Range report 5/4/09
Bought my first M1G about six weeks ago and got her to the range this past Monday. I disassembled, inspected, cleaned, lubed and replaced the op rod spring, hammer spring and clip ejector spring (which was broken). On the bolt face I could see a circular imprint centered on the firing pin hole that was the size of the primer but I couldn't feel much erosion on the surface. That was the only issue that concerned me from the inspection, and the fact that the rifle was inspected by me, a Garand rookie.
I shot two recipes of my own reloads. I started out with a traditional M1 powder 47.0 gr of IMR4895 behind a 168 gr Nosler HPBT match bullet and the stock gas plug. For this load the chrony results for 8 rnds were:
ave velocity 2475 fps
spread 46 fps
std dev 15.5 fps
I was using open sights at 50 yds, observations follow:
1) grouping was disappointing being about 2 inches for a 4 shot string
2) The primers backed out about 0.010 inches
3) The clip ejected after 5 rounds with three rounds still loaded
4) The ejected rounds seemed to be scattered over a wide area and some I believe even bounced off the canopy covering the shooting tables which is at least 6 feet above the rifle.
Second recipe used 55.0 gr of IMR4350 and an adjustable gas plug. After shooting about a half dozen rounds to dial in the Schuster plug the chrony results were:
ave velocity 2561 fps
spread 49 fps
std dev 15.0 fps
All of the above observations also apply to the 4350 load, except the clip came out after 6 rounds.
Since this was my first time shooting the Garand I don't want to place too much importance on the group size. So I'm not ready to write the barrel off just yet. However the average velocity for the 4895 load does seem a bit low based on other posts I have read, I guess that could point to a barrel erosion issue.
I assume the backing out of the primers is due to the bolt face not being perfectly smooth and the primer sized imprint I could see on the bolt face was a tell tale sign there might be a problem. Can bolt faces be machined back to smoothness or do I need to get a new bolt?
What about the clip ejecting early and the scattering of the ejected cases?
I would appreciate any opinions experienced shooters of the M1G may have about the observations above and the best way to go from here.
Thanks, BayouInformation
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