Danish Garand

During WWII there were only two manufacturers of the M1 rifle. Springfield Armory and Winchester Repeating Arms. SA produced over 3.5M rifles and WRA produced just over 500K. This is where the desireability comes from, there just aren't many WRA's. I'd love to have one in my safe. I missed out on CMP's latest WRA sale, they sold out a few hundred service grade rifles in just two days. WRA did have many QC troubles thru their production period and as a result, to maintain production, SA bailed them out creating some bad blood. SA would help WRA but only when asked. Even so Winchester had quite a hard time meeting quota's. As the war went on drawing numbers were eliminated as one of many time and cost savings so as a result the rougher mill marks are sometime the only way to determine weather or not a part may be Winchester or SA. Very important from a collector standpoint. After the war had ended Italy did end up with the Winchester equipment and this is why the Italian M1's seem to resemble Winchesters so much. Their QC is good but just like H & R, IHC and even 50's SA's the pressure of war production was off and quality rose.

HTH,

rifle guy
 
This thread needs pics!

Here my 1942 Winny dane with a var barrel.
107_0731.jpg
 
As for lockup fixes, if the TG isn't out of round and the wood is compressed, the US armorer fix is to carefully wood chisel a trough into the stock on either side of the mag well there the floorplate compresses and either fill with bedding material, or as I prefer, with walnut shim stock glued in place and cured. You then file it to height and regain your lockup.

I've seen dozens of GI issue M1s with this fix. I suspect after WW2 the armorers were kept busy with M1 repairs for years...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom