help m1 garand wont stop shooting left

[reaperilan]

i have a national ord M1 garand that i got from my brother-in-law when his dad passed away.it goes bang every time with no fte, ftc or ftf. the problem is if i have both front and rear sights centered with the barrel and reciever the damn thing will group all the shots about 7 in to the left of bull (at 25 or 50yds).if i want point of aim or center of mass shots i have to crank the rear sight all the way to the right. i dont think the barrel is shot because it prints tight groups and has fairly good rifling looking through muzzle with flashlight after cleaning it. any info will help. thanks.

 

[Mr White]

Center the rear sight and move the front sight to the left until your shots are centered. Tighten the front sight and leave it alone after that. Use the rear sight to dope for wind.

 

[reaperilan]

Mr White, when i initialy got the rifle the front post was kicked over to the left a full 1/4in off center and it was still shooting that far off. i can punch the center of my target out with my bushmaster predator with iron sights all day long, so i know its not me with a mis-aligned sight picture or pulling my shots. i am using 150grn 68,72 korean surplus and 168grn hand loads that will print 1/2 groups with my savage 110.the muzzle has a few nicks but that shouldnt make that much of a difference at those ranges.

 

[Trash]

Check to see if the receiver is shifting around inside the stock.

 

[dmazur]

It's a sign of the times. A lot of things are tending left nowadays...

(Sorry, I couldn't resist. Please excuse shameless thread drift.)

 

[Freedomv]

I have built a number of m-1 and m-1a rifles for match shooting and have run accross this type of thing before.

The National Ord. rifles that I saw in my day(20-25years ago) were not top quality. Just a fact that I am noting. From my experince I think that the Barrel threaded portion of the reciever is not parallel or centered with the centerline of the reciever. Therefore when the barrel is installed and tightened it is not true to the reciever centerline. The center line of the bore is then actually at an angle to the center line of the reciever. That will change the point of impact drasticly and in many cases so mutch that the windage of the reciever sight will not have enough travel to compensate for the centerline error.

Take a straight edge and draw a 4 inch line and put a 2 - 3 degree angled line for another 20 inches. Add a front and rear sight point as the rifle would have and draw a straight line from them to resemble the line of sight. If you extend the 20 inch line you can see how far the point of impact will be from the line of sight.
I hope that this makes some sense to you. This is why bench rest shooters will true up rifle actions by facing off the locking lugs etc to be true with the barrel threads and machine the barrel thread true to the bore of the barrel.

There isn't too much that you can do about it if the reciever is bad. Also check to see if the barrel is a real m-1 barrel and not a 03-a3 barrel reworkrd into and M-1 barrel. This has been done and is not good for obvious reasons. Just a fast way to make a buck at others expense. Buyer beware type of thing.

Vern

 

[reaperilan]

i found out that the national ord m1s were not top grade from a gun smith b4 i bought it. my brother-in-law sold it to me for $300 and a charles daly 1911 for $200. after payin off the 1911, he said forget about the cash on the garand (have to install a ceiling fan for him so i didnt get off scottfree).all the other parts including barrel are stamped SA, not matching #s. just reciever is nat ord. so maybe i need a high quality reciever?wish i could post pics but thats beyond my skills on a computer.

 

[Freedomv]

Wow, I just read what I posted last night. It is amazing what pain; lack of sleep and Vicodin will do to your mind, sorry about the misspellings and such.

I think the CMP may have good receivers available, I know at one time they did.
I have a reparkerized receiver, actually a complete rifle with the exception of a good barrel. Laying in one of my shop drawers along with a lot of other M-1 and M-1A parts. I need to sort them out and get rid of them. I could still crank in a barrel and headspace it etc, but no more match rifles.
PM me if you are interested.
Also the National Ord. receiver isn't a complete loss as I have taken several Questionable receivers that I wouldn't dare shoot a full power round out of and made them into .22 RF single shot practice toys. These are lots of fun.

Like I said send me a private message.
Vern

 

[Slamfire]

The National Ord. rifles that I saw in my day(20-25years ago) were not top quality. Just a fact that I am noting. From my experince I think that the Barrel threaded portion of the reciever is not parallel or centered with the centerline of the reciever. Therefore when the barrel is installed and tightened it is not true to the reciever centerline.

This sounds to be the correct description of the problem. If you have all GI parts, you can use them to build a decent rifle around a CMP receiver. Get that CMP receiver before Obama gets in.

I have a related story. A bud of mine had a premium barrel installed on his Palma rifle. I forget the brand, but he only buys the best names. Darn rifle zero was 11 MOA left on his rear sight. Barrel shot exceptionally well, but having a zero that ate up so much left sight windage, he wanted more as a margin for a windy day. So he sends the barrel back to the gunsmith.

Gunsmith puts on new barrel, my bud is happy.

Gunsmith when taking off barrel made a mark on the barrel at 3 OC (location a guess). He cut the barrel short, added threads, rechambered. Then he made a barter trade with a Bud of his. He installed the barrel, rotated the mark to 6 OC on the new receiver. His bud has a barrel with the zero where it should be, and he has plenty of elevation left at 1000 yards!