My garand eats brass

HIGHRPM

HIGHRPM

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Well, I finally got my Garand out to the range for the first time. A beautiful SA1942 piece of history. I found two things very interesting, while the gun shot great. The ejecting brass seemed to be ejected in multiple different directions, which none of my other milsurp semis do and the brass looks like hell, beat up likes it's been driven over. Is this normal, or WTF ? :confused:
 
My Beretta Garand ejects to the rear right slightly behind me mybe 10 feet away. All fall within mybe a 30" circle on the ground. Sometimes the last shot goes slightly forward to the right.

Case necks are often dented but not always. I find the brass is easily reloaded several times.
 
Are you shoot milsurp ammunition?

Maybe your head space is way out of wack. The brass could be shifting a lot on firing.

I am not a milsurp guy, so I am not a 100% sure. I would get a smith to take a gander at it.

I know that damaged brass has a mind of it's own on ejection! So that may solve one problem.
 
What ammo were you shooting? Sounds too hot for the M1. You may need to start reloading for it to keep the pressures down or at least get an adjustable gas plug from a memeber here Pocketfisherman. Look at the EE in parts for milsurp firearms. Cheap and they work well!!!

You may want to post this in the Milsurp section as well. It will get a lot of attention over there, unless you ARE reloading for it already. In that case though, you would think that you would have posted your recipe for everyone to be able to comment on.

Either way, we need to know what you are putting through her...

Ian
 
The Garand is hard on brass. You shouldn't try to get more than 5 firing cycles out of your cases. A properly lubed and set up Garand will distribute brass in the 1-3 o'clock area. Make sure you use grease on all specified grease points, incl a light coating on the op rod spring. The key thing is that it does eject. Dented case mouths are caused by hitting the op rod on the outside when ejecting. Just round them out by inserting a tapered punch before resizing. Some other caveats on reloading for a Garand:

- stick to 150- 168gr bullets
- only use IMR 4895, IMR 4064, or H4895 as these generate the correct gas port pressure pulse for the gas system
- always FL resize and keep cases trimmed below max
- seat primers slightly below flush with the casehead to avoid the possibility of an out of battery detonation caused by the bolt face striking a high primer
 
HIGHRPM said:
Well, I finally got my Garand out to the range for the first time. A beautiful SA1942 piece of history. I found two things very interesting, while the gun shot great. The ejecting brass seemed to be ejected in multiple different directions, which none of my other milsurp semis do and the brass looks like hell, beat up likes it's been driven over. Is this normal, or WTF ? :confused:
Click to expand...

Fairly normal, though it does sound like you may be shooting commercial ammo or hotter handloads. The ejection pattern gets less erratic with softer loads using the correct components. As for the the damage, yes, it is normal. The Garand beats the hell out of brass no matter what you do.

Purple has good advice, follow it and you will enjoy your Garand for a long time to come. If you want some reloading data for the Garand, PM me your email and I can send you info from a number of sources.

If you want better sights, Creedmoor Sports will ship to Canada and they offer a National Match front insert with a narrower blade and a rear insert for the original base with a smaller aperture. If you want finer adjustment they also offer a National Match replacement rear sight assembly that has finer click adjustments for elevation and windage.


Mark
 
purple said:
The Garand is hard on brass. You shouldn't try to get more than 5 firing cycles out of your cases. A properly lubed and set up Garand will distribute brass in the 1-3 o'clock area. Make sure you use grease on all specified grease points, incl a light coating on the op rod spring. The key thing is that it does eject. Dented case mouths are caused by hitting the op rod on the outside when ejecting. Just round them out by inserting a tapered punch before resizing. Some other caveats on reloading for a Garand:

- stick to 150- 168gr bullets
- only use IMR 4895, IMR 4064, or H4895 as these generate the correct gas port pressure pulse for the gas system
- always FL resize and keep cases trimmed below max
- seat primers slightly below flush with the casehead to avoid the possibility of an out of battery detonation caused by the bolt face striking a high primer
Click to expand...

This.

My garand brass looks rough too, but I get an honest five reloads out of it.

I don't think when the Americans were shooting Nazi's with their garands they were too worried about the appearance of their fired brass...
 
The ammo was reloads from the gentleman that sold me the gun. He told me what to use , what specs to load to and they fall in line with what people are suggesting. The brass unfortunatly has already been tumbled, and reworked, so sorry no pics, I screwed up on that. I have never had a semi eject in so many directions and distances and when you picked them up they looked very rough. So a bit confused. I will redo my own loads, relube the gun as it should be and try her again. She is very accurate, so I am pleased with that.
 
purple said:
The Garand is hard on brass. You shouldn't try to get more than 5 firing cycles out of your cases. A properly lubed and set up Garand will distribute brass in the 1-3 o'clock area. Make sure you use grease on all specified grease points, incl a light coating on the op rod spring. The key thing is that it does eject. Dented case mouths are caused by hitting the op rod on the outside when ejecting. Just round them out by inserting a tapered punch before resizing. Some other caveats on reloading for a Garand:

- stick to 150- 168gr bullets
- only use IMR 4895, IMR 4064, or H4895 as these generate the correct gas port pressure pulse for the gas system
- always FL resize and keep cases trimmed below max
- seat primers slightly below flush with the casehead to avoid the possibility of an out of battery detonation caused by the bolt face striking a high primer
Click to expand...

Great info and the only thing I can add is that you can also use IMR 3031 and WIN 748 according to American Rifleman March 1986 Issue.

I use 168 Grn FMJ with IMR 3031 at about the 43.0 grn mark and the brass is ejected at 2 O'Clock position about 6 feet away and I swear you can have them all go into an ice cream pail. Mine is a '43 SA and with this loading it does about 1.5" at 100 yards on a good day and more like 2" on an average day. Love it.
 
Thank you very much for the suggestions. I will go through the lubing of the gun, and do several reloads and see if it changes anything. Again, thanks !
 
This helps:

Bart Bobbitt on tuning Garand grass ejection:

On Wed, 11 Feb 2004 23:54:27 +0000 (UTC), in rec.guns bartbob@aol.com (Bart B.) wrote:

"The most common cause of scratched (or dented) cases from an M1 is they bounce off the operating rod near the handle when the bolt's all the way back. What happens is the ejector spring is very strong and as soon as the empty case mouth clears the chamber, the ejector pushes the case head away from the bolt face very fast and hard. As the extractor holds the case head at 2-'clock and the ejector pushes the case out at its 8-'clock position, the case flips backwards over the opening bolt and bounces off the operating rod. Inspecting the op rod hump near its handle will probably show brass colored streaks at that point. Empty cases usually have a tiny dent near the shoulder.
Another indicator is the empty cases are thrown backwards from the rifle at about a 4- to 5-o'clock angle to the line of fire or bouncing off the shooter's glasses or forehead.

The cure is to make the ejector spring weaker. Using an M1 combination tool in the chamber, close the bolt on it, then remove the extractor and its spring and next remove the ejector and its spring.
Using a good, hard pair of diagonal cutters, cut off two turns of the ejector spring. Reassemble the bolt, then fire several rounds. If the rounds aren't ejecting forward at about 2-o'clock from the line of fire, take the extractor and ejector out, then cut another turn off the ejector spring. Try it again. When the ejector spring is perfect, empty cases will pile up about three feet away at the 2-o'clock position. And ther won't be any more cases bouncing off your fore head.

Years ago when on a military rifle team, I was given a couple dozen M1's to take to the function firing range to 'tune' their ejector springs. It took between 2 and 5 turns cut off to get the empties ejecting forward and to the right a couple of feet away. In fact, a friend of mine and I had a contest once to see who could shoot the smallest diameter pile of empty cases after tuning several Garands'
ejector springs. He won."


n.b. Bart Bobbitt is a past Palma Team Member, and shot the Garand in competition for the Navy team when it was the primary service rifle for the USA (in addition to much other prior and subsequent experience).

He is a true expert, and has been there, done it and has a closet full of tee-shirts.

Anything he says related to shooting and related equipment is worth listening to, and carefully contemplating.
 
Thank you soooo much ! I never would have thought of that in my lifetime. I will do exactly that and combined with making sure I have the lubing points looked after, and some of my own reloads, I am sure I will be fine. Again to everyone, thank you for the input, thats what makes this my favorite site, THE PEOPLE !!
 
Whoa, hold on . . .

I would recommend exploring other options first before hacking away at your ejector spring.

Not that hat advice is bad, it does make sense to me, just proceed with caution. It'd be the last thing I try if the problem persists, after experimenting with reloads and such.

Bare in mind, taking a Garand bolt a part is easy, getting it back together again can be a feat if you've never done it before.
 
I cheat, I have the bolt disassembly/assembly tool.

Get a spare ejector spring before experimenting if you want a fallback option. That's what I did. I used a hammer, a cold chisel and a piece of steel to cut the spring. To smooth out the cut end I used a piece of 240 grit carbide paper on the piece of steel, rubbing the cut end in a circular pattern.

The big hint about what is happening is look at the outside "hump" on the back end of the operating rod. With a full-power ejector spring the ejected brass is thrown against the hump, deforming the fired brass. It will leave brass residues on the hump.

If you want to convince yourself put some Prussian Blue or similar on top of the hump and fire some cartridges. Care to bet the fired brass has blue markings in the dents?

Reducing the ejector spring force stops smashing the fired case against the operating rod on extractor/ejection.
 
Random distribution of ejected brass/dented casemouths were not on the list of problems that required correction by a military armorer. The main issue was that the rifle cycled properly and ejected spent casings when fired.


Yes, you can cut back the ejector spring incrementally with the aim of reducing the force of ejection. Springs are cheap. Rims get chewed up by the extractor as well, but they will last thru 5 firing cycles which is all you want from your brass in these rifles.
 
I too have seen the rims deformed. Makes it a pain when checking resized brass in a cartridge case headspace gage (which includes the rims). 5 (five) firings before discarding is consistent with what I have read and observed when feeding a semi-auto rifle.
 
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