M-1 garand or M-1a

thanks for all your replies guys. Not positive on which road i want to take. I did find a HRA garand in my local gunshop that seems to be in pretty good condition for 450. It does seem to have something wierd. behind the trigger guard is an indent in the wood and discoloring like a part was there and is no more. when i compared it to the century arms garands they had there, it looked as if it had a type of trigger guard that had a loop in it before, milled i would say. and it was replaced with something almost stamped looking. with only a slight bow at the back. is this simply a mismatch of parts or what.
 
bullfrog,

What you are seeing is just the difference between the milled trigger guard and the stamped trigger guard. Both are USGI and are interchangeable.

Springfield Armory (the REAL one) and Winchester both made the milled tg's up through WWII. Springfield started making the stamped guard in mid 1944. ALL Winchester guards are milled.

As for H&R and IHC, they did not make Garands until the 50's. All of their tg's are stamped.

Re the cutout in the stock at the back of the guard.... that is there to allow mounting of a milled guard. All stocks have it, even the ones made later on for the stamped guards. This was done intentionally so either guard could be used during armory repairs & refurbishing.

I have one IHC Garand that was rebuilt at Letterkenny Depot in 1965. New 1965 SA barrel, re-parkerized, patces made on the stock, and has a Winchester milled trigger guard.

During the "Clean and Repair" program instituted by the Army, rifles were brought in from the units and evaluated. If there were any bad (out of spec) parts they were thrown out and replaced with the first good one that came to hand from the repl bins. Some parts may have been new and unused, others came from rifles that were scrapped because of a bad receiver.

A LOT of Garands went through this program. Some came out with only minor parts replacement, others, like my IHC, got a complete rebuild.

In case you had not noticed, all of the M1-A's also have the late Garand style stamped trigger guards. The M14 never had the milled type.

my .02 cents
Swampy
 
Bullfrog99......

If that HRA is in good shape, I highly recommend that you buy it. $450 is a good price for a good Garand; I just paid $495 for a very late HRA. It was a CMP rifle, owner was getting divorced and needed quick money so he priced it below what it could have brought. Mine seems to have the original HRA barrel in VERY good shape, plus a few other HRA parts.

Threads I have read in various firearms forums seem to indicate that the HRAs are the best of the M-1s.

The first time I took it aprt, the lack of the hole in the back of the trigger guard threw me for a few minutes. Had to check my Garand book to figure out what was going on. That was when I found out about the two types of trigger guards. To me, the only reason was to make rifle dissasembly easier.
 
Well, I'm not much of a rifleman (yet) but I gotta wonder about some of this. This "faster re-load" thing seems wrong. I can fire 20 rounds from my M1-A, do a quick re-load and crank off another 20. My Garand goes for 8 rounds, then "sproing"...kicks out the clip. I re-load, fire another 8 rounds, "sproing", I re-load another clip and finally get to 20 rounds. This is faster? Plus, if after 15 or 16 rounds I can yank the M1-A magazine and switch it out with a full one while the gun is still hot. This is faster? Hmm. Maybe I'll go back to the range with the timer this week just for the "hard facts" but I'm real doubtful. Maybe if I only put 8 rounds into the M-1A mag to begin with, eh? But this seems really weird. Maybe I should only use politically correct 10 round mags...don't think I even own any. And that's still 10 rounds. Oh well. Stay safe. Ah, now I get it! I just re-read this post. Yup, in this hypothetical situation an enblock clid would be faster. Ah, the imagiantion knows no bounds.
 
M1 Garand vs. M1A/M14

I never shot the M1A, I now recently aquired a Garand. The Garand would be it for me given the choice between the two. Its more accurate than my Mauser 98K, which I would use if my Garand isn't available, then my SKS, since at distances up to 250 yards and less where most conflict requiring a rifle will take place, so I'm told, 7.62x39 will knock the target down as well as .30-06 and 8mm Mauser respectfully.
 
I've got both but given the choice I'll take my M-14 over my Garand. While the garand may be faster to reload than the M-14, you still have to stop and pick up those clips when they eject out of your rifle or you will soon have a single shot. :( Another thing is muzzle flash, is issued, the M-14 has an excellent flash suppressor while the Garand doesn't. I've fired both in low light conditions and the M-14 has a few sparks but nothing else. The Garand has a pretty good sized pumpkin at the muzzle. One other thing I seen not mentioned here is that the M-14 uses a roller on the bolt locking cam where the Garand does not. Reading through Steven's M-14 book, as early as 1943 they were exerimenting with putting this same roller on the Garand. The reason was that in heavy rains the cam lug on the Garand would sieze up for some reason. This is why you see the improvement made on the M-14 in this area.
 
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