Range followup.

So, grabbing my meager supply of .30Carbine ammo, I, like the intrepid explorer I am, trudged my way to the range to see if the Rock-ola would shoot and shoot mostly... straightly.

 

Here's the target, at 25 yds.

 

 

The flyer at 3 to 4 O'clock is the first round fired.  I was holding the rifle at arms length away from me. I just wanted to be sure it wasn't gonna blow up in my face.

 

The other two rounds were standing supported, with the rear sight set at 100 and mechanically centered. POA was the center of the target and the rounds were hitting about where they should be for a 100 yd zero.

 

The only problem is it wouldn't reset after firing a round. What was happening was after firing the round releasing the trigger and pulling would produce no second bang.  The trigger is resetting. So, the springs are functioning correctly. The spent round is ejecting and the fresh round is loading correctly and the bolt is going all the way into battery. I'm pretty sure it's the sear. Unfortunately finding a Rock-ola sear is looking to be an issue.  I'll probably just get a generic one for now to get the rifle functioning correctly and take my time searching for a Rock-ola at gun shows.

 

I now have 42 rounds of .30Carbine left.

 

 

 

Finally

It took a while, but I finally got the Rock-ola M1 Carbine all together.

 

All parts are correct Rock-ola, although the serial number puts it as a first production run in '43 and I built it up with later parts.  Type 1 barrel bands are impossible to find or prohibitively expensive.  When I got the receiver it had a Herlo barrel on it, complete with all the markings that pretty much said it was faked and unsafe to shoot.  I located a real Rock-ola barrel and had that put on.  The receiver rear sight dovetails were so badly pinged that I took it to the smith at Jackson Armory and had him build them back up and reblue the entire receiver.  It came out amazing.  Here are a few pics of the rear sight.  You can see that the built up areas didn't take the blue the same as the rest of the receiver but it's only really noticeable close up like this.

 

 

 

 

Now to take it out and see how much I'll have to shave the front sight down to zero it. Which makes me nervous.  I'm not a gun smith and anytime I do something that can't be undid by a professional... well, you get the idea.

 

I'm toying with the idea of getting an example of the M1 Carbine from every maker that wasn't a traditional rifle manufacturer.  So, Rock-ola (juke boxes), Saginaw (auto parts), IBM, National Postal Meter.  How does that sounds as an idea. I really need to focus my collecting to something more specific than "all of them". 

 

There were over 6 million of the M1 Carbines made Which made it the most produced arm of that era.  Seeing service from WW2 thru Vietnam in the US Military and longer with other countries and police departments.