Gearing up to shoot my carbines again and have some questions.....

[ABPOS]

Thank you. That helps a lot!!!

Fulton has the three of them for 99 bucks. I'm not sure I want to drop that right now. So.... I see what you're saying about excessive pressure. But my thinking is if they have been shot a lot, there's more chance of it having a long headspace. But I guess that's probably not the big of a deal with a .30 carbine. Or would it be? I guess I was thinking it could create some gasses escaping out and being an issue.

[Patrick Chadwick]

The most unsafe condition in a carbine is not excessive headspace, it is too little headspace.

Well said Dave, let's hear it again!

The most unsafe condition in a carbine is not excessive headspace, it is too little headspace.

Kuhnhausen's book "The U.S: .30 Caliber Gas Operated Carbines", Vol. 3 has a detailed explanation of safety aspects starting around P.29.

Simply put, excessive headspace is bad for brass if you are reloading. I have fired rifles with a headspace up to 1/20".*** The only result was that the case shoulders were noticeably shifted forwards, and ignition was irregular, presumably only happening at all because the case was being held back by the extractor. Not that I am recommending this situation, but the danger with
too little headspace - maybe even a negative head clearance - is that it may provoke a slam-fire, which is far more dangerous than a stretched case!

BTW, protruding primers have the same effect. Rather set primers a couple of thou" below the base level than risk any protrusion.

Another cause of this hazard can be a misguided desire to set the bullet as close as possible to the transition cone, a.k.a. lead or leade. I cringe to read of people claiming they set the bullets to be 0.003" or less off the lands. Have they ever heard of tolerances, which exist in both bullet ogives and their reloading equipment? If a bullet is seated too long in the case, then the cartridge is effectively "headspacing" on the bullet!

I wish that more attention would be paid to such aspects, rather than placing a blind faith in gauges, which are NOT a safety guarantee.

***On my own rifles I check such matters before the first firing. In this case, the rifle was handed to me for a test firing at the range, by someone who I would regard as very knowledgeable. Motto: do not trust anything or anyone when it comes to your personal safety!

And since this post is, of course, basic, even superficial, read Kuhnhausen on the M1.

[DaveHH]

or Andy's in Petaluma where I grew up. He was a real genuine gunsmith and could do anything (usually while you waited). Any other "gunsmiths" I've met I wouldn't let wash my car. Yet people always say "take it to a gunsmith". Most have absolutely no idea about this blow up issue with carbines. The government forced 100% ammo case checks at the ammo plants because they were having so many failures from slam fires. The reason that this is so important is the carbine DOES stretch cases and you could gauge a gun all you want and an overly long case could blow it up. So if you reload, checking case length is a whole lot more important than headspace.

[ABPOS]

Good knowledge coming here.

I always am irritated when people on the internet exclaim, "Just take it to a gunsmith". You never know what people know. The last gunsmith I talked to didn't seem to know crap from crapola (to paraphrase a term that came somewhere in my family). And some might know a lot about a certain gun, but absolutely nothing about another type. I find it all very discouraging. I would imagine the ones that DO know what they're doing are so busy they don't have time to talk to you anyways. Anyways........ The one gentleman I was thinking about taking my carbines to didn't seem to know about the proper timing on a Colt Detective special. Nor did he seem to want to touch my HiPower with a 10' pole. But supposedly he knows Smith revolvers and 1911's but I've never had him work on either of those. So I'm just not sure about how much he knows about Carbines. But he's an Ex Marine armorer and I think a Korean war vet, so he probably knows his way around a Carbine. Yet I still have my reservations. Not to be disrespectful.

[DaveHH]

our armorer sat around blown out on Darvons all day. He had jars of them. He had no problem handing you magazines that had corroded ammo, sand, sticks and twigs in them and smiling as he did it. I soon got my own supply of ammo, mags and pistols.

But I guess he could be a gunsmith now?

[ABPOS]

Yikes! And I don't even know what Darvins is.

[imarangemaster]

Yikes! And I don't even know what Darvins is.

Darvon was a popular pain killer. It was roughly the equivalent of Vicodin today. It had a round pellet of pain killer surrounded by Tylenol powder in a capsule. The pellets were VERY popular, and some people ground them up, cooked them in a spoon of water, and injected them like heroin. Later, they came out with "Darvacet" which mixed the pellet with the Tylenol in a hard caplet, to limit abuse

[JimF4M1s (Deceased)]

Then drink half a bottle of Terpin hydrate.
Darvon/Darvocet, got banned Nov 2010 because they contained propoxyphene -- a safety-plagued painkiller from the 1950s. There's a hint they were bad.

[DaveHH]

Darvon was a leading killer of people in this country. When taken with alcohol, the effects were much stronger. I remember trying on my old uniform maybe 20 years after the war. You guessed it.....in the pocket were two Darvons.

[ABPOS]