Chamber reaming M1 Garand-need help

[mshehan]

Hello,

Here's my issue. I have an M1 Garand that I want to replace the bolt. Of the two (new) bolts I have to choose from, neither headspace. One bolt #D28287-SA is in excellent condition. The second bolt #6528287-SA is a new unissued piece and my info shows correct for my 5mil. serial receiver. They both actually headspace too tight.
The current bolt (D28287-SA) headspaces fine but has a lot of wear on the lugs and is pitted cosmetically. It is a fine functioning rifle. Question is, can I extend the current chamber by reaming to obtain proper headspace? Can I use a pull through style reamer (without removing the barrel) or does the barrel need to come off and reamed in a conventional manner? So many resources show that many ream with a pull through style with the receiver in place. My gunsmith claims he needs to remove the barrel to extend the chamber. I even talked to someone at Krieger barrels (just to price a new barrel) but also explained what I thought about doing as mentioned above. It seems they agreed with my gunsmith (but was sketchy on info - maybe intentionally). Why is it then so many resources claim to install a short chambered barrel on a receiver, and then finish ream??? I'm confused!!! It seems I got off topic but I believe I have a similar issue in that I need to extend the chamber to headspace correctly but am getting conflicting information. Please help!

 

[jscandale]

It's really not a big deal to pull the barrel from a Garand receiver. Just unscrew the barrel, measure the distance from the action face to the bolt face while the bolt is in the completely locked position, then ream the chamber until that dimension is the same as the distance from the back of the go gage to the barrel shoulder plus .003" for clearance and crush, polish the chamber and screw the barrel back on until it is back in the proper clock position. Mission accomplished!

JS