I've been a shooting fanatic since I was about 5 years old, a love fed by my father and his constant supply of guns, ammunition and reloading components for 20 years then by various second incomes for another 40 years. I've been through shotgun phases, benchrest phases, high velocity rifle phases, 1903A3 phases, Swiss K-31 phases, Ishapore phases, long range phases, High Power competition phases, Cowboy Action Shooting phases, hunt with revolver phases, Mosin Nagant phases, AR15 phases, Mini-14 phases, AK-47 phases, fix-broken-gun phases and more others that I've forgotten. Heck, it's been so bad that the wife and I bought 55 acres and I had a 25-100 yd., then a 200 yd. range laid out before the road into the place was packed down. Then came the 300-600 yd. range. I still enjoy many of these phases but for the last three years M1 Carbines have dominated and consumed more of my time at the gunsmithing bench, the reloading bench and the shooting bench than any others before. Currently I own (I think) fourteen of them, three of which are commercial examples (1st Gen Universal x2 and an Iver Johnson) with the remainder being various US military examples by most of the WW2 manufacturers. As such I've learned a bit about them and have definitely and have sifted through a lot of the regurgitated BS.
To
@KYamateur if you just want an M1 Carbine to shoot look closely at the older commercial models. The 1st Generation Universal's (S.N.'s under 100,000) are pretty good and many times slip through the cracks on Gunbroker and sell for <$1000. The easiest way to spot them is to look at the charging handle. If it's skeletonized like this-
then it's NOT a 1st Generation Universal.
The newer of the two I own (S.N. 70,xxx) is quite accurate routinely grouping under 3" at 100 yds. with cast and jacketed bullets alike-
I wanted a carbine to keep in my daily driver pickup so I adapted my newer Universal to a folding stock and it continues to shoot well, even at 200 yds.-
My other Universal is quite a bit older. I haven't shot it quite as much but it appears to be capable of 3"-4" 100 yd. groups
My other commercial example is an Iver Johnson. I paid $500 shipped for it and it was a hot mess, with POI at 100 yds. being about 3 FEET right of POA at 100 yds. and the bolt hanging during cycling. It took some pretty drastic measures and quite a bit of time at the workbench to correct the POI , but now it too is a pretty good shooter-
The only reason I can come up with that these are "so" accurate is the commercial barrels vs. wartime barrels.
For a while I had an IAI (Israel Arms International) which is a later, USGI compatible carbine and it was a pretty good one too. Often they sell for <$1000 on Gunbroker. You might watch for those.
There are still deals on USGI carbines, but they won't drop in your lap, you have to be vigilant. How about a
re-Park'ed Inland for $750 that sold just yesterday? Another
Inland for $850. Last spring I attended our local Scentsy/Yankee Candle...I mean Gun Show and left with a nice IBM for a paltry $800-
About a year ago some friends who buy unclaimed storage units called me and they'd found a run-of-the-mill Inland in the back corner, significantly rusted and in a battered stock. I bought it for a song, cleaned the bore that was also rusted, went straight to the bench with it, moved the sight to the 200 yd. setting and flung a few-
OK, so it shot a little high, but didn't group terribly bad.
Regarding reliability, I've yet to find one that is not brought up to snuff by replacing the springs and disassembling and cleaning the bolt. Magazines, I guess I have three dozen military have magazines and have only one that gives me problems and the spring is noticeably weak. I'll replace it eventually. The new Korean KCI magazines are 100% reliable and fairly inexpensive.
I don't know why people have such a hard time getting accuracy from carbines, maybe I've been lucky? Granted, I have had maybe two or three that wouldn't do less than 5" or 6" at 100 yds. no matter what I tried, but most of those I've owned will do around 3" consistently, some even less.
The sights on the carbines were well designed. At their lowest setting and firing a 110 gr. FMJ @ ~2000 fps, POI should be +3" @ 100 yds., 0" @ 150 yds. and about -7" @ 200 yds. This give the little carbines a defensive point blank range of around 200 yds., where the bullet is still clipping along at almost 1300 fps.
Speaking of POI, if I can fault the Carbine for anything, it'd be POI's that don't match the sights. POI's too low are fairly easily to correct by removing a little metal from the front sight. But POI's that are too high or too far laterally to be corrected by sight adjustment require some unorthodox measures to correct that are best left for another thread.
The cartridge itself isn't terribly difficult to load, but one does need to watch case length. Brass is quite commonly found for sale on forums and there's always plenty on Gunbroker. Although I shoot mostly Hornady and Sierra bullets, I found a screaming deal on Armscor bullets at
$9.57 per 100, shipping included.
Sorry for the dissertation, but maybe it will clear the air some.
35W