Pretty easy to fix, really - wood's easy to get, the rest is just refinishing. Have at her, and you'll have a nice shootable Garand, given what people are paying for them these days you'll still make money. Isn't there a guy back east that specializes in Garand refinishing.
Picked up a sweeeeeeeeet M1 Garand
- Thread starter CanadianAR
- Start date
Picked up a sweeeeeeeeet M1 Garand
Just kidding, its an effing tragedy. Just a damn disaster. Came in a collection I acquired to store and liquidate. I had NOTHING to do with it. It was a beauty Springfield M1 lock bar sights etc, now it features a sporter stock, buffed and blued, as well as polished. Such a waste. Yeah the gas tube and bolt are chrome!
Back in the 60s and early 70s, that rifle would have been considered a real gem.
The original rifle probably sold for as little as $60 in Canada and around $80 in the US.
That looks to be either a Sherwood Internation or Bishop stock on it and a Williams fore end cap. The polish and reblue job, are nice and even as well. Over all, not a bad attempt by BUBBA.
Just understand, back in the day, every firearms related magazine, including non firearms related magazines carried ads for those kits. Consider yourself lucky they didn't grind off the rear sight completely and add a Williams or Lyman sight to the center of the barrel.
Is it really any different from the guys now who accessorize their relatively cheap SKSs or Mosins????????
Back then, I could buy a crate of brand new or FTRed 98 Mausers for less than $100 shipped to my house. That included new slings, ftr bayos and muzzle covers. I kept one of the FTR rifles as a keep sake. I still have it, along with another that I tried to sell recently to the OP and he declined. He knew it was a post war ftr, I didn't. I swallowed a story, hook line and sinker about it being a battlefield pick up. Oh well live and learn. I don't really think I'm going to live that long though.
Anyway, that stuff was everywhere. You could get your pick of a 98 Mauser of Lee Enfield of any stripe at some gas stations with fill up points. Every hardware store, some roadside grocery stores and implement dealers carried them as well. They were cheap.
When the Army & Navy store had a sale or even Marshell Wells, you could pick up a new in the grease No4 for $10 or a "sportered" No4 for $15. They even threw in a 48 box of surplus ammo. Let's not get into the Springfield made Krag Carbines for $15, everything from new to worn out.
As much as it seems like a shame now, if it weren't for those cheap/plentiful surplus rifles and lots of handy folks, we most certainly wouldn't be enjoying the hunting sports we are today. Those rifles put the costs of hunting within the reach of the common man.
Back then, a decent factory produced commercial hunting rifle cost as much as a month's wages for the average working man. That didn't include a scope or ammunition either.
That is a lovely example of what a motivated fellow can do to turn an ugly duckling into a swan.
Please understand, it's to bad and I don't like to condone it but that's the way life goes. Take that old girl out and hunt with her. Sell her cheap. Give me a PM if you are interested in moving it at a reasonable price.
Just kidding, its an effing tragedy. Just a damn disaster. Came in a collection I acquired to store and liquidate. I had NOTHING to do with it. It was a beauty Springfield M1 lock bar sights etc, now it features a sporter stock, buffed and blued, as well as polished. Such a waste. Yeah the gas tube and bolt are chrome!
Back in the 60s and early 70s, that rifle would have been considered a real gem.
The original rifle probably sold for as little as $60 in Canada and around $80 in the US.
That looks to be either a Sherwood Internation or Bishop stock on it and a Williams fore end cap. The polish and reblue job, are nice and even as well. Over all, not a bad attempt by BUBBA.
Just understand, back in the day, every firearms related magazine, including non firearms related magazines carried ads for those kits. Consider yourself lucky they didn't grind off the rear sight completely and add a Williams or Lyman sight to the center of the barrel.
Is it really any different from the guys now who accessorize their relatively cheap SKSs or Mosins????????
Back then, I could buy a crate of brand new or FTRed 98 Mausers for less than $100 shipped to my house. That included new slings, ftr bayos and muzzle covers. I kept one of the FTR rifles as a keep sake. I still have it, along with another that I tried to sell recently to the OP and he declined. He knew it was a post war ftr, I didn't. I swallowed a story, hook line and sinker about it being a battlefield pick up. Oh well live and learn. I don't really think I'm going to live that long though.
Anyway, that stuff was everywhere. You could get your pick of a 98 Mauser of Lee Enfield of any stripe at some gas stations with fill up points. Every hardware store, some roadside grocery stores and implement dealers carried them as well. They were cheap.
When the Army & Navy store had a sale or even Marshell Wells, you could pick up a new in the grease No4 for $10 or a "sportered" No4 for $15. They even threw in a 48 box of surplus ammo. Let's not get into the Springfield made Krag Carbines for $15, everything from new to worn out.
As much as it seems like a shame now, if it weren't for those cheap/plentiful surplus rifles and lots of handy folks, we most certainly wouldn't be enjoying the hunting sports we are today. Those rifles put the costs of hunting within the reach of the common man.
Back then, a decent factory produced commercial hunting rifle cost as much as a month's wages for the average working man. That didn't include a scope or ammunition either.
That is a lovely example of what a motivated fellow can do to turn an ugly duckling into a swan.
Please understand, it's to bad and I don't like to condone it but that's the way life goes. Take that old girl out and hunt with her. Sell her cheap. Give me a PM if you are interested in moving it at a reasonable price.
How does adding a manlicker stock & chrome bolt help with hunting? Why did people replace sights graduated from 100 to 1000 yrds or so with a crappy little williams with no graduations at all? Just like the sks of today, they would have been better off LEAVING THE DAMNED THING ALONE!
There were more redeeming pieces. I got an unissued port k9x with match bayo and scab.
Ihc m1 garand
Lee enfields
Ar15,
Lots of hunting stuff.
Colt 1911.
So worthwhile. And he's a friend.
I do understand the motivation bearhunter, just sad
These days. And I will admit, while it isn't what I like, I was well done.
Shoot it to see how it shoots, and then bead blast and parkerize it. Wood's available and so are the small parts that you may need to replace. It was rusted and pitted so there may not have been wood to begin with, and this was just and end to the problem. If you don't want to attempt it, sell it to me and I'll resurrect it. No problem.
Exactly. There is no benefit to even the worst fudds to ruining that Garand like that ( or any milsurp in my opinion). And I definetly agree about the SKS's too. Russian Sks's should be untouched. Modify Norincos if you must.
Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Our mothers all think we're absolutely beautiful as well.
That was the trend back in the day. If you can get your hands on some of the pulp magazines from the 50s and 60s, you will see all sorts of ads for just those conversions. Bishop and Williams, along with a score of others, like Herter's, published scads of soft cover books to turn just about any milsurp into an "acceptable" sporter.
Something that most here just don't understand, is that most of the milsurps that were sold during those heady days were considered border line junk. There were a couple of good reasons for that. Some were junk. These junkers, gave the good ones a bad reputation.
They were also very cheap, even for that time period. The average joe bought one for hunting, not because he/she had any interest at all in their history. Remember WWII and Korea were just over. There was little if any endearment or flights of fancy attached to these rifles. Nostalgia factors were non existent.
Many of the people purchasing the milsurps, viewed them as "ugly killers of men" in their military furniture. Many had trained with them and carried them under some pretty extreme circumstances as well. They just didn't want to be associated with or reminded of what a full dress milsurp represented.
They "sporterised" them to look like commercial hunting rifles instead of "man killers". I can't remember how often I used to hear that phrase. By converting their appearance, the psycological factor came into play and the ugly duckling became a swan.
Times have changed, most of those people are dead and many of their ideas, foibles of the mind, died with them.
We have a whole new perspective on how we view these firearms now. Losing sight of why our forebears did such things to the holy grails we now seek, is also a tragedy.
Personally, I don't mind how that rifle looks. It is what it is. Remington, converted thousands of milsurps into acceptable sporters, as did many other companies around the world. They did it, because like today, the demand for milsurps is very centralized to about 15% of firearms owners. The other 85% look upon them as oddities, couldn't care less about the history and wouldn't be caught dead carrying one.
Nope, I most certainly don't fall into the 85% category. Never did. I do realize though that if the milsurps weren't turned into sporters, that legitimised and enabled the lower paid members of our society to carry what they considered a fine hunting rifle out into the field, the vast majority of them would have been destroyed and melted down into rebar.
