with Rossi. Maybe Rossi is trying to get caught up so they can make me a Ranch Hand (the gun that makes the least sense of any in the world, but I want anyway).

Excellent point. I like to think that training teaches us how to practice. Unfortunately, it seems some take a class and feel they have done all they need to do. That is better than those who buy a gun and figure they have done all they need to do, but not good enough in my opinion. As the saying goes, there is "trained" and there is "has been exposed to training". If someone takes a class and thinks they have done enough, they missed the point. I posted that rant because I don't want anyone repeating my mistakes. I wanted to get some training practically from the time I knew there was such a thing, but put it off. It seemed hard to do at the time, but it only got harder as time went on. As I laid out in my case above, obstacles to training only get stronger and more numerous as time goes on. The need never, ever, decreases.

Short version: If you have thought about taking any firearms training, but have never gone...GO! If you haven't thought about training...You probably should! Stop putting it off, or saying you will go sometime, or telling yourself you are shooting OK without it. You WILL gain from it unless your instructor is an absolute moron. Long version: I wanted to go a long time ago. When cleaning out my Mom's house a couple of years ago, I found a Gunsite brochure that I sent for in 1981. I didn't go then. I put if off. And I kept putting it off. Like most people who consider training, I either didn't have the money or couldn't get the time off, or both at once. So I kept putting it off. Sound familiar? That describes a lot of people. Time went by, I got a back injury that both made me look like an obvious target from my hunchback walk. It also made it hard or impossible for me to defend myself or even run away. It also limited how far I could travel, eliminating some choices in training sites. I should have gone earlier. Then I got married and had kids. Now I had more to protect than just my own sorry self. Those same responsibilities also made it harder to get free time to go. I should have gone earlier. That illustrates the sad fact many encounter: The more some people need training, the harder it is for them to get it. My point is to get it when you can. I could have done it before if I had known more about where to go...or bothered to find out. It's a lot easier to find training now than back then, but I could have gone if I tried hard enough. There are more schools than ever out there. Besides the big name facilities, there are several "traveling schools" out there also. They come to all areas of the country. As far as expense goes, you can spend a lot if you want, but many of the traveling schools have three-day classes than run around $450. There are some top-notch instructors doing one-day classes for $125. How much was the last gun you bought? Or that last ammo order? You can get a great class for the cost of many holsters. Can you afford $450 and three days time (two days of which are probably on the weekend anyway)? I hate to use the cliche, but it really could change your life. Many lives have been extended by them. Will it help? That's partially up to you. If you go in there thinking you know everything already, you probably won't gain a thing. Don't bother. If you go in there ready to learn, you should learn a lot, and probably more than you expected. I used to think I would you have to go across the country to get good training. I was wrong. When I found out about some training nearby, I looked into it and all the classes were full except one- Intro to Defensive Pistol. I signed up, and a friend of mine asked why I was bothering with an "intro" class. That got my ego cranked up, and I started thinking about that. By the time the class came around, I wondered if I had made a mistake. The following is not bragging (not much to brag about), but to explain how wrong I was: I had shot HighPower (rifle) matches for years and had won some local matches; I had shot a few different competitions and done from fair to pretty good depending on which type- from "C" class in IPSC to winning some bowling pin shoots. Nothing spectacular, but nothing too terribly sad either. After talking to my friend, I began to wonder what I would gain from an "Intro" class. That was stupid of me. Within 15 minutes on the range, and maybe five shots fired, I had learned a bunch. The instructor had spotted and corrected things I had been doing wrong for years and may NEVER have caught on my own. Had I spent the money that class cost on ammo, I would have just continued doing the same things for that many more shots. I should have gone earlier. I've taken several more classes since then, and have gained a lot from each one. I've never EVER heard anyone walk away from a class complaining that they didn't learn anything or failed to get their money's worth. Everybody wants more. Do yourself a favor and go.

Well I like it. But I'm not exactly unbiased Seriously, I do like the look. Clean, crisp, straight-to-the-point black and white style, without sensationalized graphics that make so many places look like a video game.

Well that took about five seconds, although it isn't what I was thinking of: http://forum.m1911.org/showthread.php?t=28256 It says "C" is Checkmate, which I thought about, but also thought was too obvious. It also says the secondary "S" is stainless.

I know I've seen a chart that breaks down the codes, but I can't remember where. I'm pretty sure it was online. I'll look around. Please don't hold me to this, but I think the "C" is a Metalform code. I want to say the "S" means stainless steel, but am even less sure of that.

I must be getting old. It's taken me a moment or two to get a joke, but never a couple of days.