Yesterday I sat with Charlie Maloney while he inspected an import M1 Garand that I had purchased.
During our conversation he was adamantly against using reloads in the Garand. Basically, if I understood what he was saying, the only catastrophic failures of a Garand that he had ever seen, were caused by reloads.
Without being specific, he went on about the powder, the primer, the bullet, etc and if they weren't correct, Bad Things would happen. I did some reading on the CMP forums and some threads there seem to indicate something similar- that an improper reload was far more serious than out of spec headspace.
Now I'm not stupid, I know reloading is serious business. My friend, (an experienced reloader who makes his own competition .223 ammo) and I reloaded once-shot, Greek HXP brass. We used CCI #200 Large Rifle primers with 47.5 grains of IMR 4064 powder and capped them off with 150 grain Sierra Game King bullets. This is all in accordance with the Hornady reloading book as well as information found in the CMP forums.
We carefully measured the cartridge LOA to ensure that they conformed with the M2 ball specifications in the Hornady book. It is the cartridge length that seems to cause the greatest concern in my reading.
We used the proper materials, we followed the manual, we trimmed the brass, we measured everything continuously.
Should I be concerned? Is there anything else I should do for quality control before I fire these reloads?
During our conversation he was adamantly against using reloads in the Garand. Basically, if I understood what he was saying, the only catastrophic failures of a Garand that he had ever seen, were caused by reloads.
Without being specific, he went on about the powder, the primer, the bullet, etc and if they weren't correct, Bad Things would happen. I did some reading on the CMP forums and some threads there seem to indicate something similar- that an improper reload was far more serious than out of spec headspace.
Now I'm not stupid, I know reloading is serious business. My friend, (an experienced reloader who makes his own competition .223 ammo) and I reloaded once-shot, Greek HXP brass. We used CCI #200 Large Rifle primers with 47.5 grains of IMR 4064 powder and capped them off with 150 grain Sierra Game King bullets. This is all in accordance with the Hornady reloading book as well as information found in the CMP forums.
We carefully measured the cartridge LOA to ensure that they conformed with the M2 ball specifications in the Hornady book. It is the cartridge length that seems to cause the greatest concern in my reading.
We used the proper materials, we followed the manual, we trimmed the brass, we measured everything continuously.
Should I be concerned? Is there anything else I should do for quality control before I fire these reloads?