practicality of larger calibers in M1

[DJG]

I have re-barreled several in .308, which seem to me to have a "sharper" recoil. I have not yet done one in .270, but I shot one and was very impressed with it. Makes you think that Garand's original idea for a 7mm/.276 round was probably the best caliber - it held 10 rounds as I recall; however, the huge stocks of 30.06 ammo settled the caliber issue. dg

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[RCS]

If the standard rifle had been adopted in 276 caliber what would have been done with the M1917A1 Browning and the long range 30M1 cartridge ? the
Army would not give that up for a 276 machine gun. The Browning M1918 BAR also in 30M1 cal plus any type of aircraft machine guns would not use
the 276 cal.

[roland beaver]

I have re-barreled several in .308, which seem to me to have a "sharper" recoil. I have not yet done one in .270, but I shot one and was very impressed with it. Makes you think that Garand's original idea for a 7mm/.276 round was probably the best caliber - it held 10 rounds as I recall; however, the huge stocks of 30.06 ammo settled the caliber issue. dg

Humm?? Seems to me that recoil of a .308 M1 is a bit softer than that of a .30-06, but I guess that is a subjective evaluation. I have built a number of M1's in .22-250, .243, .25-06, .270, .260 Rem, 7mm-08 and recoil is noticeably reduced in these chamberings. A .22-250 is really a lot of fun when shooting a string of rapid fire, and I used one in quite a few matches years ago in the NRA match rifle category.

The first customer I built a .22-250 for called a few weeks after he received his rifle to tell me that he had a problem with it. ---after a pause---he went on to say "I had you build that rifle for my wife--and now we're going to have to build another one". (putting another one in the budget was the only problem)