Making The M1 Garand
In my critique of the M1 Garand rifle on Sunday, I noted that John Cantius Garand was not only a firearms designer, but a machinist as well. It was his intimate understanding of the world of the shop floor that made his rifle economical to produce, which is in my opinion by far the most outstanding attribute of the weapon.
Below is a video made of a series of segments showing rifle production at Springfield Armory, dating from 1955 (the footage was probably shot earlier than that):
In it one can see drop-forging, one of the first steps to making a Garand receiver, barrel boring, lathe operations, barrel straightening, what appears to be a broaching operation, receiver and barrel assembly, tolerance inspection, stockmaking, final assembly, and test firing. The speed and care with which each of these processes are undertaken is stunning (I certainly never got that good on a lathe!); it definitely gives the impression that these men knew their work was important.
This video gives the watcher a rare peak through the window of Springfield Armory during its golden years, when it was making “the finest battle implement ever devised”.
H/T, GunLab.net.
Nathaniel is a history enthusiast and firearms hobbyist whose primary interest lies in military small arms technological developments beginning with the smokeless powder era. He can be reached via email at nathaniel.f@staff.thefirearmblog.com.
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How fascinating it would have been to actually watch the entire production of this rifle. Each time I clean mine after a range outing, I often ask myself how did they machine this area or how did they do this operation? Amazing.
While stationed at Gtmo Bay Cuba, I was in the Armory over on the mainside and we had 256 Garands in our care and we were in charge of maintaining them in the event the base was 'overrun' by the Cubans. That was the thinking back in 1969. At any rate, we did everything except re-barreling and headspacing and I had many revolving Lazy Susan bins to choose parts from during cleaning and repair. These rifles were in excellent shape but they had one drawback; They were shot very little but cleaned a lot by the Naval Reserve Ground Defense Force or NEGDEF who would take them to the range on a regular basis and blast away about 6 cllips of ammo. Afterwards, they were cleaned by the contingent of men that used them but back then we did not have bore guides to center that steel cleaning rod and you can just imagine what an off-center steel rod would do to the muzzle area after awhile. Oh well, we did the best we could under the circumstances. 45+ years later, who knew I would have a renewed interest in these fine rifles? Yeah, they are not tack drivers but they are fun to shoot!!
Mike in FL
Thanks for posting that video! This article makes me appreciate my Springfield Armory M1 even more! :D