Garand Slamfire with LC 69
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=264020
“While the M1 and M14/M1A do have the "web", slam fires are still possible and can be catastrophic. I was lucky enough to come through one with a GI Springfield M1 from the DCM about 20 years ago using LC 69 issue ammo. The rifle held together for the most part, but did fire out of battery on loading a single round in slow fire. If it had been in a rapid fire string, I most likely would not be typing this right now. The rear of the receiver from just aft of the serial number was blown off and the stock cracked with a big chunk blown out of it. The bolt was jammed into the back of the receiver and would not come forward. The op rod handle ripped the palm of my hand open, and you could read the head stamp of the case in reverse on my palm. The recovered empty case was about an inch long. Never did find the rear of the receiver. The DCM took the rifle back and never did tell me what they determined went wrong. They replaced it with a brand new, and I mean, brand new, never issued H&R.
If you shoot either the M1 or M14, I would highly suggest you either use a SLED with the M1 or load single rounds from the mag on the M1A. Reloads should use the harder primers, like CCI, and I check mine with a seating gage. ”
From Old Culver’s forum:
I opt for the #34. A number of my friends who shoot the Garand regularly use LR primers. One who specializes in ballistics for a large ammunition mfr says it is imperative to have the primer seated .005", no less but a std LR primer is safe.
The # 34 will not save you from the many mistakes that can be made with a Garand, but will add some insurance against death or severe injuries that can occur even when you have all the safety bases covered.
I started shooting the Garand in 1958 in service, was a unit armorer, have owned and fired Garands for close to 50 years.
One slam fire is enough to coax a person out of complacency. Fortunately, the bolt gouged into the receiver a third way back so my right hand and arm were the only recipients of countless tiny pieces of hot brass. Since I was old enough for the doctors not to worry about blood poisoning over time, they left the brass in the tissue.
The cartridge was a 'Garand safe' commercial match round. Two gunsmiths found nothing to indicate a problem with the rifle, but after checking the primers/seating depth surmised that the firing pin dimpled-fired the LR primer in the round.
That occurred in 1999 and since then I have fired over 8,000 rounds through several Garand's, all using CCI #34 and have not had any problems. I think the major authors/gunsmiths who specialize in the Garand will tell you to use the #34.
If you really get curious about primer seating depth, mic some Lake City milsurp, some commercial Match ammo and some of your own loads, if you load. If you have any of the LC, a quick visual will show you that the primers are seated quite a bit deeper than any commercial ammo. And they are mil-spec primers, less sensitive than std LR commercial primers.
Garand Slamfires with Federal American Eagle ammunition.
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=366406
dmftoy1
Senior Member
Join Date: 11-17-03
Location: Lexington, IL
Posts: 1,947 FWIW if you're going to use commercial ammo (non-nato) I would not single load if you decide to do any service rifle matches as the softer primers (IMHO) are a greater risk of a slam fire. I was recently shooting next to a guy shooting Federal American Eagle 150 grain (30-06) in a Garand and he had a slam fire upon releasing the bolt. I think if you're loading from a magazine you're probably ok as the extra "drag" slows down the bolt slightly.
Just my .02
Regards,
Dave
2008 slamfire with Greek HXP 88 30-06 ammunition.
http://www.jouster.com/cgi-bin/reload/reload.pl?noframes;read=31735#31762
Re: M1 Garand / Hang fire ?
Levisdad <Send E-Mail> -- Tues 3 Jun 2008 8:54 am
Yep 1988, Lot hxp 88j001-002
I also had a slamfire out of this same lot a short time ago.
The slamfire was from closing the bolt using a two round clip. It was the second stage of rapid prone. I've fired 200 rds after that with out a problem. Until the two hangfires.
Slamfire with HXP 20 Feb 2010
http://www.thecmp.org/forums/showthread.php?t=8784&page=2
Today, 09:03 AM
chevycrazy69
Join Date: Oct 2009
Posts: 11
________________________________________
I have had one slamfire with a M1 garand. I was single loading during the sighters portion of a NRA high power match. Sure scared the crap out of me. I put the garand down and finished the match with my AR. I was using HXP ball. I have no idea what caused the slam fire. It has made me much more careful in how fast I let the bolt forward during single loading. I have fired hundreds of rounds (both reloads and ball) in that garand since without a single problem. I have used CCI 34 primers in all my garand reloads since. Do I feel it is needed, no. But I am a design engineer and like to take a "belt and suspender" approach to my safety. I do use winchester small rifle primers in my AR and have for many thousands of rounds. I wish I knew if that particular HXP round had a high primer or not.
http://handgunsandammo.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=cr&action=display&thread=9424
M1 Garand woes...
« Thread Started on May 2, 2010, 4:39am »
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Well, today I got to attend a super-awesome marksmanship clinic on how to improve our positions for highpower shooting using sling support. I learned *a lot* The big take away was to really practice and stick to the fundamentals and get those things down.
The icing on the cake was to be a course of fire. I was using my treasured M1 Garand rifle and 1980 HXP Greek M2 150gr. ball ammunition. During the slow fire prone I was putting individual cartridges in the chamber, and then closing the bolt. During this exercise, I had an out of battery cartridge detonation. Confused and shocked me a bit, but fortunately the rifle was pointed down range, and the fired cartridge case jumped out backwards, sailed past me and hit me in the arm/torso/leg area. The primer was pimpled out and extruded a bit, but otherwise everything held together. The diagnosis was that the firing pin may have become elongated and may need replacing. I hope it is something simple. I switched to firing an unfamiliar M1 rifle, and encountered the frustration of not really knowing where it hit, and having to make adjustments on the fly. Then I had five cartridges and a magazine jump out of the rifle half-way after the third shot was fired. Then I shot an off-hand string, which was all over the paper, and I realized belatedly that the gas cylinder and the attached sights were loose and free to slide fore and aft!
So it was frustrating, to say the least. I've literally never had any issue or problem with an M1 apart from a cartridge case buckling and causing a stoppage once, and i stopped using that brand of ammo and never had a repeat. But today was clearly not my day.
Read more:
http://handgunsandammo.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=cr&action=display&thread=9424#ixzz1268Lr7Uw
Garand Slamfires with Greek Ammunition
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?p=7446022
Yesterday, 07:53 PM
#6
ArchAngelCD
Member
Join Date: November 25, 2006
Location: PA, USA
Posts: 9,272 Almost forgot to mention this, I bought 6 cans of Greek M1 ammo from CMP. In the second can I opened I actually had 3 slam-fires from 3 different clips. Didn't happen with ammo in the first can, didn't happen again with the rest of the ammo from that can or the next 2 cans of ammo I used. (192 rounds per can, 768 total rounds) Go figure, never happened to me with my reloads using standard CCI and Winchester primers as well as CCI #34 primers but I got 3 with ammo specifically loaded for the Garand by a government arsenal!
Garand Slamfire with Federal Primers
http://www.jouster.com/cgi-bin/reload/reload.pl?noframes;read=31870
Soft Primers Easy Slamfire?
http://www.snipershide.com/forum/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1321745
I suppose that this reply will show age on my part, but here goes. I carry a scar on my right palm from 13 stitches due to a slam fire back in the 80's. The rifle was a Match Grade M-1 Garand. Shooting NRA highpower requires 22 shots slow fire from 200 yds in the first stage. Loading a Garand single shot is no monumental task, but here is how it all happened.
While shooting the offhand stage, I was at my 6th shot for record with everything going fine. I slid #6 into the chamber, depressed the follower to allow the bolt to run home, and turned loose of the op rod. The bolt moved forward until it hit the rear of the follower and stopped. This is where i made my mistake. Rather than using my thumb to pop the op rod handle, I opted to bump it with the palm of my hand. Upon closing and partially locking into battery, the firing pin tapped the primer and ignited it. The op rod handle slammed into my palm and opened it up like a sardine can. Wrapped up the hand, went to the saw bones, and 13 stitches later I a fixed man.
That year I personally witnessed 2 other slam fires in matches. All with M-1 garands, and all using Federal 210M primers. One of the other guys has a scar identical to mine, the other person was smarter and got his meat hook out of the way. I notified Federal at the time of my accident to see if they had changed anything in their primer cups. They wanted me to send my rifle back for inspection, but I declined since I was shooting matches with it. Later that year I see an article in American Rifleman about how they had thickened their primer cups due to this problem.
I've never heard of slam fires on M-1A's, M-14's, or Ar's, but feel that it's allways a possibility. After my incident, I learned to allways bump the op rod with my thumb, palm up. That way all meat is out of the way.
You can readily tell if a Garand has ever slam fired. When it happens, it blows the windage knob clear off the sight and removes the top corner of the right locking lug recess in the receiver. I hope I've cleared this up for some. Kevin
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Garand Slamfire with Winchester Primers
http://www.mdshooters.com/showthread.php?t=39841
July 12th, 2010, 07:18 PM #16
Drmsparks
Old School Rifleman
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: PG county
Posts: 4,489
Images: 24
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lambo
I had a Slam-fire occur with my Garand when I was using Winchester Primers. The Cup Metal is to soft in those for use in Military Rifles. I now use the CCI #34 and haven't had that problem since.
Ditto. We have had a rash of slamfires (and blown primers) with the hornady garand match ammo. According to Hornady they were winchester primers.
__________________
RIP
Garand Slamfire with Federal Primers
http://www.thehighroad.org/showthread.php?t=467078&highlight=federal
Mine was once more than nine years ago and it rattled my faith in the old girl for sure - I mean it's a GARAND!
It was the first round of a full clip and the rifle closed all the way (as far as I could tell) so the only damage was to my trust in things. The round went downrange safely - even hit my target backer although I hadn't set into aiming the shot. It fed the next round just fine which was also Federal primed and didn't fire that one. I unloaded the rifle.
I set that rifle aside for the day as I wasn't sure what had happened. Another shooter asked me about the primer used and told me for the first time I'd heard it that Federal primers were too sensitive to use in semi-auto rifles. I didn't know any better and still am not sure of it but I've never had one slamfire using Winchester or CCI priming. I know that one incident isn't enough to substantiate a blanket condemnation but seeing you say it struck home for me.
There didn't seem to be anything wrong with the rifle and that's been proved out over a couple thousand rounds since, so I've taken it on faith and not used a Federal primer in any of my Garand rifles since.
It's a Springfield Armory, 1-55 date barrel but it isn't original to the receiver, though it came from CMP on another receiver that I converted to 7.62. It measures like a new one and has three "P" stamps, one "T" stamp, the small "m" and "A217B" on it. A couple of people have thought that it was a barrel designated for NM use, but I don't know any of that. It IS a good shooting barrel though.
I only know that nothing about the barrel or the receiver (so far as I can tell)contributed to that slamfire episode. To play it safe I took a little cut to take the headspace out to just short of my "No-Go" gauge because it had felt a little resistant closing on my 'Go' gauge and I thought maybe that could have brought the slamfire. It was probably just my worrying.
I use an old set of RCBS dies, hand prime with a Lee Auto-prime (or whatever it's called) to be sure of my primer set. The round was good but it had Federal No.210 priming and not being able to find another reason for that slamfire I switched to Winchester primers for the rest of my loading for the caliber.
It's been a lot of years since I shot high power matches so now I'm content to shoot CMP ammo, the Greek stuff these days
Garand Slamfires with Federal Primers
01-07-2009, 04:55 PM
SGT D USMC
FNG Join Date: Dec 2008
Location: oregon
Posts: 13
________________________________________
I had a slam fire in a M1. feel free to disreguard this post because few shooters have first hand knowledge, and even fewer have had one. It only happens to others so why worry, except if you are using federal match (very accrate) primers in a gas gun, You are playing russian roulette. My slam fire was in the mid 1980's. It was with a Federal match primer. I got very involved in this and found 17 cases of M1 slam fires with one common factor, ALL WERE WITH FEDERAL MATCH PRIMERS.
Posts: 161
Joined: Mon Jun 01, 2009 6:19 pm
Location: VA
DCM Garand slamfires out of battery with LC69 ammo
http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/index.php/t-178109.html
AK103K
January 21st, 2006, 05:17 PM
My right hand got tore up pretty good when my DCM Garand went hand grenade. I'm just glad it happened when I was single loading it, we never found the rear of the receiver, which I have a feeling would have ended up in my head. The worst part of the whole thing was, it happened in New Jersey and trying to convince the people at the hospital that it wasnt a "gun shot" wound and no need to bring the police into it.
AK103K
January 21st, 2006, 09:03 PM
I believe it slam fired. The recovered case was missing the front half, which leads me to believe it fired out of battery. The ammo was DCM issued GI Lake City 69 and not commercial 30-06 or reloads. I sent it back to Anniston and they never did tell me what they thought the cause was. They did send me a brand new H&R though. I still shoot M1's, but I no longer load single rounds by allowing the bolt to go home on its own, and anymore, I usually use a SLED. I also only use CCI primers when I do reload, for both my M1 and M1A's, and I also mike the primers.
edit to add: I dont believe that the M1 and M1A's firing pins can protrude or reach the primer, due to a slotted bridge in the receiver, that wont allow the tail of the firing pin by until the bolt is closing or closed.
Garand Slamfires with issue ball and NM ammunition
http://forum.1911forum.com/showthread.php?t=251078
11-23-2009, 12:23 PM
lowflash
Member Join Date: Dec 2005
Posts: 233
Quote:
Originally Posted by GRPfan
I've only read about first-hand slam fires (not hearsay) on the Internet a couple of times. There are two problems with this. First, we believe what we read on the Internet, and while a lot of good info is out there, so is a lot of misinformation. Also, we cannot get any kind of statistical information for how often slamfires happen.
Three slam fires with M1 rifles:
1964 ITR Camp Geiger NC International Harvester Mfgr M1 with issue ball ammunition, 1968 Gitmo Marine Marksmanship Instructor for Sailors using M1 rifles converted 7.62 Nato with issued 7.62mm Match XM118 Lot LC 12010, and a M1 Springfield match conditioned by Clint Fowler in 7.62 Nato ammunition .308 Federal Match. All three rifles were examined and found to be with in specification.
A friend who is a very experienced highpower competitor and reloader wrecked his match grade M1 Garand using the same handloads he had used for years when the rifle slam fired out of battery. Bent his op-rod, blew extractor/ejector out of bolt and rounded the receiver locking lug recess about 1/8" showing the bolt lug (thankfully) had barely entered the recess but was not fully in battery at the time the slamfire occurred. He received a cut on the forehead and had somewhat of a problem with his trigger control for a while thereafter. Fortunately, the rifle, and his shooting ability have since been restored.
Upon examination of the remaining lot of ammo, we found that the rounds did not have sufficient headspace (clearance) in his snug, match chamber. He had loaded this batch of ammo using the same (full length) die setting as always. Remember, all previous lots had measured OK. The problem stemmed from the fact that this particular lot of brass had been fired at least 8 times and had work hardened. His dies had been set to give proper headspace with once fired brass and he failed to check headspace on this lot after loading. The harder brass springs back more than softer brass after sizing which resulted in oversized (for his chamber)rounds.
Regards,
hps
Garand Slamfire with CCI #34 primer
http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=35116
08-25-2008, 06:46 AM
#17
B747
Boolit Man
Join Date: Jul 2005
Location: Sioux Falls, SD
Posts: 125 Also, keep in mind that the Garand has a floating firing pin that will at the very least make an indent mark on the primer if you release the bolt from all the way back.
I've had a slam-fire on mine even with a CCI #34 military style primer with the hard shell is supposed to help prevent that. When single round loading I now drop the bolt from about half way closed to keep bolt closing speed down.
A slam fire is always a bad deal --- if it occurs out of breach lock, really bad things will happen.
Wally
