Hey, I need some good info from you experts out there. Have an old blue sky import M1 carbine that I've had for 10-15 years. The M1 got burned up in a vehicle fire that burned the wood furniture completely away. Then it sat in the weather for a couple weeks. with this small amount of info, is this gun repairable? If not are the parts usable. Since these rifles are now going for $500 plus, and I'm an old German-American tightwad, i just want to know if it is do-able....
no photos sorry. No photos I'm a dinosaur when it comes to high tech. Any way I was more concerned with the heat from the fire damaging or altering the original heat treatment for the receiver and other parts
M-1 i would be very leery of rebuilding. At the very least you would need to replace every spring in the gun. I would have the receiver and barrel rockwell tested to make sure they did not suffer any ill effects such as changes in the heat treating.
fire damage are the springs anealed?? if the are good you could reasemble it and test fire most heat treatment is to harden for wear.I have a garand that was torched and cut and rewelded.Rock Iland arsenal said aneal receiver to machine that it would be safe to shoot but would get streched throu time.its a tack driver.
The best thing you can do is to take it to a quality gunsmith and let him inspect it. It is not worth your safty to take any chances with it. If nothing else you can clean it up, cold blue it, put new furniture on it and make a nice conversation piece (wall hanger) out of it. Also if it is shootable anymore you might want to weld it just so no one would ever try to rebuild it in the future.
Door stop?!!! Don't you dare. The metal would have had to have gotten cherry red for the heat treat to be substantially changed. If the springs in the gun have any spring at all left in them then it didn't get too hot. Like previously suggested, most all the springs will have to be replaced, though. I'd clean and inspect the bore first, and if it looks good, then everything else will probably be ok too. Example: Customer walks in my shop with a Browning Hi-Power that had been through a fire. Grips were somewhat crispy and there was an even brown patina of rust on the entire gun. We got the grips off, scrubbed a little with a "Big 45 Frontier" metal cleaner, and it turned out that the rust had not eaten through the blueing yet, and it cleaned up and looked almost as good as new, when new grips were installed.
Like you said murray, it would take a lot of heat. A car fire is a lot of heat depending on how long it burns. I had a car I stored in my Granfathers hay barn many yrs. ago. (56Dodge) You had a tuff time figuring out which end was which. Even the leaf springs warped in opposite directions. But anything is possible I guess. I'm no expert by any means.
The safest thing to do , is take it to a machine shop and have them test it for proper hardness. Most shops will do it free.
send it to me , I'll put it back together and shoot it, Nothing better then a little aventure shooting
