Teflon Garands

[milgunsguy]

Here's a Teflon coated Garand in the Springfield Armory Museum:

[milgunsguy]

Have any of our members seen one, besides in the museum?

Is this rifle a U.S. military-coated Teflon Garand or is it a fantasy project? (I don't know. Teflon Garand is what I was told by the seller, who wouldn't know, and there is no reference material on the subject.)



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[Bodyman]

I don't think I have too much information for you that you don't already know about them. The Marines wanted to test them and I think they had several hundred made for that effort but nothing really came of it. They do not come up for sale very often and it has been a long time since I have seen one offered. Many years ago, I handled one at a CADA show that was for sale (4k if I recall). A few years later I saw another for sale again (but to be fair it could well have been the same one being resold). They have a greenish appearance on the metal finish, and almost feel slick to the touch. It is quite odd.

Not too long after that, in 2002, I had a buddy who pulled duty as one of the curators of the (old) Marine Corps Museum and he got permission to do a little back door tour of the Museum's vault with us. This pic shows several of the racks of their Garands that were not on display. I cannot recall which row it was but I was surprised that one of those racks was loaded with teflon Garands, and many of them appeared to be near new if not unfired.



I think this pic may have been the rack that had the teflon ones;



We didn't spend too much time on them other than noting they were there in quite a good quantity.

Honestly, I was just completely overloaded from seeing and handling so many ultra cool things that the teflon Garands barely made a ripple - things like this;



What a great trip.

[milgunsguy]

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The finish is a light green underneath an outer layer of black. The black is rubbery and scratches off easily - just like the first Teflon frying pans did. The green finish layer is more durable than the black.

The serial number is nowhere close to that one in the museum and the stock is a WW-2 GAW.
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[Bruw]

Seems like an awful lot of beautiful rifles to be sitting in a storage room

[Bodyman]

Oh sure, now you have pictures, ...

It looks like it could be a teflon coating but I never saw one that was coming apart like that. If I recall correctly though, one of the criticisms was that the finish wasn't very durable. Also, I do not recall seeing any WWII rifles and am pretty sure that all of the rifles I saw were late production. I know the one at SANHS is a late SA, but I think the Marine Corps rifles were all HRA's, ...

But seriously, I didn't even pay attention to them more than noting they were there (and it was almost 20 years ago - really, has it actually been that long?!) - they were just one more really cool thing that we saw in a room full of really, really cool things.

Sorry, I don't think I was much help.