M1 Carbine Project

I purchased this little m1 carbine for $325. It's 70's vintage so there is no historical significance to it. It had been sitting for quite a while and had some minor rust showing on the receiver and barrel. I tore it completely apart and sanded the rust off-there was much more than originally thought. I was trying to decide what type of new finish I would have applied to the rifle once it was completely cleaned up. I thought about the traditional parkerizing and blueing but when checking into it the re-finishing would have cost at least as much as the entire rifle did! I started looking into DIY gun finishes and settled on Duracoat in semi gloss black. It's a two part coating that is sprayed on with an airbrush or small spray gun. It goes on easily and doesn't require baking. It comes in a ton of colors too. The sight is a 1x red dot-I would have just kept the peep sight but my old eyes don't work as well as they used to so optical sight it is..

When I reassembled it I installed a Wolff spring kit. These springs are stronger than the stock springs and the hammer spring is MUCH stronger than stock so if you are doing one of these BE CAREFULL!!

I re-finished the stock sliming the fore end and staining it darker-though not as dark as I would have liked.

I think it turned out very nicely - now I just need to get it to the range and shoot it.