i just sent in my paperwork for the CMP for my M1! finally the gun that ive always wanted will finally come home. anways, im looking at a good place to get military ammo? i live in mesquite so if someone knows a good place in the Dallas area that would be great too.
Just be careful using commercial ammo from any source in the M1, it was designed to fire the Ball ammo. Bad things can happen when using soft primered, variable pressure ammo.
The *ONLY* place to get M2 Ball (the correct ammo for an M1 Garand) is from the CMP. Anything else you find for sale went through the CMP. And the HXP (Greek) that the CMP is selling is reloadable!
Do *NOT* fire commercial .30-06 in a Garand without a properly set adjustable gas plug! You WILL bend your op rod and possibly damage other components.
+1 on Eli's comments. You really do need to fire only military 30-06 in your Garand, or buy the Hornady Garand ammo which is supposed to be equivalent to military stuff. However that ammo is I think right at $1.00 a round. CMP sells excellent HXP ball ammo for .50 per round in 8 round clips. Earlier this week they had USGI .30-06 ball on metal links for 40 cents a round. Needless to say that ammo didn't last very long!
Byron thanks for starting this post, because of it i looked up the requirements to order from CMP and it turns out that they are about to start getting alot of my money.
One caution for you: Be careful with mil-surp ammo. Some of that stuff used chlorate primers and leaves KCl (Potassium Chloride--a salt) residue in your barrel. If you fire that type of ammo, you will need a water-based cleaning system, since the corrosive residue is insoluable in oil. The US Military used chlorate primers in .30-06 until after WWII. I don't know about the Greeks. Just sayin'.
The Greek ammo from CMP is noncorrosive. Also, there are commercial options from Hornady and American Eagle (Federal) that are safe for the M1, and they are marked and/or advertised as such.
I have used neither AE nor Hornady, but at about $20/20 rds, I'm sure they are good. I do know that the HXP (Greek from CMP) shoots groups that are half the size of groups with the LC (Lake City) surplus that CMP used to have.