A story and a little M1 Carbine porn - warning: long, windy and full of information
Several years ago now I was working a gunshow here in Atlanta helping a friend of mine. The tables next to us were occupied by a dealer of USGI surplus parts. That day, he had several M1 Carbine parts kits for the whopping sum of $259.00 retail. I asked him and because I was a dealer working the show, he offered me one for $200.00 cash. I told him I'd like to get one and would talk to him about it on Sunday afternoon (It was Saturday morning, I was cash poor and the show was just starting. Good manners among dealers is if the other guy has something you're interested in, give him a chance to sell it at his best make money price and then buy it for a discount for cash late Sunday, when you've made money and have some to spend.)
I did well that show and walked over to talk to him late Sunday afternoon. He had sold all his "bagged up" kits, but still had enough parts left to make up a kit and told me he would be glad to mix/match a set to make me up one I'd be happy with. I ended up with a kit that contained the following critical parts:
USGI replacement stock, M2 potbelly/low cut, beach w/4 rivet beach handguard
USGI replacement barrel, SA 3-52, NOS sealed in aluminum protective bag, with the following connected: type 3 barrel band, w/bayonet lug (best for accuracy and I'm a shooter) front sight w/key and pin (all NOS)
Most all the other parts were late revision/type/upgraded parts, replacement, USGI, NOS, the only exception being the trigger guard and sear. The trigger guard was either a cast or forged guard and had seen some use, so had some dings. The sear was either a type I or II without the hole in it. I did choose a NOS blued flat bolt at that time, though if I had it to do over, I'd have gotten a round M2 bolt.
So now I had a complete M1 carbine except for no receiver, mostly new parts. I debated getting a USGI receiver, but at that time, they were hard to find and expensive when you found one. I didn't want to pay big money and get a worn out receiver with all the new parts I had. I knew the rifle would always be a replacement part mixmaster, but the parts were new and if I could get a new receiver, I could basically get a new gun.
Lo and behold: For about ten microseconds, Springfield Armory, Genesco, IL offered up brand new forged steel/machined stripped receivers for sale for a whopping $100.00 bucks or a bit more by the time you paid the local dealer.
I was sharing this information and decision with my Dad on the phone at the time, as I didn't quite have enough cash to get one yet, so had time to think about it. My birthday was coming up and my Dad bought one of the Springfield Armory forged receivers for me for my birthday! What a great guy! Dad was in good health at that time and one thing I'll always love about my Dad is he always supported me 100% in any endeavor I was into. He invited me to come visit on my birthday and gave me the receiver as a present. I was surprised and quite happy about it. So now I had the parts to build an M1 Carbine that was nearly new.
One nice thing about an M1 Carbine is if you have a vice and a good wrench, you can put together the barreled receiver pretty easily if you follow the old manuals instructions. You just need to make sure you've gotten it indexed correctly by some method. I attended gunsmithing school many years ago, so I made a set of alignment guages using some aluminum stock I picked up, ordered a set of head space gauges and a pull through reamer set and I was ready to go. Didn't take me long at all to get the barrel together, lined up and head spaced properly.
Finished assembling the rest of the rifle, stained the stock with some reddish/brown Minwax finish I got at Lowe's and the rifle was ready to shoot. It was one of the most accurate M1 carbines I've ever shot, both with jacketed and the 125 grain group buy bought here years ago. I was very pleased with it's performance, but not with it's appearance. The parts looked mismatched to the blued steel receiver and the stock just looked too shiny and ugly to me as the years past.
A couple years back (five or so), I pulled it down and decided to parkerize the metal and put it back together. Took over to my ole buddy's, who was just learning to park at that time and had full size tanks. The barreled receiver parked ok with the barrel a shade lighter (He was using Brownell's solution, not the best IMO, but that's what he had.), but the rest of the parts turned out an unacceptable silver and that was the last of the solution he had. So now I had a gun with a bunch of silver parts, not something I wanted. So the gun sat for a while, as my buddy just never did do as well with parkerizing as he did with bluing.
Flash forward to this spring. I had purchased a three burner cast iron outfit from Tractor Supply and a set of stainless steel pots from Harbor Freight. These aren't big enough to do a barreled action, but they are perfect for doing pistols and small parts off of rifles. My purpose was to get much more serious about learning the ins and outs of parkerizing professionally as well as find a quality brand of manganese solution that was affordable while providing a lot of mixed park solution. I found the solution I was looking for, found the information on professional parkerizing from the metal working/machinist forums and refined techniques, with some excellent results, a nice dark grey park.
I re-did all the silver small parts on my M1 carbine, then refinished the beech stock with a more appropriate military finish, to include some dark stain, raw linseed oil and a pine tar/beeswax preservative mix. During the stock refinish, I discovered the stock had needed some minor fitting back when that I'd missed. It needed some relief at the back of the trigger guard and the slide was rubbing slightly on the left inside. I repaired the cracks caused by the trigger guard with acraglas, relieved the left inside of the stock to prevent interference with the slide. I also did more research on properly installing the barrel in the stock and getting the best alignment.
Of the original kit, I only replaced two items: 1. The rear sight was a stamped model and I prefer the forged models. So I bought a reproduction sight made by a US company. 2. The old style sear gave a trigger pull like twenty pounds of bricks, so I bought a NOS Type III sear and replaced it.
Both the replacement sight and the type III sear worked much better. The trigger pull is now just about right. Sad thing is, neither my wife or I have good enough eyes to use iron sights much anymore, so we'll have to replace the handguard with a Ultimak and add a dot sight to be able to use the rifle.
Without further ado, here's a sample pic and a photobucket slide show of the pictures after completion. The closer up pics show the wood grain much better in the slide show. I apologize for the fading light and my cell phone camera, it did a poor job of picking up the rifle stock:
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...ps028e9823.jpg
Slide show:
http://smg.photobucket.com/user/Dave...aM1CarbinePics
