philipk: no sweat, I didn't think a thing of it...some of my posts on other boards and issues have deserved crtique due to my attitude on some subjects so either way I wouldn't have taken it badly...thanks though.

Wowsers. I haven't started this much trouble since I posted on Glock problems at assaultweb...

For the record:

I have decided to avoid the Springfield guns altogether. The arguements against have been pretty good, and besides I can spend that much money at Fulton Armory and buy a darn good gun that IS an original Garand.

I have decided to buy a CMP gun in .30-06. I thought .308 ammo would be cheaper, but it isn't, so there is no reason to not have the better long range performance of the .30-06. No spacing issues to worry about, and it can fire ANY .30-06 ammo without problem.

I owned a Springfield .45 a while back and it was the biggest piece of junk I have ever seen. It AD'ed on me (at the range, thankfully) and I got rid of it.

I only considered buying a SA M1 garand because I had heard such good things about the M1A.

But I can get a CMP Garand in excellent shape for half the price and it is standard so it can be worked on by guys like Fulton Armory, and I don't have to go find another FFL (my guy went to Iraq) to get it.

The original Garand has a lot more romance to it and it would be wonderful to own one that was a reliable shooter that had also seen action zapping Nazis.

I originally wanted a .30 caliber rifle to give me superior performance over my AR, which is pretty puny out past 150 yards. I looked at FAL's, M1A's, G3 clones, etc. The Garand is more powerful than all of those other guns, can be had at a better price, shot cheaper than the other guns, and is a rifle I have always wanted to have. Plus I can get it directly to my door with no pesky FFL trying to make a huge profit on me. Ideal.

I am going to get started on the paperwork this week. I hope to have one actually ordered within 2 or 3 weeks. I am going to buy a service grade SA gun as my research among CMP buyers has said that these tend to be the best gamble for the money.

Even if I get a dog and have to put a new barrel and so forth on it, I will still have about the price of a new FA gun into it. And odds are that I will get a pretty good gun from the CMP.

I promise to post some pics and reviews when I finally get the gun.

Duke...er..uhhhh John ,
Great choice.  Now which flavor you gonna get?  If you want one that's pretty much guaranteed to be a shooter (not that the others won't be), look at the Danish returns with VAR barrels.  The wait is longer but, they all shoot.

Also consider ordering an HRA.  The HRA's were some of the very best in terms of quality and machining.  I have an HRA and a SA (both service grade) and the HRA was barely used (if at all).  When I was orderning my Garands, I asked Tony and Dean which ones they preferred to work on.  Unanimously they chose the HRA.  Lots of guys that have ordered HRA's have been getting ones that are totally "correct" too.  Either way you can't lose with whatever you get.

I HIHGLY recommend you pick up Scott Duff's book, "The M1 Garand: Owner's Guide"  Great source on info. I also have his other book: "The M1 Garand: Post World War II".  I found this one especially helpfull with my HRA.  

The SA's are great too, after all they were the "original" and guys are getting them within a couple weeks of ordering.
Congrats man!

Rich

FWIW (by now probably not much) I spoke with an SA riflesmith at a recent event about the new M1. He admitted they were getting back more of them than they'd like.

However, I will say that they had an M1 with them and over the course of the weekend it had somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 rounds put through it.  Everyone who shot it commented on its accuracy and there were no problems encountered at any time from what I personally saw. This could have been a specially tweaked sample, but take it for what it's worth.

Still, $1000 is a bit steep for an M1.