- Hey guys. My name's Zack. I'm the media director here at TekMat, and today in our workshop, I'm going to show you how to clean one of the most heavily used
rifles during World War II; the M1 Garand. So let's get to it. (glitching) (guitar plays while gun fires) Most M1 Garand owners
usually don't disassemble their firearm for every clean. Usually they do a deeper
clean at the end of the year, after they've shot it various times. We're actually going to show
you that deeper clean today so that you can see how to
disassemble, clean, lubricate, and put back together your M1 Garand. So, the items we're going to
be using in this video are; first, our nylon brush
to apply the cleaner, gun grease, our cleaning rod, a brush for the gun grease, a jag, a ratchet chamber brush, a bore brush, a muzzle guide, thin patches, and thick, a TekTowel, cleaner, lubricant, and of course our TekMat
that protects your surfaces and has a diagram of all
the parts of the M1 Garand and some awesome info. So first things first, safety first. We're gonna want to go ahead and make sure that there's no ammo in the vicinity of where we're cleaning, and also in the rifle. And we're go ahead and visually and physically inspect to
make sure there's no ammo. And there's nothing, so we're
good to start disassembling. So in order to disassemble the firearm, we're gonna go ahead
and flip it upside-down and lift up on the trigger guard and take that trigger assembly out. Now to separate the stock from the barrel and receiver group, we're going to go ahead
and lightly tap the stock so that the barrel
receiver group comes out. We're going to go ahead and lift up on the follower and slide assembly, and pull back on that follower
rod from the follower arm. And you can see there's
these little latches here that attach to the follower arm. We're going to pull that out. We're going to just set that right here. And now with the jag,
or some kind of punch, we're going to go ahead
and push right here on the follower rod pin. And if you see here,
it kind of sticks out. You're just gonna push there and it's pretty easy to take out. All right, now that we've
taken out the follower arm pin, we can go ahead and take
out the trigger guard, and the follower arm
will come out with it. And now we can take out
the operating rod catch. And lastly, the follower
and slide assembly comes right out if you lift it. Now, to get out the operating rod itself, if you see here, there's a
little part where it lifts up, and you're gonna just
push on it right there. And that's gonna come up and out. And then now, lastly, you
can take out the bolt, and usually you just kind
of have to wiggle it out and kind of rotate it. Perfect, our M1 Garand
is fully disassembled and ready to be cleaned. So, the first part we're going to go ahead and clean is the chamber. So what we're going to go ahead
and do is use this ratchet chamber brush tool. And we really like these droppers because you can control
how much you're using. You're not gonna waste
any amount of cleaner. But, we're gonna put a little
bit of cleaner on there and then stick that inside. Then screw our cleaning
rod onto the chamber. Do this a couple times. Just rotate that, allowing the chamber to get a nice coat of cleaner in there. And that should be good. And pull that out. Now that we've done the chamber, we're gonna go ahead and clean the bore. And the way we're gonna do
that is with this bore brush. We're gonna put some cleaner on there with this tool, this muzzle guard here. Put it on the muzzle. And what you're gonna do, is
you're gonna push this through. And I think that's good enough. Now that we've brushed
the inside of the bore with a bore brush and cleaner, we're gonna go ahead and attach our jag and put some clean patches through. And here, as you can see we
like the smaller patches. They tend to not fight as much when you're pushing it through the bore. And as you can see, that rifle is pretty dang dirty. And you're gonna want to
do this several times until it comes out clean, your
patch comes out clean. So if you look at that,
it's still pretty dirty. Okay, and for the sake of the video, we're gonna go ahead and stop there, but if you were to do this at home, you're gonna want to make
sure that comes out clean. So now, we're gonna start
cleaning those smaller parts. Put some cleaner on our nylon brush. And we're gonna start here
with the operating rod catch (brushing) to get all areas, our follower arm pin, and now we got our follower arm. And we already have enough cleaner so we don't have to reapply it. Basically just getting all parts. And here's our bullet guide. Now, we're gonna clean
inside the receiver. (brushing) And inside where the bolt rests. Now, we're gonna clean the bolt itself and just clean all parts, but also not putting
any near the firing pin. But just inspecting it for
any fouling or carbon or dust. (brushing) Okay we'll go ahead and set that aside. We're just gonna wipe some cleaner on the op-rod. It's not too dirty. Okay, so op-rod's done. Now, we're gonna clean
the trigger assembly. (brushing) Making sure to get all
parts, there's a lot of them. All right, now that we've
applied cleaner and let it, let it soak in all the smaller parts, we're gonna go start
wiping off the cleaner. And here's the bolt. We're just making sure
to get all of that off. All right, we're gonna set that aside, and just clean off all the small parts. And you're gonna want to just do this on all the other parts. Just wiping them off with the patch. And I actually like to
use the TekTowel to remove the cleaner from the part. It's a lot easier. It kind of grabs it all. Okay. Perfect. Now, when I'm cleaning inside the receiver I like to use patches, just because it's kind of a tighter fit. Perfect. And wipe down the trigger assembly, making sure to cover all parts. Now, it's time to lubricate
our firearm using gun grease, and we're also going to
use gun oil on one part. We're gonna go ahead and put
some of it on this brush. And just a nice light coat. First off, in the bolt caming area. And you can kind of see
where the bolt slides. Not a lot, just enough
where it's a nice thin coat. Another place we're gonna want to put it is a little bit on this side. Now, where the bolt rests
we want to put a thin coat just where it's sliding. Not a lot, like I said, because we don't want it
going into the firing pin. Just a nice thin coat where
we see metal touching metal. All right, that looks good. Now, where the operating rod slides, on the receiver, we're just
gonna put a little bit more. And put an nice thin coat. And a little bit right here on the barrel, where the
operating rod slides, you can see a little bit of wear. Perfect. And now, for the trigger assembly, the only place you want to put any oil is right here where the
trigger guard slides, and that's it. And just cycle that a couple of times. And then we're gonna
get this cleaning patch, and we're gonna wipe that down, because we do not want oil
in our trigger assembly. Because these parts run
great when they're dry, and we don't want any malfunctions. And your M1 Garand, at this
point, is perfectly lubricated and ready to be put back together. We're going to get the bolt, make sure the firing pin
is facing the muzzle end. And you're gonna, kind of, swivel it. All right, so now that
you've got the bolt in, we're gonna go ahead and
slide the operating rod in right next to the barrel, and make sure it goes inside there. There's a little lip here. Attach it to the bolt. So now that we've go the operating rod in, we're going to cycle that. And we're going to first put
in the operating rod catch. If you see here, there's a little piece of metal sticking out and with the arm it will attach perfectly. And then after that, you're gonna go ahead and get the bullet guide. And you can tell where
to put the bullet guide because there's this
little arm sticking out, this little hook that's
gonna go right under there. And the bullet guide's
gonna sit perfectly flush with the receiver. All right, so now you can put
the follower rod assembly in. The larger end's gonna
go towards the muzzle and the flat side is gonna be
facing up while you put it in. And before you drop it all the way down, you're gonna go ahead
and get the follower arm, the smaller end with
those two little notches are gonna go into the
follower and slide assembly, and then you can drop that down. To lock all of that in, you're
gonna get the follower arm pin and put it in on
the operating rod side. Now that you've got the
follower arm pin in, you can get the follower rod and spring in here. And it just latches right on there. This is all set up for us to go ahead and put the stock back on. The last thing we've got to
put on is the trigger assembly. And what you're gonna do is make sure that the trigger guard is up. And it's just gonna plop right in. And then to lock it, push
the trigger guard in. Move the safety back and
forth to make sure it works. All right, now cycle the
bullet a couple times. All right, and that is how
you clean the M1 Garand. Thanks for watching. If you have any comments or questions, please leave them below. We love to hear from you. Also, if you want to get
your own M1 Garand TekMat or a TekMat with your firearm, visit our website at tekmat.com. Thanks. (glitching) (guitar plays while gun fires)
