After firing a few rounds through a friend's standard M1A a couple of weeks ago, I decided I had to get one of these fine guns. I picked this one up over the weekend at the Bad Shot show in Chickasha, a SOCOM 16. I've only put 40 rounds through it so far, but it is a fine shooting rifle. It's a keeper!
Sweet - is it marked on the top of the wall of the receiver cut-out? "Bavarian Rural Police" or such?
The best part about the M1 Garand that I snagged at the Wanenmacher show this weekend: Hint: look at the first two lines of the heel stamp. "Gap letter" is what it's called, and it's an uncommon variant of the least common M1 manufacturer. I'd been looking for well over a year for one of these, so I'm stoked A few more pics of this rifle... And here's one of an interesting repair done on this stock; when the first run of IHC stocks came out, the factory discovered that the stocks were much too tight around the butt plate, so installation of the plates caused the stocks to crack in this area. Rather than scrap all the stocks made to date, the factory sent them back to the manufacturer to be repaired with wood inserts. These usually consisted of "half moon" pieces of woods along the sides, and sometimes top and bottom repairs; once done, the stocks were resubmitted for inspection and found to meet USGI specs. This stock has the inserts on both sides and top, and is an interesting bit of the IHC M1 Garand history.
