M14 Forum

mtime7

No, you will most likely get a post war serial #, unless you buy a Winchester

M14E2

Was gonna mention this myself. Same with Blue Sky carbines. Bought a Saginaw for my Pop , and noticed how deep the barrel stamp was. Barrel even looked slightly bent at the stamp. Tried to drop a .300 gage pin down the bore , nope , .299 , no go , etc. None passed till I reached .294.

pepperbelly

Check the receiver carefully. I am not sure who put them out there but there are some with welded receivers.

BTW the latest work from the CMP is they are out of service grade Garands. They still have rack grades and the grades above service grade.

Jim

Gus Fisher

I got into a side business working the imported Garands when they first came back in the mid 80's. Blue Sky then Arlington Ordnance (same company out of Northern Virginia at first), Excel, Oyster Bay, Fed Ord and finally Arlington Ordnance that was out of the Long Beach Area of California. The only ones that were serviceable when you got them was the Long Beach Arlington Ordnance guns of the early 90's as they went through the trouble of replacing parts, timing them and generally slightly rebuilding them. All the other makers were a VERY different story.

On the others - I told people most of the time the barrels were TOAST and out of the "Big Three" other parts ( I.E. the barrel, bolt and gas cylinder) I found that at least one of these parts, likely two and very often all three were not serviceable. Add the fact you had to replace most of the springs and the stocks were pretty crummy - they were a losing investment all around.