rare m1 garand - international springfield
i need to share this with you. several months ago, a member of our gun club asked me to look at his garand, as he had just purchased it and wanted me to chk it out. this garand looked really nice at first glance. i asked to take it apart, and he said "sure". while taking it out of the stock, i noticed that the legs on the reciever were marked "ihc", while the back of the receiver was marked "springfield". looking closer revealed a really nice "rewelded", demilled receiver. he was advised to get a new receiver. a couple of weeks ago, he returned to have his "new" receiver put on. when i chk'd the bbl, (throat and muzzle good, but no notch for the pin holding the bbl band),i noticed that it had only two grooves. this rifle had the stub end of springfield m1 bbl mated to a two groove 1903a3 bbl. again, a really nice job, with almost all the cuts in the proper place, except for the cross hole that locates the bbl band (which was missing). further inspection revealed that the trigger hsg had no mfg id or nunbers on it. it was a casting, and a very good one at that, as everything worked as it should. i have now replaced the rec, bbl, and trigger hsg. all is well that ends well, i guess. anyone out there had any garands like this show up?
Welded Receivers courtesy of BAD BOB at FEDORD
All of those POS were done for or by BAD BOB at FEDORD.No decent Garands were available but the 'scrap steel' was and 03-A3 barrels were accessible at not much more than the price of scrap steel TOO if you bought a few K.(Bob DID).
As noted however,nobody seems to have EVER heard of one going KABOOM and the quality of the welds on some was truly atrocious.
I was even offerred one while down in Mexico on a consulting job about 20 years ago.The years south of the border hadn't been kind to that poor "resurrected" Garand either.
I don't know how many of us have seen the "ULTRA RARE" 2 groove Garand barrels up for sale over the last 25 plus years either.Thankfully nobody seems to have gotten hurt(yet?)