GARAND clips WW2
Can anyone give me the skinny on M1 Garand clips made during WW2? By looking at the bottom of the clip what should I look for? How many different MFGs Are genuine WW2 made clips hard to find? I only want ten or more for collecting not to actually use [:)][:)]
steve
steve
0
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Although this is an area of M1 collecting that does not interest me in the least, there are at least a few die hard en-bloc Garand clip collectors out there (whatever floats your boat). Information I have shows that there are 24 known clip manufacturers (no doubt more) and at least 94 variant code stamps (no doubt MANY more). Some of the better known WWII makers were Borg Warner (B-W), Valcartier Industries (DAQ), Springfield Armory (SA), and Winchester Repeating Arms (WRA among others). To get ten WWII clips I'd simply look through the typical piles of M1 clips so often found at gun shows and pick out the ten with the markings which suit you. Chances are excellent that the seller can't tell a WWII clip from an identical post war clip so I'd wager it won't cost you any sort of a premium to "hand pick" your clips. Enjoy.
Mark T. Christian0 -
Mark is the Garand person. Just an adder, International Silver--IS--
also stamped the en-blocks. I have zero interest in en-blocks also.
IS also made oilers for the carbine. 1010 -
There are probably hundreds of actual manufacturers of M1 clips. For instance, Winchester couldn't be bothered with small stuff like that, and subcontracted much of it's small parts work to 30 or 40 (or more) small machine shops and job shops in the southern Connecticut area.
I personally know of 6 or 7 small shops in the Middletown, Meriden, Wallingford area that were making small parts for Winchester, Colt, Underwood (carbines) Pratt & Whitney and Auto Ordinance (submachine guns)....all at the same time.0 -
Xracer makes a really good point about the use of sub contractors for items like this. Just because the clip is marked with lets say a Winchester code does not mean that it was produced by WRA or ever saw the light of day at the Winchester factory. That clip may have never even been within 50 miles of the Winchester facility. This was war time and any welding or metal fabrication shop could get a fat contract to stamp out these clips by the tens of thousands for Winchester to help WRA free up production floor space in their already jammed factory, where there was already too much to do and not enough hours in the day.
As long as these clips met government specs for Winchester's government contract: W852-ORD4622 with supplimental Agreement No. SA14054, there was good money to be made for anyone who had garage space and a punch press! The steel used in these clips was type WDX 1045 (provided by Uncle Sam) and called for heating to 1950-1610 degrees, oil quench at 1440-1460 degrees, and a final cooling at 650 degrees for 10 minutes to reach Rockwell C 44-55. Any good metal shop could do this and I'm sure that just like Xracer told us there were PLENTY of local shops itching to land such a juicy little contract from a big out fit like Winchester.
Mark T. Christian0
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