Garand Ammo!

[M1-Garand]

There's no need for a small base resizer for a Garand. I've reloaded for several dozen of them using regular FL resizing dies from RCBS and Redding. When loading for a Garand it's important to pay attention to your brass though with special emphasis on the following;

-always FL resize (don't neck size)
-keep brass trimmed below max OAL
-seat primers slightly below flush with the casehead
-if possible use CCI 34 MILSPEC primers. That said I've used regular CCI, WLR and Rem primers with no problems. I'd avoid federal primers as they have softer cup metal.
-any boxer primed brass is OK to use, but I prefer military brass because it is somewhat harder
-don't try to get more than 4 reloading/resizing cycles out of a piece of brass. The rifle is hard on brass

A final check on correctly sized brass is to use the rifle itself as a gauge to check on free chambering of resized brass w/o resistance. To do this strip the rifle, remove the oprod, strip the bolt and trial chamber resized brass by hand using light pressure to close the bolt. There should be no felt resistance to the bolt closing on resized brass.

I use a case gauge(Lyman or Wilson make them) and check every single one after resizing,also great for checking overall length.
Once in a while I get a case that won't fit in the gauge no matter how many times I run it through the resizing die,I either toss it or if I have enough of them they get annealed.
Don't want to think of the consequences of an oversize case in a semi-auto rifle.

 

[rci2950]

learn how to hand load, Thats what i do for mine. Cheaper and makes it more interesting. I put random posts on Facebook looking for pulled M2 bullets and i also shoot various hunting and match bullets that i find that are roughly the same weight. All have promising results. You can also buy a pop-it valve or something like that i forget what it is called to make the garand safe for normal modern 30-06 loads. I don't have any experience with them but i heard good things.