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Carbine story from my youth

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ArmyLifer View Drop Down
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Joined: Mar 01 2020
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    Posted: Mar 07 2020 at 10:48am
My uncle was a well respected M1, M14, and M1A gunsmith back in the day.  He opened a commercial shop in Spokane, WA in the early 80's.  I would work there after school some days, and the story below probably took place in the '82-'83 timeframe.  

One day he had a customer come in that had an M1 carbine with misfire issues.  My uncle gave me the task of fixing it.  He walked me through the steps of troubleshooting the problem and coming up with a solution.  For the life of me I can't remember if it was a firing pin issue or hammer spring.  It was one or the other.  After I fixed it, he told me to test fire it.  He would test fire his match M1A's into 14" blocks of tamarack inside the back corner of his shop.  I loaded up 5 rounds of 30 Carbine in a mag and test fired away.  The carbine worked flawlessly! 

It was sometime later that day that he noticed .30 cal holes in the outside of his metal building.  After examining the tamarack, he found that the little more than a pistol 30 Carbine cartridge out of an 18" barrel punched holes right through 14" of wood, while .308cal 168gr matchkings out of a 24" barrel wouldn't even make it 1/2 way.  We have no idea where those bullets ended up.  The side of the building that was perforated lead to his parking lot.  Past that there was a street, then another building.  We searched and asked around, but no other holes or damage.  Close call that one!  The only explanation we could come up with was that the round nose ball round would just push through while the hollow point match round would flatten the nose and tumble.  Who knows?

He got a commercial center fire bullet trap after that, and I haven't fired a carbine since.

But, I just got a new to me Inland...


Edited by ArmyLifer - Mar 07 2020 at 7:30pm
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Quietus View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Quietus Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: Mar 07 2020 at 12:54pm
Funny how your bullets penetrated that which 168g SMKs at .308 velocities could not, when the durned carbine ammo in Korea would not penetrate a Chicom soldier's cotton-insulated winter uniform or run the gun, either one.  (Snark off.) 
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote sling00 Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: Mar 08 2020 at 6:46am
Great story. Thanks for sharing.
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Dave Tennent View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Dave Tennent Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: Mar 08 2020 at 11:34am
More please!
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m1a1fan View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote m1a1fan Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: Mar 09 2020 at 4:41pm
Great story! Thanks. A second helping please.

My uncle owned a gun store when I was a kid. I remember walking past display cabinets filled with blued and shiny revolvers. Some small, but most were huge. Small ones on the bottom shelf, large shiny ones on top. I remember my dad and uncle talking about them and how he could barely sell a one. My dad bought a few on the cheap, but they are long gone now.

What were they?

Colt Snake guns.
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ArmyLifer View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote ArmyLifer Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: Mar 09 2020 at 6:21pm
Sorry, that was my one and only carbine story.

I'll switch it up though...M1 story.

My favorite uncle, Al Ewing, previously mentioned above, was a young 23 year old Army PFC in 1963.  He was stationed in Panama, but was picked up to shoot for the AMU that summer.  He went and won the Interservice Rifle Championships in Quantico, VA with a new record score of 500-71V's. 

As told to me by Clyde Malphus, a longtime AMU gunsmith: the other AMU gunsmiths wanted to know why uncle Al's M1 shot so much better than everyone else's.  They went and decided to tear it apart to figure it out.  That gun never shot worth a crap again after that, and they never did figure out why it was a good shooter.  Clyde retired sometime in the mid 90's, but every time I ran into him over the years after that he lamented that one rifle and uncle Al's blown chance of winning at Camp Perry later that summer.

Here’s uncle Al that summer, probably with that M1: https://imgur.com/a/5wMJQAL

I sure do miss that guy. 
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Charles View Drop Down
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Post Options Post Options   Thanks (0) Thanks(0)   Quote Charles Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: Mar 10 2020 at 9:04am
Most likely the action had never been out of the stock which fit like a bug in a rug, now it has been loosened up and lost the firm fit as before.
Just a thought.
Charles
Co B 1st Batl.115 Inf. Reg.
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