m-1 carbine jamming

[dakotasin]

fellas... i worked up a pretty nice load for the 30 carbine in my ruger blackhawk. i was hoping to use the same load in my m-1, but it jams pretty bad.

the load uses a 110 grain speer varminter (hp design, soft exposed lead tip). the carbine feeds factory (american eagle) fmj's just fine (which are crimped to .330", and my loads are taper crimped to .328"). but the jamming is two-fold. first, it mangles the tip of the hp and fails to go into battery. then, once i do get the cartridge/gun into battery, it is nearly impossible to open the action again. it sort of feels like a bolt action gun does when the bullet is seated deep into the lands.

the brass is trimmed to spec, and the oal is about .01" less than the oal used in the speer #13 manual with that bullet - which is to say the bullet is not engaging the lands.

i'm looking for thoughts on how to rectify both parts of the jam problem. the carbine is a 1943 general motors and, to my knowledge, has never had any sort of 'smithing done, including kitchen-table butchering.

 

[ricciardelli]

I never had any luck with that particular bullet. But the standard round-nose, soft-point bullets, regardless of manufacturer, work fine in my Ruger BH, M-1 Carbine and Marlin 62.

The carbine was designed to use a round-nose bullet.

 

[DMZ]

I remember using a 110 gr JHP bullet back when I reloaded the .30 Carbine, with great success. Not only was it accurate, but it always fed out of any magazine with out problems.

The closest thing to it now is a 110 gr Spire Point.

Edit- rcmodel has a good point. I did use only surplus mags in my Carbine.

 

[rcmodel]

(hp design, soft exposed lead tip).

?????

It's either a HP or a SP.

It can't be both at the same time.

I have shot a gazillion 110 RN-SP Hornady's and also 100 grain Speer plinkers in mine with nary a problem.

But my first suggestion would be to try another magazine.
Any old GI mag is better then most brand new reproductions, if you have one of those.

My second suggestion would be to "color" some of your reloads with a black Magic Marker and feed them through the gun.
You can quickly ID the problem by where the Magic Marker wears off.

rcmodel

 

[Dumpster Baby]

It's either a HP or a SP.

It can't be both at the same time.

I've had problems with soft nose carbine bullets feeding in GI carbines but not in Universal carbines.

The feed ramp on GI carbines is short and designed only for FMJ RN bullets. Some GI carbines feed SP bullets OK, some don't.

The problem is where the short feed ramp drops abruptly into the magazine well. The soft nose bullets catch on that ledge. On my GI carbines I had to round that edge over so there was nothing to dig into the lead nose.

 

[rcmodel]

A SP-HP!
Or a HP-SP?

Well, I'll be jiggered with a carbine mag spring!

I stand corrected!

rcmodel

 

[Dumpster Baby]

You're a hard man to trip up!

 

[JohnMcD348]

I have a few different models of the M1 that I've gotten over the nearly 20 years that I've loved them and there are some models that feed better than others. The only model I ever owned that didn't feed them well didn't feed anything well and that was a Later model Universal. My main shooter is a mutt rifle and I've never had any failures to feed with anything in the 30carb line.

It could just be the rifle. ALso, are you using MilSpec mags? Try using a 15 or even 5 rnd mag if you're using a 30. Sometimes, those 30rnd mags don't like to feed well.
Try watching a round go through the feed syscle and see if you can determine where it hangs up. Just put one in the mag you're using and ride the bolt home paying close attention to how the bolt picks up the cartridge and if the bullet actually hangs up anywhere along the ride up into the chamber.

I'm by far no expert in these things and you may have already doen all of this. Just tryin to lend a hand.

 

[Riss]

I agree. Look past the bullet and try to see if the mag is the problem. The feed lips can be finicky at times and can lead to quite a variety of jams.

 

[dakotasin]

the speer 110 varminter is a jacketed bullet somewhat similiar to the hornady half-jacket, and the bulk of the the nose from just past the where the ogive tangents is a very soft lead which ends in a hollow point design. quite similiar to what dumpster baby posted, but w/ a wider cavity...

the mags are mil-spec. i have a dozen or so, and i tested the rounds in known quantity mags. the nose of the bullet is being badly damaged during the feeding process - again like what db is suggesting, and is unrelated to the mags. unfortunately for me, the link to the pic of the fix does not work for me...

any ideas on why, when i get one stuffed into the chamber, it is so hard to extract/eject? feels like a case that is way oversize (they are not) or like a bullet is stuck in the rifling (again... not)...

appreciate all the help so far in fixing my 2-part jam...

 

[Dumpster Baby]

I know the bullet you're talking about, but have never used any.



The picture you can't see is just a stock GI carbine being stripped down, to show a typical unaltered feed ramp. My little mod is nothing more than rounding off edges and polishing the ramp so that soft lead bullets don't have any place to dig in.

That's all I can offer without seeing what kind of damage your bullets are getting, what various dimensions are, and watching your carbine chambering and extracting rounds.

Something just popped into my feeble mind - if you're loading these rounds for both revolver and carbine then you must be crimping the bullets into the cases. Otherwise they would back out of the cases when the Ruger recoils. The .30 Ruger has a pretty good recoil, and would back the bullets out unless they had a roll crimp to hold them in place.

The straight sided rimless cases headspace on the mouth of the case, so the mouth has to remain straight and square. If your dual purpose reloads have a roll crimp on the bullets for revolver use they might not chamber right in the carbine. The cases also have to be the right length, and I don't know how many times I've heard the comments on straight sided cases: "I've never trimmed a case in 40 years......".

I've never handled a .30 Ruger revolver, so I'm not sure how the rounds seat in the cylinder. I know they don't use half moon clips like the .45 ACP revolvers. And I've never seen a 9mm revolver cylinder to see how those rounds seat.

There's just not quite enough information here to deal with.

 

[rcmodel]

any ideas on why, when i get one stuffed into the chamber, it is so hard to extract/eject?

Go back and read my post #4.
Last paragraph.

My second suggestion would be to "color" some of your reloads with a black Magic Marker and feed them through the gun.
You can quickly ID the problem by where the Magic Marker wears off.

rcmodel