Sometime you just need to have fun at the range. I've been re-reading "The Corps" series by WEB Griffin, so I decided I needed to take out the WWII guns today and give them some range time.

I started out with a little 25 yard shooting with the 1943 Remington Rand...it's actually a pretty decent shooter for what it is, and while I'll admit that that the 1911 has come a long way in the last 77 years, I'd have no trouble passing our dept. qualification course with this gun.

My M1 never ceases to amaze me with it's accuracy potential even with iron sights. I can typically get it to shoot under 2" at 100 from the prone (and I'm sure I'm the limiting factor there), and I was working on this today, paying extra attention to my follow-through and trying to observe the impacts. I fired round #6 of a clip, and then instead of chambering, round #7 came flying backwards out of the action and hit me right in the forehead. I'm not sure what happened...maybe I didn't have all 8 rounds seated fully in the clip. It has never done this before, and I put another clip through after that without incident, so I'm gonna call it a fluke.

I guess this is why we wear glasses:



The perpetrator:



Still a good day on the range with some old-school shooting iron!

rub some dirt on it, it will be fine,

and what about round #8?

quote:

Originally posted by lyman:
rub some dirt on it, it will be fine,

and what about round #8?

Pretty much what I did . The bolt closed on an empty chamber, #8 stayed in the magazine. I manually cycled the action to chamber it and fired it with no problems, and the clip ejected properly. I then recovered #7, single-loaded it, and shot it...no problems there, either.

Interesting. May have not been seated in the clip fully. Or the clip may be slightly bent or starting to lose its spring tension.

Just the rifle's reminder to you about who's really in charge.

M1 owners will have to keep an eye out for that.

Nice looking M1!

Hmmmmm. One of the old timers who took me under his wing when I was shooting High Power matches stressed that I should do my best to try to get all the rounds as close to fully seated in the clip as I could. I don't recall the why, or any warning of something like your incident happening. He did say they used to use a machine to load the clips, and it was almost impossible to get an enbloc properly loaded by hand compared to what the machine did, as they weren't really designed to be reused or loaded by hand from the get-go. The clips, like M1 carbine magazines and others, were intended to be single-use disposables. I guess as-issued, the recessed groove along the bottom is where the rim of the cartridges would have been locked into and the whole enbloc would have been a lot tighter than what's really possible to do by hand. Try as I might over the years, I've never managed to get one loaded in a way that matched his description. So, if what he told me is accurate, there really is no "fully seated" with an M1 enbloc today, just "close enough."

But for all that, I've never had anything like that happen, nor heard of such a thing happening until now. I wonder how far from "close enough" to seated that round was to misfeed in such a way? Is that clip in good shape?

quote:

Originally posted by RogueJSK:
Interesting. May have not been seated in the clip fully. Or the clip may be slightly bent or starting to lose its spring tension.

That's definitely a possibility. I have some really old clips that I bought from a friend. I'll have to take a closer look at that one. It may be time to retire it.

quote:

Originally posted by P220 Smudge:
He did say they used to use a machine to load the clips, and it was almost impossible to get an enbloc properly loaded by hand compared to what the machine did ....

Are there no mechanical aids available to accomplish that with reloaded clips today? If it’s a significant issue, it seems to me someone would have developed something like that.
(Be nice. I’m exposing my ignorance of M1s and their clips in a quest for education. )

quote:

He did say they used to use a machine to load the clips, and it was almost impossible to get an enbloc properly loaded by hand

Interesting...I'd love to see what that looked like. I will say that I have noticed that there's always a small gap between the case head and the back of the clip, no matter how hard I try to get them all flush. That's probably what your friend was referring to.

It's entirely possible that that round was a little high in the clip...I loaded them myself, and I'm far from infallible. It just surprised me more than anything as I've never had that happen before (I've experienced M1 thumb, but before today never M1 face!). I was also relived when it shot the next clip without issue...re-assures me that it's likely an operator or clip problem, not a problem with my rifle.

quote:

Originally posted by sigfreund:
Are there no mechanical aids available to accomplish that with reloaded clips today? If it’s a significant issue, it seems to me someone would have developed something like that.
(Be nice. I’m exposing my ignorance of M1s and their clips in a quest for education. )

I'm only relating what I heard, and of course, this was range talk and we all know how that goes. It may be complete bunk, but I lean towards believing it because we mechanized and automated everything we could during WWII production. Whether the machine in the video Check Perry was so kind to post was what they used or something someone came up with on their own, I don't know. But again, I just do my best to get "close enough" by hand and that's been good enough for me. As a quick check, I'll often take a loaded enbloc and set it on the table with the bullets pointing down to check for any high rounds that I might have missed eyeballing it.

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
Interesting...I'd love to see what that looked like. I will say that I have noticed that there's always a small gap between the case head and the back of the clip, no matter how hard I try to get them all flush. That's probably what your friend was referring to.

Yeah, according to him, there would have been no gap between the base of the cartridge and the clip, and the edge of the case rims would have fit into the groove on the sides of the clip.

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:
M1 face!

Ok, this made me laugh.

Hey, it was just trying to give you a kiss to make up for biting your thumb.

quote:

Originally posted by Chuck Perry:

Ok, that thing is cool...so cool that I'd like one just because the mechanical nerd in me would enjoy operating it. I'm sure that my low volume of Garand shooting would in no way justify the expense of such a machine, but that doesn't make it any less cool.

The early M1’s had an issue with ejecting the clip at the time of chambering of the 7th round and jamming up the rifle. Known as “The 7th Round Stoppage”. They modified a rib on the inside of the receiver, left side I believe, to fix the problem. It happened in the early rifles and I am quite sure yours had the mod when the rifle went through Armorer overhauls. Maybe no but, highly unlikely. You may want to replace the spring under the clip ejection tab on the outside of the receiver and/or the op rod spring.

I am glad you are ok though.

quote:

Originally posted by 357fuzz:
The early M1’s had an issue with ejecting the clip at the time of chambering of the 7th round and jamming up the rifle. Known as “The 7th Round Stoppage”. They modified a rib on the inside of the receiver, left side I believe, to fix the problem. It happened in the early rifles and I am quite sure yours had the mod when the rifle went through Armorer overhauls. Maybe no but, highly unlikely. You may want to replace the spring under the clip ejection tab on the outside of the receiver and/or the op rod spring.

I am glad you are ok though.

Interesting. Mine is a very late 6-digit Springfield (in the 900,000 range), but it's a CMP special rack-grade, so it's far from correct. I'm sure it was modified somewhere along the line. I have not to date had any issues with the clip trying to eject early, and even during the incident today, the clip stayed in place after #7 came at me, and then ejected properly after I cycled the action and fired round #8.

quote:

Originally posted by 92fstech:

quote:

Originally posted by 357fuzz:
The early M1’s had an issue with ejecting the clip at the time of chambering of the 7th round and jamming up the rifle. Known as “The 7th Round Stoppage”. They modified a rib on the inside of the receiver, left side I believe, to fix the problem. It happened in the early rifles and I am quite sure yours had the mod when the rifle went through Armorer overhauls. Maybe no but, highly unlikely. You may want to replace the spring under the clip ejection tab on the outside of the receiver and/or the op rod spring.

I am glad you are ok though.

Interesting. Mine is a very late 6-digit Springfield (in the 900,000 range), but it's a CMP special rack-grade, so it's far from correct. I'm sure it was modified somewhere along the line. I have not to date had any issues with the clip trying to eject early, and even during the incident today, the clip stayed in place after #7 came at me, and then ejected properly after I cycled the action and fired round #8.

I think some of the jamming issue was the en bloc ejecting partially not fully I should have been more clear. Thus the en bloc and last 2 rounds basically “gummed up the works”.

Gotcha. I'll definitely watch for this going forward. It gives me an excuse to go shoot the m1 some more, too, so it's a win-win.

the fix for the 7th round stoppage was done long before 900K,


having a few springs on hand will help,


not so sure about the story of the machine loading vs by hand,


if you see some original stocks with small pin holes in them, it is from where the folks shooting would sometimes tap the bullets against a surface to make sure all the cartridges were seated against the back of the enbloc,

I've do the same on table tops if one round sat higher than the rest when loaded,