LAST EDITED ON Apr-08-17 AT 05:24 PM (EDT)
 
>And it works ever so much better now. We literally filled a trash bag
>to bulging with paper towels and cotton scraps, cleaning that rifle.

Heh, I just cleaned a gun earlier today. It wasn't anywhere near as dirty as that, but still. I have that Hoppe's #9 smell in the house now. :)

>Boy howdy is it fun to shoot now.

Yeah, I guess the downside of the Williams gas system is that it's prone to getting pretty grubby, since it's buried so deep in the gun? I haven't had mine apart to that extent yet. Maybe I should pull it apart and do a follow-up post on what I find.

I haven't shot it yet either (might do that tomorrow, weather permitting, after which I'll have to take it apart as mused about above), but just from handling it I can tell I'm going to like it. It just feels nice—light and handy, and everything's the right distance apart. After the sore disappointment that was my first time picking up a Thompson, it was a refreshing surprise how just right the carbine felt. If I had to be equipped with a WWII small arm, based on the ones I've handled to date, it would be the carbine. Don't get me wrong, I love my Garand (and my SMLE, though in the form I have it's technically more of a WWI thing) as rifles, but as a thing I would have to carry around with me everywhere I went and fire many many many many rounds out of? Ye gods, no.

(Plus, if I was in WWII and I had an M1 carbine, that would presumably mean I wasn't a front-line infantryman. You might as well take the win in your hypothetical alternate history scenarios, right? :)

>The limited availability of .30
>carbine is always problematic, but this, this is a Good Gun.

It's not so bad now that Sellier & Bellot makes it. By a weird coincidence, I got a flyer in the mail from J&G just this morning that offers S&B .30 Carbine, 500 rounds for $239.95, or a thousand for just shy of $460. Which is not cheap, not like .22 LR used to be, but not shortage territory either.

(Right above it on the same page, they offer 1,000 rounds of TulAmmo .30 Carbine for $259.90, but really? Steel-case Russian ammo that may or may not mean it when it says it's non-corrosive? Not a fan. I put a mere 40 rounds of TulAmmo 7.62x39 through my AKM knockoff when I bought it and my Grodd the filth. I'd have been better off taking some of my Yugoslavian milsurp ammo with me and shooting that.)

I'm not sure how I ended up on J&G's mailing list, come to think of it. Maybe I bought the aforementioned Yugo ammunition from them, I forget. I really only wanted the SKS stripper clips it came on. :)

--G.
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Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
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