Navy Garands

[Bob Seijas]

CMP has gotten another lot of Navy 7.62 conversions, reportedly from the Crane Depot. GCA investigated and wrote up the first lot in the Fall 2012 Journal, dozens of photos and all the details on MOD 0 and MOD 1 rifles.

[Bob Seijas]

From the 2012 article:
"Of particular significance is the fact that none of these receivers
had a barrel with 7.62 MM marking. The implication is that the
initial intention was to mark only the receivers, not the barrel.
Although that would allow the user to see the right cartridge for
the rifle at a glance, it consigned that receiver to only that cartridge
forever. If another caliber arose in the future or if it became
necessary to put the rifle back to .30-06 for some reason, simply
putting on a different barrel would not suffice. Besides, it wasn’t
the receiver that was 7.62, it was the barrel. This was evidently
realized after only a small number of conversions (reportedly the
first 100), and marking the receiver was discontinued."

[ssgross]

Question on the Navy Mod 0's...I get the disclaimer for unserviceability with regards to the barrel bushing mod. Is there anything else done by CMP, along the lines of various things done to drill rifles, to guarantee unserviceability?
"These rifles are being sold for display purposes only, in a nonfunctional condition..."

I'm thinking about getting one, a mod0, and re-barreling to make a shooter. Seems the only reason to pay the extra $650 for the mod1's is to get an original, non-bushing-mod, barrel which I don't care about. But I don't want to have to deal with tack welds, plugged chambers, or anything else that was done to ensure "non-functional condition". It would only be ~$50 cheaper to go with a rack grade garand and a new barrel, but you wouldn't have a nicely stamped 7.62 receiver, and then again $50 is well worth my satisfaction of building it out myself!

[Bob Seijas]

The two companies contracted were American Machine & Foundry and H&R... we found many different marking schemes, including some with no contractor identified. Eventually we figured out that the quickest way to tell was the location of the decimal point in 7.62: HRA stamped it at the bottom of the line, AMF put it in the middle.