Thursday, February 02, 2012

Just a nice little Garand post

This one about tractor guns.
No, not guns made to shoot tractors, or shoot from tractors...guns made by a tractor company!I love M-1 Garands. I really do. And these two, just a couple of the Garands that I've acquired from the Civilian Marksmanship Program (CMP) over the years, are among my favorites. As rifles go, Garands were some of the finest combat arms ever fielded by the US military. Winchester repeating Arms Corp. and the government-run Springfield Armory made a bit over four million of them for World War Two, but when the Korean War broke out five years later, we needed more, so the fine folks at the International Harvester Company made another 337,623 of them at their Evansville, Indiana plant between 1951 and early 1956. And out of that number, after decades of military service and storage, these two eventually became mine.IHC did not make the barrels for their rifles, however. That job was subcontracted out to the Line Material Company in Birmingham, Alabama. Their barrels had a reputation for being the most accurate of the M-1 barrels, and while many of the IHC rifles out there today now sport replacement barrels made by one of the other manufacturers, both of these rifles still have their original Line Material (LMR) barrels.(Click on the pictures for more detail.)This one shows the LMR stamp and the December, 1954 date of manufacture. Both of these rifles had relatively little wear on the barrels when I got them and this one in particular had almost no detectable muzzle wear or throat erosion.

Both of these rifles are fine shooters, fully capable of holding the nine-ring of the standard SR target at 200 meters even with forty-year-old military surplus ammunition and I expect to be taking one or both out to my new range before too much longer. I have more than a few rifles in the safe but none of them (except the Garands) shoot like a Garand.

12 comments:

  1. Way too cool!

    IHC should've also made companion Scout rifles.

    My Dad retired from the other International - the one that made some of the M1 Carbines (long before he worked for the company). Every now and then he mentions looking for one of them at a gun show.

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  2. Yep they DO shoot well, I'll have to bring my two, and we can have a shoot off :-)

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  3. Nice! As a new member of the Garand club, I extend my envies.

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  4. So now I confess. I don't own one of these (yet). I have told everyone I am a Handgun guy.

    So, after I fill out the CMP paperwork that makes a IRS 1040 Long form look easy what do you suggest?

    Oh, if I get one I left a clip in your Jeep!

    With luck my interest free loan to the IRS will be re-payed shortly!

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  5. How cool!! Thanks for sharing! I have never seen one of those:)

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  6. @ Keads: the forms are easy. This coulnd't get simpler. And yeah, that clip is around here somewhere, as are several more should you acquire a Garand of your own. So hurry up and get one!

    PS--get a service grade...you'll be glad that you did.

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  7. Thanks Murphy! Service grade, Check!

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  8. "...more than a few rifles in the safe ..." -- Do you want to add one more?

    SSK industries .950 JDJ: "…2400 grain bullet, propelled by 240 grains of powder, the JDJ is comparable to a World War I-era tank round or a 20mm cannon in terms of kinetic energy…."

    http://www.theblaze.com/stories/want-to-see-the-worlds-biggest-caliber-rifle-in-action/

    ###

    I enjoy the blog. Topics, politics, interests, GSDs: right on the mark.

    If you and Murphy ever find yourselves in Pensacola, (teaser: National Naval Aviation Museum), my wife and I would be honored to buy you a beer, (additional teaser: Pensacola Bay Brewery; they allow dogs in the taproom).

    -- Steve

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  9. Everyone need to shoot a Garand at least once. If they had a magazine it would be my MBR, but I guess that's what a M1A is about.

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  10. Steve--Murphy and I both thank you for the invite. And NAS Pensacola and it's museum have been on my "must visit" list for years, so it could happen.

    Duke--you got that right. And shame on me, but I've been neglecting MY M1A horribly. Need to put it on the "take to range" list.

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  11. Keads- Join GCA http://www.thegca.org/

    And that takes care of the organizational membership required to get a gun and ammo through CMP.

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  12. NFO- Thanks! I will join them. I DO meet the requirement however. Guess how? Wait for it..... Wait for it.

    I'm a member of the Glock Shooting Sports Foundation! Bet you or Murph did not see that one coming! I don't even own one (except for the Tupperware training one).

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