.30-06 semi-auto? Any ideas?

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Motega

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A fellow shooter I work with was thinking abuot trying to piece together a clip-fed .30-06 on a Garand action. I don't know much about non-sporting pieces, is this an easy mod, is there anything out there like this? I think the goal of the project is a very accurate clip fed .30-06 capable of 20 & 30 round mags.
M14 fit this description or a ScarH?

I think he specifically wanted to convert a Garand and i was wondering if anyone has done this and can point out what parts would be needed to accurize it as well (new barrel & trigger group at the very least I would think).
 
Motega said:
A fellow shooter I work with was thinking abuot trying to piece together a clip-fed .30-06 on a Garand action. (snip)

I think the goal of the project is a very accurate clip fed .30-06 capable of 20 & 30 round mags.
Click to expand...

Uhhh.... what? :confused:

Garands are already clip-fed .30-06 rifles.

If you're talking about an M14 magazine conversion, a couple of guys will do them for you, but you'll need to convert to .308.

You used to be able to find smiths who would convert garands to take 20-rd .30-06 BAR mags but I haven't heard of anyone recently who would do it. From what I've read you need to remove too much of the receiver and safety may be questionable.

The Garand is not the best choice to begin accurizing/modding, IMO. They are tricky.

Basically for the money it would take, you could buy a pretty nice M1A (and maybe an AR-10 as well) that would, in all likelyhood, be more accurate and reliable than your Garand mashup.
 
Uncle Sam spent a lot of money developing both the M1 Garand and the M-14.(M1A) He knows what he's doing. Both are way better property than a cobbled up deal that nobody else wants. Eventually, you wont want it either,then where will you be? If you want a weird 30-06 to play with, buy a Johnson, then when you tire of it, it will still be worth something.
 
.308 is not .30-06 by a long shot. And yes I intended the pun.

I love my new FAL but if I had to play favorites the .30-06 is my first and true love.

No .308s!

This isn't my project I am just trying to round up some info for a fellow shooter... I have to agree the FAL is the best way to go in .308 though.
 
You might rig up some kind of long magazine for the Benelli R1. There are 4- and 10-round magazines for it, but kinda pricey. (So is the gun.)

http://www.benelliusa.com/rifles/benelli_r1_rifle.php

I don't know anything about this rifle, in the hands on sense. I have not been there; neither have I done that. I mention it because it uses detachable boxes and is available in .30-06. I like their shotguns.

It's not a Garand, but if it absolutely has to be .30-06...
 
It almost seems like it would be easier to make larger magazines for a long track BAR (the new ones, not the old machine guns).
 
The way I understand it, the feed lips in BAR "magazines" are a modular unit that clips onto the floor plate, holding 3 or 4 rounds...

I have often wondered if you could just make a deeper floor plate and gain extra rounds - very much like what they do with pistol magazines.

You could recycle the feed lip unit and the follower - just put those parts and a longer spring onto the new deeper floor plate.

Sure you would have to play around with the power of the spring used, but it seems like anyone with access to a machine shop could make a new extended floor plate. The only other potential pitfall I see is possibly over-loading the magazine latch if you made the capacity too high... but 10 rounds should be easy enough.
 
.308 is alot closer to the old .30/06 than you think. Less than a 100FPS difference. Big deal...
 
speed is almost irrelevant- the weight, shape, kinds of offerings, and of course ballistsics are much different. For most purposes sure one will serve for another... but so will 50 other calibers. They are not the same.
 
Wha?

.308 diameter bullets are generic - One brand of bullet doesn't magically change shape or weight according to the dimensions of the brass it gets loaded in...

Visa Vi - a 150gr Nosler Ballistic Tip remains the same, whether it is propelled at 2,800fps from a 308, or at 2,900fps from a 30-06.

Your 'different offerings' argument makes no sense either because both cartridges are SO common, that any line that offers one will assuredly offer the other - Federal Fusion, Hornady Superformance, Remington Premier, ect. - the extreme spread is seldom over 100fps, and when it is just barely.

Speed is only "irrelevant" because they are both so similar.
 
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speed is almost irrelevant- the weight, shape, kinds of offerings, and of course ballistsics are much different
Click to expand...
Curious about this. A .308 bullet is a .308 bullet, as mr.trooper says. How fast it is going when it leaves the barrel is the ONLY functional difference between a .308, a .30-'06, a .300 Win mag, a .300 Wthby Mag, etc. There aren't any other ballistics involved.

What bullet you can load in one, you can load in any of the others. (To be fair, the loading manuals generally refrain from loading the big 220 gr. and 250 gr. slugs in the smaller .308 case.)

I agree that the speed is almost irrelevant, but only because the speed differences between a .308 and an '06 are usually pretty small. Maybe 100 fps, but often less.
 
Motega said:
A fellow shooter I work with was thinking abuot trying to piece together a clip-fed .30-06 on a Garand action. <snip> I think the goal of the project is a very accurate clip fed .30-06 capable of 20 & 30 round mags.
Click to expand...

Why not just get a Springfield M1A National Match and be done? Is the 30-06 that much better than a .308?

You'll be way ahead money and time -wise, and more than likely, probably in accuracy too.
 
Again, it's not me it is a friend- for one thing he says he has 5000 rounds of .30-06... if it were me I'd sell the ammo and buy a Springfield M1A.

Really the .308 argument is preaching to the choir and not the subject at hand. It's a project and the flavor the guy wants. Kinda silly to argue about the merits of chocolate when someone wants vanilla.
 
Well, then I think he is stuck with buying a production hunting rifle.

Building a very accurate semi-auto 30-06 is plenty doable. Both the BAR and Remington 750 have established aftermarket smiths that will accurize them to a high degree... but the strait-skinny is that there is NO production 30-06 that takes 20 or 30 round mags.

10 rounds is all your buddy is going to get, and most such mags are crappy third party junk, with the exception of the $100 factory clips for the Benelli R1.

His only practical option is to drop the 30 round mag requirement - every other feature he wants is plenty possible, but those mags are just not going to happen. Sorry to be a D*&K, but unless your buddy is a millionaire he is going to have to rethink this project.
 
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