Garand and blanks.....

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BigBore44

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So a man I’ve taken care of for awhile passed today. He was a Command Sergeant Major in the Army. A wonderful man that I very much respected. His family and I developed a friendship in the last couple weeks. His son is wanting to have a 21 gun salute for him when all this Coronavirus stuff blows over. His son has his dad’s Garand and his uncle has another. I offered to make the 2 hour drive to the grave site and allow them to use mine as well. I would be honored to have my rifle participate in that salute. But I don’t know if a fully functional rifle will operate properly when using blanks. I expect this to be a short thread. But I’d appreciate any input you all have on the subject matter.

Thanks guys.
 
The rifle will fire a blank but it will not auto cycle. If you carefully watch a drill team perform this action you will see that they manually cycle the action between each salute in a coordinated move. There is also an attachment for certain military rifles that constrict the release of gas from the blank allowing the action to cycle but I've never seen one in person.

Hope this helps.

.40
 
I did military funerals back in the 80's. We use the Garand. There were two ways. One was to use the blank firing adapter, the other was as forty_caliber said was the manual cycling of the bolt. Being that we were Air Force there were problems with each method. We went with the manual cycle. Fire, bring the rifle to your chest to cradle the rifle, use your off hand to cycle the bolt. The problem was there were people with insufficient arm strength to cycle the bolt. So you had to make sure that you had synchronized fire but also fire on each volley. It takes practice to make it nice, but is very doable. Sorry for your loss.
 
As the others have said, you can either manually cycle the bolt or use a blank adapter.

When I was doing WW2 reenacting, we used this type of blank adapter, which replaces the gas cylinder lock:

https://www.ebay.com/c/1832050859

Or, you can use a fancier one, like this:

https://www.warsendshop.com/products/m1-garand-invisible-blank-adapter

Properly speaking, a 21-gun salute is reserved for honoring "a national flag, the sovereign or chief of state of a foreign nation, a member of a reigning royal family, and the president, ex-presidents and president-elect of the United States." Veterans are entitled to 3 rifle volleys at their funerals. If the firing party consists of 7 persons, that could lead to the confusion that it's a "21-gun salute." But it isn't.
 
Two types of blanks, "report" and "grenade launching".

They ARE NOT interchangeable!!!

Firing a grenade blank through a report blank firing device is NOT cool.
 
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Thanks guys. I REALLY appreciate the the input. My brother is on an Honor Guard for his PD. His rifle is also a Garand. So that makes 4. I’m pretty sure a friend of mine has one also. So 5. So I’ll need to order a few blank adapters. No problem.
 
So I’ll need to order a few blank adapters.
Note that the standard blank adapters are designed for GI blanks. (And not grenade-launching blanks.) If you are using hand loaded blanks, or blanks from another source, be sure to test them with your blank adapter first. Some blanks may not have the power to cycle the action with a standard blank adapter. Or, they may be too powerful. You don't want to be embarrassed at the actual funeral.

It's important to securely screw the BFA on the barrel in place of the gas cylinder lock, and then install the lock screw tightly. Otherwise, you risk launching the BFA itself as a projectile.

It would be much simpler to use M1903 Springfields, rather than Garands, to fire blank salutes.
 
If you are using hand loaded blanks, or blanks from another source, be sure to test them with your blank adapter first.
The son said he has blanks, but I’m not sure what kind they are. I “think” blanks use a special powder. Do you or anyone else know what kind? And I’m betting they take a special crimping die. So I should probably just by some blanks. Is there a way to tell what you are buying if they aren’t labeled on the package?
 
We have a local American Legion post with a drill team that will come to veterans funerals and perform the ceremony. They came to dad's funeral, 2 of the guys were close friends of dad. They manually operated the actions between volley's. Of course this is something they practice and it was well done. One advantage of manually operating the action is that it is easier to find the shell casings. All 21 of them were recovered and are inside dads flag.
 
I “think” blanks use a special powder. Do you or anyone else know what kind? And I’m betting they take a special crimping die. So I should probably just buy some blanks. Is there a way to tell what you are buying if they aren’t labeled on the package?
Vintage GI blanks (in .30-06) can be identified by an annular groove (crimp) at the neck, and a heavy paper or cardboard top wad sealed with a red lacquer sealant. (Grenade-launching blanks, in contrast, have a star crimp.) The powder is EC Blank Fire powder. Incidentally, this same powder was used as the filler for about half the Mark II fragmentation grenades in WW2. (The other half used TNT as the filler. Different fuses -- "detonating" versus "igniting" -- were used, depending on the filler.) You never want to load a bullet over Blank Fire powder.

The annular crimp cannot be replicated by any hand-loading die that I'm aware of.

As far as buying blanks, be aware that genuine GI blanks (in .30-06), once commonplace, are now rare and expensive. Probably veterans' organizations still have a supply, to use for funerals.

You can hand-load blanks, using some fast-burning powder, but there's no guarantee they will function with a blank adapter. You would have to experiment, by trial and error, to get a charge that would work. I don't have a source for loading data.
 
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Note that the standard blank adapters are designed for GI blanks. (And not grenade-launching blanks.) If you are using hand loaded blanks, or blanks from another source, be sure to test them with your blank adapter first. Some blanks may not have the power to cycle the action with a standard blank adapter. Or, they may be too powerful. You don't want to be embarrassed at the actual funeral.

It's important to securely screw the BFA on the barrel in place of the gas cylinder lock, and then install the lock screw tightly. Otherwise, you risk launching the BFA itself as a projectile.

It would be much simpler to use M1903 Springfields, rather than Garands, to fire blank salutes.
not too tight on the lock screw. the blank adapter is screwed onto the barrel, so the lock screw just keeps the bfa from backing out. i use a large flat blade screw driver to firmly tighten the screw.

that is a blank firing garand, broken down for repair, in my avatar.

luck,

murf

murf
 
not too tight on the lock screw. the blank adapter is screwed onto the barrel, so the lock screw just keeps the bfa from backing out. i use a large flat blade screw driver to firmly tighten the screw.
One of the functions of the gas cylinder lock is to regulate the fore-and-aft placement of the gas cylinder, so that it properly lines up with the gas port on the barrel. On some Garands, there is a noticeable gap between the rear of the gas cylinder and the front handguard. On these rifles, if you overtighten the gas cylinder lock (or the BFA, which takes its place), the gas cylinder will be pushed to the rear and won't line up with the gas port (which means that the rifle won't cycle). The lock screw is very important in maintaining this alignment, and keeping the BFA from backing out. That's why I say it has to be tight. (The BFA is actually much harder to adjust than the standard gas cylinder lock, because it's round and lacks the projection on the bottom. That makes it infinitely adjustable, whereas the standard gas cylinder lock is adjustable only in full rotations.)

I learned this the hard way during one of my WW2 reenactments, when I accidentally launched my BFA downrange. Fortunately I found it on the ground about 15 feet in front of our position. This is also why you never aim directly at a person during a reenactment.
 
screwing in the bfa too much can bind up the op rod. make sure the hand guard stays a bit loose to prevent this. the lock screw, as alexandera said, keeps the bfa from flying off the gun and can be as tight as you want, but, as i said, can be firmly tightened with a screwdriver.

i also suggest cleaning the guns after every shooting. the carbon buildup on the gas cylinder, gas port, etc. is a lot more when shooting blanks and if not cleaned will also bind up the action. if you clean the gun regularly, the lock nut coming loose issue will not happen.

luck,

murf
 
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