Dangerous barrel wiggle?

[ktrosker]

Hello everyone, a while back I posted how my rifle wasn't wanting to operate correctly without premature clip ejection, and on occasion short stroking. After replacing my springs, polishing my clip recesses, inspecting my clip latch and switching to actual quality ammunition instead of Korean surplus, everything seemed to work great from a bench rest. But as soon as I switched to standing fire, it prematurely ejected the first clip halfway through again. After getting home, I realized that holding the rifle in my left hand while grasping the front of the barrel/gas cylinder/sight with my right, would ultimately make it wiggle about 1/16th of an inch. It isn't a loose gas cylinder/ plug, as you can see the barrel clearly rotating through the open action. Is this normal in garands? The S/N match all to 1943, except the barrel which has no markings that I can see. I know after the war most garands were rebuilt / rebarreled, I'm just not sure if that's what happened to this one or if some schmuck did a half assed job with a foreign, trash barrel on his own. But either way, is this too dangerous to keep shooting as is? Will peening the barrel fix this issue? I didn't die shooting it after all, in fact it surprisingly still kept about 3MOA. Just wanted to get everyone's opinion on the matter, thanks all.

Edit: after posting, I forgot to mention that after taking the stock off and messing with the action/barrel a bit, I was able to get the barrel to "stick" in what seemed to be the normal position. I was able to get it reassembled like this, and the barrel didn't wiggle at all. However, I know this is just temporary, because it's not difficult to un-stick it and get it rotating again, and I'm sure the first fired cartridge would loosen it up again. Thanks everyone

[RDS]

M1 Garand barrels are torqued tight using special receiver wrench and barrel vise. You should not be able to move them by hand. Do not shoot it until it is fixed by a gunsmith that knows M1 Garands

[Jersey Devil]

M1 Garand barrels are torqued tight using special receiver wrench and barrel vise. You should not be able to move them by hand. Do not shoot it until it is fixed by a gunsmith that knows M1 Garands

+1 .......... don't shoot another round through it before getting this problem resolved. Your safety is at risk.

[m14brian]

Extremely dangerous. That is an accident waiting to happen, RDS is correct, a gunsmith that knows M1 Garands needs to repair it. Don't even attempt to load it or troubleshoot it further, it is absolutely unsafe in it's current state.
m14brian

[lapriester]

At some time the barrel was probably replaced with a used barrel which did not provide enough torque against the receiver when it was indexed. That sometimes happens and it even happened when replacement barrels were installed. The USGI solution was to peen over the shoulder of the barrel all the way around to enable the rolled over metal to provide the needed torque. More often than not you ended up with a tight barrel but a messy look. You basically got one shot at that. The current cleaner and better way is to use a tool that rolls the shoulder over smoothly all the way around. Unfortunately you will find very few Gunsmiths with either the capability, knowledge or tools to properly do the work. The good news is that making a tool to do it properly can be done easily and cheaply. Having said that, you can roll the shoulder but you'll still need the knowledge and tools to torque and index the barrel to the receiver once the barrel shoulder is rolled. If I had an FFL you could send it to me and it could be done in about 15 minutes but unfortunately, I don't. If you know a local Gunsmith capable of doing a proper index of the barrel I can tell you how to build the tool with a pipe cutter from Harbor Freight and a 3/8" grommet kit from ACE Hardware or Amazon. You would also need to remove the barrel from the receiver but, it sounds loose enough that shouldn't be much of a problem. Two blocks of hardwood in a HD 6" vise and a 13" Crescent wrench would do it nicely. Fact is, you might even be able to torque and index the barrel with that same set of hardwood blocks a heavy duty 6" bench vise, a $6 HF angle finder and that same 13" Crescent. I rebarreled my first two M1's with those same "tools". It is amazing how simple the tools need to be to do barrel work on an M1.

As others have said, don't keep shooting the rifle. That barrel needs to be properly torqued to be "safe" to shoot. Not saying it will necessarily "blow up" on you but you could do irreparable damage to the rifle or damage or break misalligned moving parts that could cause injury. Those misalignments no doubt are what are causing your function problems.

See this picture and how simple tools can get simple work done:
http://pic80.picturetrail.com/VOL100.../219552935.jpg

Simple barrel vice:

http://pic80.picturetrail.com/VOL1005/3560554/14611412/407730296.jpg

Or just the blocks in a vise.

Barrel roller:

http://pic80.picturetrail.com/VOL1005/3560554/24348797/406527148.jpg

http://pic80.picturetrail.com/VOL1005/3560554/24348797/412733945.jpg

http://pic80.picturetrail.com/VOL1005/3560554/24348797/406527149.jpg

[RCS]

here is a photo of a Buffalo Arms barrel that had the swaging tool roll to fit an early 1940 receiver

[ktrosker]

Thank you very much, guys. And lapriester, that is some fantastic information and I really appreciate you taking the time to type that all out in such detail. I think I'm going to give a crack at doing it myself, since there's only one person in all of Colorado that I know of who might be competent.

[lapriester]

Look here for the links and info on M1 barrel changing, indexing, reaming, etc: https://www.m1garandforum.com/forum/...files-and-more