Colombian 7.62mm NATO M1 Garand Conversion
Forgotten Weapons
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8m 7s
After World War Two, Colombia adopted the .30-06 cartridge as standard, purchasing a thousand .30-06 FN49 rifles and 19,000 surplus American M1 Garand rifles. With the subsequent development of the 7.62mm NATO cartridge, Colombia experimented briefly with converting their existing Garand rifles to the new NATO round. In 1990 a large batch of Colombian surplus arms was purchased by Springfield Sporters, and it included 12 Garand’s converted to 7.62mm. The conversion was done by cutting about a half inch off the chamber end of the barrel and cutting a new 7.62x51mm chamber. The handguards, stocks, and operating rods were cut down by the same amount, allowing the use of the existing gas port. In addition, the stock and hand guard were drilled with a pattern of quarter inch holes, to provide visual and tactile indications that the rifle was no longer in its original caliber. Clearly this conversion was not deemed efficient enough to adopt en masse, as only this small batch of test rifles has been seen.
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