currently made M1 carbines

https://www.classicfirearms.com/m-1-carbine-w-rockola-receiver-30-cal-semi-auto

This is the only new-production worth considering......and at that price, you could acquire a nice GI gun.

Just pick up an AO and compare it to a GI carbine......you'll run screaming.

The new Inlands LOOK good.....but way too many issues with poor heat treating.

As far as the postwar commercial carbines, the only ones I would consider are Universals below serial #99k and Plainfield's.

http://www.m1carbinesinc.com/ - this link will tell you everything you want to know about the commercial guns.

My advice: save up and get a clean GI gun. I have a '43 Winchester, '44 Inland and 4-digit Universal and they are all great little fun guns!

I have one of the new Inlands. I do not recommend it.

Fulton Armory, Rock-ola, Inland and Auto Ordinance... I agree with Nightlord40k on this, for the price of the new clones you can still find a decent G.I. that will probably be a better rifle... That is what I would do.. I also have a 1944 Inland... Great little rifle... Tin cans at the 100 yard berm don't stand a chance....

I have one of the war-model Inlands and love it. Coupled w/ Hornady Critical Defense, it is my new home-defense rifle.

hmm, when everybody asks what good is a 300 bo good for? aha right here it. is a better 30 cal carbine that I can mount a scope on and utilize one of the million mags out there. and although a borderline geezer at 63 I have purchased inlands for 169 when I was a kid and cheap ammo to go with,,,not so anymore. sorry for the thread derail......jmho

I'm going to have to side with diselchief. I have 2 carbines, both wwii: inland and rockola. and they're great. but for casual plinking you would be much better off with 300BO ar or the ruger 9mm carbine. Unless you reload, 30 carb is expensive, the guns are expensive...... it's kind of like saying "I'm looking for a casual driving car, I want a 1974 porche. sure they look cool, but they're high maintenance, hard to get parts for, don't drive very well, etc.

but hey, if you want an m1, get an m1. of the usgi, the inlands are probably the cheapest. of the old commercial ones, maybe try to find a universal with a serial number less than 100,000, or a plainfield with a serial number that starts with a letter.

they current production ones...........I don't get it. I really don't. We have modern cnc machines, our manufacturing capabilities are far superior to what we had 80 years ago, and for some reason, we cannot build a cheap, wartime rifle that was designed to be made on primitive machinery by unskilled labor as fast as possible. I really don't get it.

I don't get it. I really don't. We have modern cnc machines, our manufacturing capabilities are far superior to what we had 80 years ago, and for some reason, we cannot build a cheap, wartime rifle that was designed to be made on primitive machinery by unskilled labor as fast as possible. I really don't get it.

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I disagree with the notion that those workers making M1 Carbines were "unskilled labor". I'm not a machinist by even the broadest definition of the term but I have had some training and experience operating lathes and mills and I would say that it took more "skill" to make a rifle on the "primitive" machines of the period then operating the CNC machines of the present....

As for why companies today have a hard time making a rifle that works as well as the originals do, I think there are a lot of reasons. First it's harder to tool up to copy something then most people realize. They're not made the same way the originals were so new processes need to be created. There is limited capital investment available to accomplish this in order to stay competitive and compromises often need to be made. Some processes and compromises work better then others. At some point the company says this is close enough and puts it into production..

when everybody asks what good is a 300 bo good for? aha right here it. is a better 30 cal carbine that I can mount a scope on and utilize one of the million mags out there

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I have 2 carbines, both wwii: inland and rockola. and they're great. but for casual plinking you would be much better off with 300BO ar or the ruger 9mm carbine. Unless you reload, 30 carb is expensive, the guns are expensive...... it's kind of like saying "I'm looking for a casual driving car, I want a 1974 porche. sure they look cool, but they're high maintenance, hard to get parts for, don't drive very well, etc.

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I see both of your points if a guy is just looking for something semi-auto that is bigger then a .22 to use or just "plink" with. I'm guessing though that most guys that want an M1 Carbine to "plink" with want an M1 Carbine, they're not searching for an intermediate power .30 cal semi auto..... and decide upon an M1....

The new Inlands have a fantastic reputation from the gun magazines and paid online reviewers.

From many actual buyers here in the real world, this is not the case. I'd never buy one.

Bushpilot said:

I disagree that those workers making M1 Carbines were "unskilled labor". I'm not a machinist by even the broadest definition of the term but I have had some training and experience operating lathes and mills and I would say that it took more "skill" to make a rifle on the "primitive" machines of the period then operating the CNC machines of the present....

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Well, I think Greyling meant they weren't skilled FIREARMS workers. M1 carbines were largely made by firms involved in automotive, or other light industrial manufacture. Back then producing any durable good required a modicum of skilled labor.

But I disagree that the gun was DESIGNED to be easily mass produced- at least not in the way of an StG44 or M3 Grease Gun. When Winchester started on it, they certainly didn't want the design farmed out to a dozen different firms. Just look at the recoil spring guide channel- when the war started there was exactly ONE special jig capable of drilling it in the receiver- and Winchester owned it! It is truly a testament to the willpower, ingenuity, and capability of American manufacturing (at least back then) that they were able to overcome some of those design hurdles to produce as many as they did. Of course it didn't hurt that money was no object and Uncle Sam had a very strict QC process for them too.

The M1 carbine might be easy to make- but tough to make RIGHT.

Of course it didn't hurt that money was no object and Uncle Sam had a very strict QC process for them too.

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The M1 carbine might be easy to make- but tough to make RIGHT.

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yep... on both counts..

I'll vote for a USGI. The AO gun is cheap. You'll be sorry if you buy one of those.

I have experience with Inlands, the real Inlands, not the new ones. I have an early 43. There are plenty of parts out there to keep them going.

If you can find one with a good barrel (<1.5 ME) you have yourself an excellent rifle. Be prepared to rebuild the bolt tho. Takes about 30 minutes and $40 worth of original parts.

1K will get you a decent rifle. This one was sold yesterday. They don't last long so you have to have an app to notify you when someone posts a FS.

http://forums.thecmp.org/showthread.php?t=227337

Skilled labor.... Wartime M1 Carbines had to pass strict inspection (check the history of contractor Pedersen). The firms and workers building them had to develop serious skills to keep their contracts.

Rebuild the bolt..... The extractor spring on an original may be 70+ years old and springs may crystalize and fracture over time; on reassembly, make sure the extractor plunger correctly interfaces the extractor. A copy of the Army/Air Force tech manual is a good investment.

An AR is not the answer to everyone's different gun desires. As stated previously, when someone wants a particular gun, suggesting something completely different just seems to miss the point.

With so many corps. today owned by private equity firms, their only desire being not to make a product they can be proud of but to scrape every last penny out of the investment. If the company falters, they will find a way to make money anyway with tax dodges. That is the reason none of them seem to be able to make a quality M-1 Carbine clone. Use cheap labor, cheap materials, cheap processes and kind of sort of make it look like an original. Hopefully enough of the public will buy them before word gets out they're crap.

My 1943 production Carbine was made by a typewriter company, remember typewriters? Underwood, with no prior gun experience, made lots of good Carbines and their own barrels which were also sold to other companies making Carbines at that time.

Anybody know what the gov't. was paying for Carbines back then, and what that would equate to in today's dollars?

To amplify on @Bushpilot's point, one of the big differences between wartime production and any modern-day work is in scale.

The wartime manufacturers used what we would now call "single point" machining. The tooling was set up to do exactly one machining step on exactly one part. Any further machining was executed on a different machine. This has some really good machining benefits. Like wear on tooling can be tracked fairly closely. So, by using a counter, at a known number or repetitions, the tooling is adjusted (or replaced) so that the end result is within tolerances. Also, the machine could be set up once, for the exact action, which could be monitored so as to be exactly right for that specific operation.

This methodology has a drawback, too--it's only economical for a large number of parts. It's labor intensive as well. And is needs a ton of floor space, and a lot of machines.

Modern firearm machining expects to use multi-point machines, that can be set up to make short runs of different parts (based on finite expected sales figures). This is why AO is using so many castings in the new carbine parts production. Also why it seems like they are not spending a lot of time in finishing those parts, too. QC has a different impetus, too. If a part is on the margins of tolerance now, ok, you get a frustrated owner sho sends it to the factory or a gunplumber. Then, there was a soldier, a sailor, a Marine whose life was on the line--that will affect how a QC inspector works.

Speedo66 said:

Anybody know what the gov't. was paying for Carbines back then, and what that would equate to in today's dollars?

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My memory keeps popping up $47, which would be, converting from August 1945 dollars to 2018 dollars, $648. About half what the new AOs go for.

.300BO is an interesting caliber. However, it's going to be really difficult to find in a 5 pound weapon.

A Carbine in .300BO would be very interesting, possibly far more interesting than an AR in .30carbine

CapnMac said:

A Carbine in .300BO would be very interesting, possibly far more interesting than an AR in .30carbine

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I believe that would be a Ruger Mini 14 in 300 BO.
I have a factory 30 carbine "proof" load around here somewhere. It's a (I believe, can't remember) 168gr bullet in the 30 carbine case. Looks interesting.

I can buy as much 30carbine ammo as I want for about $20 a box of 50. For as much as I shoot my CMP Inland, I don’t consider that “expensive”, when compared to the price of other calibers I shoot.

And, the poster above who mentioned the Hornady Critical Defense load, I agree. My Inland has a 15rd mag of that load in it right now. It is pretty accurate out to 100yds.

I reload all my .30Carbine for plinking, and pay $16 a hundred, plus the initial cost of the brass.

When Springfield Armory (the recent company) tried to build M1 Garands they never seemed to turn out very well. I think these along with the Carbines are pretty difficult to manufacture with lots of very subtle contours and radii that NEED to be correct or the thing just won't run right. And IIRC the M1 Garand has a harmonic component in the op-rod that if you don't get it right the thing will be balky. Wonder if the castings in the Carbine are not playing nice with the design?

The people who built things back in WWII weren't messing around and they did VERY nice work on the manual machines of the day. Just because it's run manually doesn't make it 'primitive'....I've seen some real crap come out of CNC machines which don't know or care what the parts look like, and if the tooling wear compensation isn't done exactly right....the tolerances will be all over the place.

RecoilRob said:

When Springfield Armory (the recent company) tried to build M1 Garands they never seemed to turn out very well. I think these along with the Carbines are pretty difficult to manufacture with lots of very subtle contours and radii that NEED to be correct or the thing just won't run right. And IIRC the M1 Garand has a harmonic component in the op-rod that if you don't get it right the thing will be balky. Wonder if the castings in the Carbine are not playing nice with the design?

The people who built things back in WWII weren't messing around and they did VERY nice work on the manual machines of the day. Just because it's run manually doesn't make it 'primitive'....I've seen some real crap come out of CNC machines which don't know or care what the parts look like, and if the tooling wear compensation isn't done exactly right....the tolerances will be all over the place.

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Ironically, Springfield, Inc. did make some nice postwar forged receivers as a limited run, but never assembled them into complete guns. The link I posted above to M1CarbinesInc.com talks about them.

The problem with many of the cast receivers is the tooling got passed around quite a bit between different manufacturers and has not gotten better with age. Add to that that some unfinished receivers never got heat treated, or had poor treatment, and that the quality of the finish machining varied widely. Personally, I would not touch any of the cast carbines except the Plainfield's.

I have an Auto Ordinance Paratrooper M1 Carbine, I figured I could not afford a USGI version, and it shoots fine. But, it is not quite as reliable as my USGI M1 Carbines.

Also, a side note, the wire frame stock is brutal on the shoulder.

I'd get a USGI M1 Carbine for fun and plinking.

While I feel the 30 M1 Carbine round and the M1 Carbine makes a dandy home defense combination. I would not want to put a USGI M1 Carbine into that service, risking damage, and post war M1 Carbines are not reliable enough.

Enter the 300 Blackout. Effective out to 60-100 yards, the rainbow trajectory minimizes down range collateral damage, and the AR-15 is a good platform for the round. It is what I have on my hobby farm.

kanook said:

I believe that would be a Ruger Mini 14 in 300 BO.

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But it weighs 6.7 not 5 pounds. Trying to figure a way to put mine on a diet.

I've never understood how an Aluminum and plastic rifle with a 16" barrel is heavier than a steel and wood rifle with an 18" barrel.