INSIDE THE M1 GARAND

[Music] [Music] [Music] you f H not UHF like on TV you F H stands for Union fork and hoe for a couple years in World War two 42 and 43 they made bayonets 10-inch bayonets for the m1 grand we're revisiting this today we've done a little bit of clean-up on the stock we've done some work to make this front handguard match the rest as best we could the rest of this finish and I've spent a lot of time looking at parts and learning what we can about parts identification and things of that nature a lot of immersion I've had a lot of hard time sleeping lately and my attentions been going you guessed it to learning everything I can about the vm1 gland so today we're going to talk about this rifle in terms of parts breaking it down gonna give you a real brief tutorial on how this old leather sling is supposed to go on and why it goes on that way we're gonna talk briefly about amo also we're gonna talk about what's out there in terms of shooting type stuff so nice overview today warning this is gonna be a lot of a lot of gun nerdery boring stuff we're not shooting this guy today I'll reference you to my prior video and probably some future video shooting this bad boy but we're going to talk about this 1955 Springfield Armory and this is the m1 grand this is Dr Drake 63 stay tuned okay so we picked this up about a week ago and as you saw in pictures in the introduction originally this handguard was a different color stain than the rest of the rest of the rifle the biggest reason was it was obviously a replacement handguard I also believe it's a different kind of wood I don't believe this is a walnut like the stock is it might even be birch not a hundred percent sure but I had to do a lot of experimenting and back and forth to get this color right I did not want to have to completely take down the the finish on this stock and restain it just to have this match so I was focusing on two things one is is we did clean up a lot of the grime a lot of the a lot of the where you had the old either boiled linseed oil raw linseed oil whatever they were using had just got dirty looking over the years and got a lot of that off with some acetone and as far as this I tried some different Reds I try some different dark walnuts nothing would match this and then I said what the heck I'm gonna try some dye that I use for leather working projects and I'll be darned if it doesn't come out just to be about perfect so after letting that dry then we started putting boiled linseed oil on this on this stock and I think it turned out pretty good I mean I know it's a little bit different I always will but I want to talk about a few things that that I've learned through my research that we're kind of like did necessarily add up based on how we look at firearms in today's world on this rifle the first is I want to I want you to pay attention to this handguard here you notice how it slides back and forth a little bit it's loose well we're kind of conditioned to believe that when when we have a part on a gun something like that that it means it's not right and that was my first thought did quite a bit of look and it turns out that that's actually on purpose you ought to be able to fit a couple business cards in this gap when you've got to push forward and that's exactly how it fits the reason it's loose is because the gas tube is underneath here and the way that this fits into the rest of the rest of the of the stock and so forth if you don't have a gap there when this heats up it's gonna affect your accuracy accuracy possibly greatly so this was on purpose which I would have never known that interesting fact about thick of the garand along those same lines we're gonna look at this bayonet right here we started out as told you it's from Union Fork and Howe and it's got this flying bomb logo underneath and there's no date there's nothing Union for can and hole was not dated they made this for two years and that's about it okay anyway so the first time I put this bayonet on clicked into place real nice but this thing's kind of loose and I'm thinking man that is the lug and issue or what actually this is pretty commonplace and they were loose tolerances for a number of reasons one as this barrel starts heating up you don't want something on it that's so tight that you're gonna affect your accuracy you know it Marines to test with these rifles back in the 40s they found that even if you just put a penny on the end of the barrel it can affect the accuracy by half a foot at a couple hundred yards especially when it heats up so these guys were no dummies they knew what they were doing secondly this has to be able to go on whether there's grit whether there's grime or anything it's not important that this thing is a stealth kind of scenario if you're fixing bayonets in a war kind of situation the enemy knows where he are and you're not sneaking up on it it's a close-quarters combat kind of scenario and but I found that kind of interesting now there are some things you can do if you look real close you'll see a channel here and that's where this snaps in and it's spring-loaded and here you have a butt which releases it you can if you're really uptight about it fit and tight there are some things you can do you could put a little piece of paper in there or something just to take away some of this wiggle room and and then get it right but it's not bad or defective because it does that it's just the way it is so there you have it now these are a little bit more expensive bayonets to get of this design because you had a lot of the older ones that were longer they were like 16 inches I believe the way you can tell is on the older ones this channel which is called the Blood Channel go figure it runs all the way to the end because it was on a 16 inch instead of a 10 inch blade so you can tell they just cut them down and and this channel would run the whole length this was a purpose-built 10 inch 10 inch blade again the company is Union fork and Howe they only did it for a couple of years and this is considered a more valuable bayonet to get than say there's ones out there called Greek contract which basically you know they were made by the Greeks something like that obviously makes sense but this is a situation I would not want to run into this by any any means I would not but I find that to be very interesting so as far as this this rifle itself I was corrected by somebody when I did my intro video to this when you pull back this operating rod which today's world we'd call the charging handle tendency is to do this kind of grip and they were taught no don't do that you want to grab it underneath and open it just like that okay the thought being that if you have the overhand grip you could somehow get your thumb caught in there I don't know if that's true or not show a couple other things this right here is your safety okay so that's engaged the thought right there is you just going with your finger and now you're ready to pull the trigger obviously I just showed you this was not chambered but you can see right here whereas before it was kind of a solid kind of reddish hue a little bit more like you see on the worn spots where your hands go this does have a very attractive grain that we're able to get this down to without having to restain and as you can see up front it's just not the same kind of wood so this is probably as close as we're gonna get and I'm happy with the result now I've gone ahead and I've taken off the sling and we're going to show you how to put that on later and again I do want to warn you now we are getting to the a little bit more technical a little bit more boring part of the program for some of you I'll see comments on my videos where people will say well it took till 5:22 to get to the point or something like that I'm definitely not meant for the guy with a short attention span if you're a gun nerd like me and you want to hear as much detail as you possibly can keep watching if if you're somebody that needs lots of rock and roll music and quick cuts between takes and stuff like that it's probably a good time to turn off anyway so here I've got my m1 grand I want to make sure once again that we are empty which there's not a bullet in the chamber and they like that okay I can go ahead and put it on safe anyway just to make some of you guys happy we're gonna take this thing apart I want to show you how easy it is okay they had to make this something that you can field strip okay so I'm gonna do right here is on this trigger I'm gonna pull back and lift up and look at that the trigger group has come out I want to show you one of the things is I pull these parts off I'm gonna show you what what I'm looking at when I talk about the stamps okay so unlike a lot of say European type firearms where you have matching numbers throughout these were mass-produced rifles so you know they used a lot of the principles of assembly line and interchangeable parts so you're not gonna have your trigger guard match the serial number that's on your receiver and you're not gonna have that match with you know all that kind of stuff but what what I've done has gone back and looked and seen that this particular stamping for the trigger guard number one you see the SA on there it is from Springfield Armory and it's the stamping matches up according to data of the the proper year that's associated with a 1955 rifle so I'm gonna set that I want you to notice how easy it is just to pull this stock up and there you go whole stock has come off I mean that's an easier takedown than just about any firearm I've ever experienced I'm sure somebody's gonna say hey but what about this or that so now we're down to our basic components you have the action you have your operating rod we're gonna show you how that comes out and then you know I call this the charging handle it's just called the operating rod handle here's your bolt let's show you how easy this is okay the first thing we're gonna do is right here this spring attaches right here to this piece right here which is basically your elevator okay I call it your elevator it's it's you you put your ammo in the magazine and this is this is what lifts it up and down so I'm gonna pull that out and that spring comes right out so there you go not using any tools or anything like that okay so now that I've taken that spring out this piece which is basically your internal magazine it's what your your clip rides on this can be taken out but what I need to do is first is all these parts that you see right here all right on this pin right here and so it was setup that you could actually just take the point of a bullet and get it started I can pull this pin right out here and a lot of the stuff hinges on that pin so this is the only quote-unquote tool I've used is around a thirty at six now as you can see these parts are all loose this part comes out this part which is again your ammo rests on top of that and the spring actuate sit up inside your magazine okay this piece comes out and then this piece which is actually just pulls out just like that okay and that's really what we're talking about so far now what I have is is my bolt which as you can see travels along this line and it cams right off of a little channel in here that I'll show you in a minute that'd be good to show you just basically how this works okay so you see your bullet right there right now the luck the lugs are locked into place right up front okay and it cams right in here inside the operating channel so you'll see when I pull it back first thing you do is you see it rotate see it's not a lot but it's enough to lock it into place so it rotates and travels back all the way to the back and as you can even see there's a little cutout here for the firing pin so it's not gonna come into contact with anything so I'm just thinking that's a pretty slick way of doing business very simple and locks into the chamber ready to go and then your hammers gonna follow hit the back of that firing path seems simple by today's standard but very innovative when John garand developed this also in terms of getting this out and move it and then it wants to come out just like right there there's just a little channel where that comes out when there you go you can see this is relatively clean when I got this it was relatively clean but I've recently just cleaned it but here you're gonna see another set of serial numbers stamped right on here and again I've checked these out and these correspond to a rod that's gonna be period-correct for a 55 and it is Springfield Armory I told you I'd show you where that cam channel is and that's where the one of the lugs of the bolt travels when it rotates or part of the bolt okay so once we've done all that the only thing left to do is take out the bolt and that pretty simple there's not a lot holding it in place now so here she is and yet another set of stamps this little ding right here is actually a proof mark and then you see a number of things that point out including this a 15 and these numbers indicate that this also would have been 1955 would have been a appropriate manufacturer year so when they rearch on all these things I don't think they'd go to the trouble to do all that chances are this is a red but maybe not but the barrel being stamped correctly kind of leads me to believe that and we're gonna look at that next so underneath this proof mark you see si and then F six five three five four four eight that corresponds with and that's kind of hard to read right there is it a three is it an eight I believe that's March of 1955 the a to 200 a is another marking which I believe talks about a batch number metallurgy and then here you see right here to the far right you see that Eagle with the three stars over it that's the the Defense Department's acceptance and then you see a couple more proof stamps now why are there two of them well a lot of times they'll have one proof stamp when they complete the barrel and another one when they test-fire it over here the P just means that it's been proof the S is very likely an initial of the guy that that inspected it or it could maybe be the other way around but this was not a bring back this did not go to the Philippines or India or anywhere else and as you can see they're barrels just in really good shape you see going up along this handguard and there's that band that lug we talked about and then at the very end here you're gonna see this piece right here which unscrews and that's that's a plug this is your gas tube I'm not going to get into that for purposes of today I wanted to show you a quick down and dirty field disassembly and so as far as cleaning you know you're gonna want to anywhere where metals traveling you're gonna want to do some cleaning here on the receiver again some more markings or stampings and again I verified this is correct this is period-correct and we already saw the receiver so this was this was the long I mean six million was the last this is five eighty three three seven four one so it's kind of getting up there towards the end of production so there's there's no historical connection with this the design is historical but as I as I mentioned in in prior video I picked out the best barrel in the bunch not the one that had the most history and I think I did well with that regard she'd kind of see here's your parts not too complicated not too complicated at all and the only thing I needed tool wise to take this down was something you'd probably have with you in the field anyway so believe me they were thinking about that when they did lose tolerances on hand guards loose tolerances on bayonets and and the whole takedown process this is this is pretty easy now the question might be asked how do you put this together and I would say without trying to be too much of a smartass you put it together the opposite of how you take it down the things to look for are definitely remember you've got three things that are running around this takedown pin right here and you need to make sure that they're lined up and the one thing that might take you a little bit of time and I don't know how well you can see this you see this thing wiggling right here okay that is your your clip release mechanism I'm depressing a button on the side and basically after you get one out of the chamber if you press this it'll eject your clip if you want to unload your rifle but anyway this piece right here that that Forks around you'll notice it runs down inside you need to have this end of this guy needs to be underneath this part that I showed you in order to get everything lined up if it's not you'll sit there all day wondering why your hole doesn't line up so there's some genius to that parts won't fit together and let you put this thing back together if they're not so it's really not complicated guys you do it a couple times it's a very intuitive very intuitive okay so to put the stock back on we're simply putting that back into place you see this trigger group which I think is just so cool how this is self-contained put this down with the trigger up until your flat here and then there you go I've got a solid rifle let's see yep everything works locks up nice and tight like we need it to that's all there is to it now if you recall earlier I was talking and I was trying to show you during reassembly that one piece that needed to be on the right side of the magazine release and there it is that's what it looks like when it's assembled we were looking at it upside down so that's the piece right there and how you activate that it's through this button right here it's a little spring-loaded affair and in order to do that you are holding back on the bolt you've got this guy kind of pushed down it's not a super easy operation but it's something that you can do let's see if we can show you okay so I want to make sure my Safety's on for this I've got my my charging handle pulled back and I've got right here is what's called M block there's eight rounds in here as you drop this down in here like so and it's not gonna slam shut as long as you've got pressure on it but as soon as you do there you go okay so sometimes you have to help it sometimes it's gonna go on its own that's just the way it is that's not a design flaw but let's say for example that what we wanted to do was eject the magazine right now without firing others we want to unload this rifle okay well like I said we've got it unsafe so the first thing we're gonna do you saw the round come flying out there then we're gonna rather than let the next round load we're gonna put our hand here to catch it and I'm gonna depress this button and out comes the magazine and that's all she wrote so that's how that works okay pretty easy huh as you can see there's there's nothing in there to talk about ammo just a little bit and then we're gonna talk about using these these leather slings which actually go back to the 1903 Springfield and and wrap this up but one of the things when when when I was demonstrating how to load this and how to eject this I went against what I told you about the proper grip to put on this this handle right here when when you're doing all that stuff well a lot of it just had to do with the fact that I'm making a video and I had to get in some weird positions to do what I don't have anybody helping me make these videos so you know my apologies to the purists out there but I was hoping to give you guys the basic idea anyway you can find again see here how we've got some different green patterns between this wood and this wood right here and as we talked about earlier the match is going to be kind of tough perfect I think I got a pretty close I've seen some really bad examples out there including the way this one was when I got it but getting back to ammo here these end blocks are real interesting designs I think they're cool a lot of people like to talk about well you know you don't fire the last round because you don't want to give away your position and I guess the one thing I'd have to say guys is if your fire in 30 odd 6 it's your enemy he probably knows where you are generally but I think that's a bit of a wives tale but anyway kind of interesting here on this particular ammo don't know where it came from but it's ball ammo it's 150 green it's kind of interesting they even show you on the top of the can they pay in this little pattern just so everybody knows that this is this is for an m1 grand and this comes 280 cartridges you see over here I just picked this up this is new production and this comes it comes in these boxes of 20 so got quite a few that quite a few that we can fire here between between these two boxes I I think I've got somewhere around 680 rounds or so to fire and we're looking price-wise these guys are running oh you're gonna you're gonna be spending somewhere around 60 cents apiece typically now there's gonna be guys that can tell you where you get them cheaper I get it I've given some thought to taking this deer hunting in order to do so I would not fire 150 grain of FMJ I would need to find something they got stay away from a soft point like a remington core lock or something with this kind of action but federal fusion makes some nice some nice ammunition that i've used and so if I can find 150 Green there I think we'd be good to go but we're gonna test that out at some point but just overall you know as you can see general conditions somewhere along the line somebody bang something into this you know in the Army they don't really handle stuff too gingerly like we do our own equipment that's just a different mentality when when this is a tool than when it's some prized possession that you're gonna sit on your back porch and make videos about let's talk about this sling when you get it out of a package it's gonna look like this you look at and you're gonna say I don't really know what I'm doing with this so I'm gonna show you to the best of my ability how to thread it it's not hard once you've done it once and it all makes sense so let's take a look first of all I look like I'm really pissed off right here it's because my dog would not quit barking but anyway I'm showing you the rear and the the front sling attachments and we're gonna take this one piece which is the hook with the buckle on it and we're gonna run that through the rear sling attachment just as you see right there we're gonna leave that alone for a second and now we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna take the front hook just like you see right there we're gonna run that through that buckle and we're gonna take the other end and run it through the front sling attachment so here you go just like that now what's important here is we want to go ahead and run that loop over both of those doubled-up pieces of leather that you see right there and then that comes over at the top now from the rear now we're taking the back hook and we're attaching it as you can see as far forward as we can on the front piece and now the front two hooks are going to attach as far up as we can pulling them tight and there you go it should make more sense right now and you have you have something that you can use as a base for firing well now I'm gonna show you how you open this up for carrying and so forth so first you take the rear sling hooks move them back as far as you can then you're gonna slide your loops forward and you're gonna adjust this front sling hook again giving yourself some more slack and now it fits rather easily over your your shoulders I'm a pretty big guy shoulder wise with a coat on or whatever there's plenty of room here for me and then you're able to unfold er this fairly easily and be in a position to shoot so that's all there is to it okay so all the stuff I just showed you about the m1 garand for the most part or things I didn't know we could go so I've been pretty knee-deep immersed and to learning about the various parts of this how it breaks down what the history of this particular rifle might be as I indicated before there's there's not any war history with this or anything like that but what it is is a darn good shooter that is is in pretty decent shape so I'm not gonna upgrade this stock I'm not looking to to put a perfect looking stock on this part of this rifles accuracy is gonna is going to be about this the fit with the receiver in the barrel and the stock that I have so part of thats if it ain't broke don't fix it and the other part is if I'm looking for a brand new rifle then I probably shouldn't be getting an m1 garand anyway but totally enjoy this thing I've been wanting one of these for a long time as I mentioned before I think this is a great shoot and a bunch of fun I hope you've enjoyed just learning some little tidbits with me and there's gonna be some guys watching they know a lot more about this firearm than I do and of course as always we welcome your comment this is dr drinks 63 sand thanks for watching [Music] you [Music]

Channel: David Drake

Views: 16,114

Rating: 4.8686867 out of 5

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Id: bMZ-E9Z1hPU

Length: 32min 45sec (1965 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 26 2019