commercial 30-06 in a Garand

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When people talk about the Garands operational needs and compare it to a car engine, I don't think it's very analogous to liken using other ammo in it as to using diesel in it. No gasoline engines will run if you put diesel in them. On the other hand, most .30-06s will run with various .30-06 loads.

It's more like saying the Garand will only run on Shell 87-octane. It will not run on BP, Chevron, or Exxon 87. And God help you if you put in 89 or 93.
 
It's more like saying the Garand will only run on Shell 87-octane. It will not run on BP, Chevron, or Exxon 87. And God help you if you put in 89 or 93.
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j

Oh, come on..... That's carrying an analogy a teensy bit too far, don't you think.

My original comparison still applies.... It's what was the rifle DESIGNED to shoot that counts, not what will fit in the chamber that's important..... though if you insist on carrying it that far....

.... I guess if anything that will fit in an M1's chamber should be OK to shoot in it.... I guess that anything that will go in a cars fuel tank should be OK to run it on too... Let's see, that would include not only diesel, kerosene, and mineral spirits... but water, beer, and doggy pee too. :D

Best to all,
Swampy

Garands forever
 
I don't think it's carrying it too far, I think it's more accurate.

An engine designed to run on 87-octane should be able to run on any 87. Same goes for a .30-06. Sticking diesel in it is like jamming .303 British in the chamber.

Just my $0.02, but I did originally intend it in more of a comical way. Probably should have used a smiley.

:D

There we go.
 
Cosmo:

And your Mosin has a bolt handle that is waaaay to short for any "serious" shooter to tolerate. Why didn't the Russians put a serviceable bolt handle on their Mosin's that was long enough to comfortably handle and bent so you could scope it without having to modify it. You'ld think they would have thought about that in advance..... after all, it's not like they had any Germans to worry about or anything.
 
I heard he had to bubba up a Nagant with a .32 ACP cylinder! :)

I don't know how we managed to win WWII with those defective rifles. And who can get by with a .30-06 with 150-175 grain bullets and 4064? Next thing you know, they'll be asking us to use 2400 in .357s! :)
 
The M1 Garand was designed to work with the US .30 Cal. M2 Ball and M2 AP rounds, not just .30-06 (which is really a commercial designation)...

The M1 Garand will work just fine with any ammo built to the M2 spec (which includes the use of an IMR4895/WC852 burning rate type of powder), no matter who makes it...

Use ammo loaded with slower powders at your own risk, unless you use some system for bleeding off some of the port pressure...

Forrest
 
I was at the range this morning with one of my Garands. I had a 12"X12" steel plate hanging in a frame at 300 yards. Everything seen in these photos was done with M2 ball, not black tip AP.

The big holes are from my Barrett so please disregard those. But all the .30 caliber holes were punched through with "underpowered" M2 ball.

plate.jpg

From the backside. The little splatter marks are from an M1 carbine, also at 300 yards. No damage to the steel at all.

plateII.jpg

As has already been stated an adjustable gas plug makes this entire argument irrelevant. Or like someone else suggested simply get some surplus M2 ball, pull the projectiles, and reseat hunting projectiles of the proper weight.

Looking at that plate I have absolutely no reason to believe the M2 ammo is underpowered in any way. Just because an 06 round can be loaded to 3000 F.P.S. doesn't mean it needs to be. A soft point bullet would be absolutely devastating at M2 velocities to any soft target.

And again, keep in mind I took these shots at 300 yards with open sites. I am not much of a hunter but I am positive I would never shoot at an animal in excess of 300 yards with open sites. So I have got to ask, why in the world would you need any MORE power than what the M2 ball produces?
 
I don't really have a dog in this fight, but I'll be the devil's advocate.

In practical terms, more power wouldn't hurt just cause you'll get a flatter trajectory if nothing else which helps at any given range. Faster flight means less wind-drift too. Also for someone like you, you may wish sometime to shoot through thicker steel which extra velocity would help, or you may wish to punch the same steel plate at even further distances which added velocity would help, both in getting through the plate and in hitting your target.

In absolute terms, no the M2 is not underpowered. In relative terms to the .30-06's potential, it is. It all depends on your frame of reference.
 
The .30-06 was originally a military cartridge. What was the original load? It was a 150 gr FMJ loaded to 2750fps +/- 50fps. Yes thats right. The ORIGINAL specs were the same as M2 ball. It didn't start to get loaded hotter until civilian experimenters got ahold of it. These people are the velocity junkies I talked about in a previous post. The military's needs were met just fine with the original load specs. Why would they change it?

Commercial ammo was loaded to the same specs as the military ammo for many years because, 1)that was all they knew, and 2)smokeless powder development was still in its infancy in the early 20th century. We now have available many powders that weren't available in the 1930's. Many ammo companies have specially designed proprietary powders to squeeze out the most velocity as possible while still keeping chamber pressures to spec. Most of these powders are slow burning and unsuitable for the M1's gas system.

Instead of getting angry at John Garand for designing his rifle to function with the military ammo of his time, why don't you get angry with the ammo companies for loading the .30-06 so far off from its original specs that it cannot safely be used in all firearms chambered for it. That is what irritates me. I don't get irritated with Garand because he didn't have a crystal ball to see what people would be shooting out of his rifle design in the future. How dare he design a military rifle 70+ years ago that won't function with commercial ammunition from today. What nerve.

One last thing before I'm finished with this thread for good. Do you honestly believe that a few hundred fps really makes that big of a difference? I don't think anything you are likely to shoot will even know the difference between a 150gr bullet at 2700 and the same bullet at 2900 or even 3000, which by the way, just because the factory says it will get that velocity doesn't mean it will. Do you even own a chronograph? If you do, go check some of those .30-06 loads, you might be surprised at how "weak and low powered" many of them really are.
 
And your Mosin has a bolt handle that is waaaay to short for any "serious" shooter to tolerate.
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Not so. You just have to know how to cycle it properly. You use your arms like a red army man, not your wee fingers like some weak money-counting capitalist. There are several threads on the subject.

So I have got to ask, why in the world would you need any MORE power than what the M2 ball produces?
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For brown bear with a .30'06, a 200 grain+ bullet is suggested. And for hunting in general, I don't want to go through the PINA of pulling bullets and reloading the old shells with SP's. And I'd like to be able to shoot commercial .30'06 out of a .30'06 rifle. I'm funny that way.

One last thing before I'm finished with this thread for good. Do you honestly believe that a few hundred fps really makes that big of a difference?
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Not really, but like you said the limitation is really one of powder burn rate and bullet weight.

In absolute terms, no the M2 is not underpowered. In relative terms to the .30-06's potential, it is.
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Yes, this is what I was trying to get at.
 
Yes, the original .30-06 was a 150-grain pill at 2700, but don't forget the M1 Ball which was a 172-grain FMJ boattail loaded initially to 2700fps and later to 2640 fps. That initial loading came about in 1926 because the military thought it would make it more effective at long range. They eventually went back to the M2 150-grain because it worked better in the Garand.

That seems to contradict your first three paragraphs.
 
The dog I have in this race is a .308 Garand. So commercial surplus .308 should be ok in this rifle?

BTW Midway is listing the adjustable gas plug as DISCONTINUED BY MFR.
 
Yes, the original .30-06 was a 150-grain pill at 2700, but don't forget the M1 Ball which was a 172-grain FMJ boattail loaded initially to 2700fps and later to 2640 fps. That initial loading came about in 1926 because the military thought it would make it more effective at long range. They eventually went back to the M2 150-grain because it worked better in the Garand.

That seems to contradict your first three paragraphs.
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All right, I have to respond to this. I didn't contradict anything.
The problems with M1 ball were that it had excessive fouling for the military's standards, and it reduced barrel life substantially. Anyone who studies ballistics knows that a boat tail bullet will cause more barrel erosion than a flat base bullet. The M1 ball round was replaced by the M2 ball for these reasons. The fact is that M1 ball is still perfectly safe to fire in the M1 rifle.
 
The dog I have in this race is a .308 Garand. So commercial surplus .308 should be ok in this rifle?
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NO !!! Same concerns, even more so.

See my post much earlier in this thread.

Best regards,
Swampy

Garands forever
 
It contradicts that the .30-06 did not get hotter until "civilian experimenters got a hold of it." It also contradicts that they had to wait years to get special powders to get higher performance out of the round. It also contradicts the idea that Garand made his rifle to handle the ammo of the time and then the ammo surpassed it. They had to take a step backwards to get his rifle to handle the ammo of their time.

And everything I've read said they went back to the 150-grain cause they couldn't get the Garand gas system to work well with the 172-grain loading. Never saw anything mentioned about barrel fouling or erosion.
 
And everything I've read said they went back to the 150-grain cause they couldn't get the Garand gas system to work well with the 172-grain loading. Never saw anything mentioned about barrel fouling or erosion.
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I don't know where you read that but it is false. Would you please provide a source for that information.

They did have functioning problems early on with M1 ball, but it was not due to the gas system. The main problem they had was failures to extract fired cases. They investigated and the cause was from the excessive fouling of M1 ball, and improperly manufactured ammunition, not the fault of the rifle. They later corrected these problems with an improved M1 ball load.
Further testing revealed that M1 ball wore out barrels after only 5000-6000 rounds, and M2 ball didn't wear out the barrel until 10,000+ rounds. Thats quite an improvement, and it would have saved quite a bit of money since barrel replacement wouldn't be neccessary as often as if they had stuck with M1 ball. If you do a little research you can easily verify this.
 
Swampy:

I did mis-type. I meant surplus, NOT commercial. I have surplus .308 (SA, Hirtenberger, etc). I meant to ask if the common (well, not so common, now) SURPLUS .308 out there is safe in the .308 Garand (Mine's a Fulton conversion).

Thanks.
 
M1 Shooter:

I don't really know for certain one way or another what the cause was. If you've done the historical research on it, I'll take your word for it.

Here are the sources I found:
http://www.reloadbench.com/cartridges/3006s.html
end of second paragraph under General Comments

http://www.huntingmag.com/guns_loads/30_06_springfield/
end of sixth paragraph

http://www.olive-drab.com/od_firearms_ammo_30-06.php
under .30-06 Military Cartridge Characteristics

All of these seem to refer to the cause of change being the adoption of the M1 with one stating it had problems with the M1 ball. I think I might have got mixed up with it being the gas system in particular though. I'm not sure it specifies in the article what the problem was. That's where I got a lot of it. I never saw anything about barrel life. I don't doubt it's true though.
 
I don't really know for certain one way or another what the cause was. If you've done the historical research on it, I'll take your word for it.

Here are the sources I found:
http://www.reloadbench.com/cartridges/3006s.html
end of second paragraph under General Comments

http://www.huntingmag.com/guns_loads/30_06_springfield/
end of sixth paragraph

http://www.olive-drab.com/od_firearms_ammo_30-06.php
under .30-06 Military Cartridge Characteristics

All of these seem to refer to the cause of change being the adoption of the M1 with one stating it had problems with the M1 ball. I think I might have got mixed up with it being the gas system in particular though. I'm not sure it specifies in the article what the problem was. That's where I got a lot of it. I never saw anything about barrel life. I don't doubt it's true though.
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None of your sources really go into much detail. They just simply state that the US military switched from M1 ball to M2 ball, but none of them give a satisfactory explanation. I have done some research, and there is a wealth of information out there concerning the M1 rifle and its development. The reasons I could find for the switch I already posted about. So the fact is that the original M1 ball load was safe for the M1's gas system, but it was unsatisfactory in other regards. M2 ball was not the only load to be used in the M1 during WWII either. M2 AP was used quite commonly, especially in the European Theater, and it was loaded with a 165gr (+/- 3gr) bullet at 2700fps. The Garand had no trouble digesting that ammo because it used the proper burn rate powder. In fact you will find that other weapons have had similar problems when the powders it was designed for are disregarded. The M16 is one example. It was designed for ammunition loaded with a certain type of powder. When the military switched powders, it caused excessive fouling, which in turn caused the rifles to jam more frequently. It just goes to show you, stick with loads the weapon was designed for.

You will also find that with any US military load they are different than their commercial equivalents. 7.62 NATO is not the same as .308 Winchester, and 5.56 NATO is not the same as .223 Remington. The same is true for .30 caliber military and commercial .30-06. They are not the same and not always interchangeable. As an example, I have a lot of surplus M2 ball for my Garands, and I also have a couple of sporting rifles in .30-06. On one sporter, it is very difficult to get a round of M2 ball to chamber, but it chambers commercial .30-06 with no problems. In comparing the two, I found the military ammo to have an ever so slightly longer case neck. That particular rifle must have a tight chamber though since M2 ball chambers just fine in my other sporter. The M2 ball of course functions just fine in my M1's. I just thought that was interesting.
 
And I'd like to be able to shoot commercial .30'06 out of a .30'06 rifle. I'm funny that way.
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Technically you have a M2 ball rifle, not a 30'06 rifle.

Thats why you cant shoot commercial .30'06 out of a M2 Ball rifle. Its one of the top 10 rules to safe firearm shooting:D Having the proper ammo for the weapon.

But you can "shoot commercial M2 Ball out of a M2 ball rifle. I'm funny that way."


Same with the .223 rifle and the. 5.56 rifle. They are more or less the same but are not. Same with 30'06 and M2 Ball.


Anywho thats how i look at it, and enjoy shooting my Garands.


Ps i got an email my CMP M1 carbine is going to be here Monday yea for me.
 
Technically you have a M2 ball rifle, not a 30'06 rifle.
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You know, now that I think about it, the Garand doesn't say ".30'06" on the side, does it? It says ".30" or something along those lines IIRC
 
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