CMC M1 Carbine restoration

After a weekend of deliberation, I decided to start refurbishing my M1. So far I've sanded it down to it's base metal ready for either blueing or priming/respraying.

So far I've done the barrel and breach sections, receiver, trigger group with spring and hammer removed, charging handle, a small piece of metal that sits on the rear of the receiver (no idea what it's called), bayonet lug thingy and barrel band thingy with sling loop.

Pictures of the receiver and trigger group prior to sanding.



Trigger group after sanding.





Receiver after sanding.



At the rear of the receiver you can just make out a hole with a tapered thread. Does anyone known what it's for? I can only guess it's for attaching a folding stock, even though mine is standard wooden one piece stock.



Does anyone know what the red boxed area is supposed to contain? Whatever is supposed to be there, I ain't got it.



Whatever this part is called, it sort of hooks onto the rear of the receiver and acts as a sort of anchor point when screwed into the wooden frame.



Charging handle.





First section of the breach and barrel.





You can't really tell from the picture, but the ramp leading up to the breach is in a bit of a chewed up state. I can't do much about that so sanded it as best I could. And somewhere is the detonator pin. God knows how you remove that. Oh well.....



Second part of the barrel section.



The forward sight post on the barrel. Still needs a little more work with a wire brush.



Bayonet lug thingy. Dunno what it's called.



Barrel band.



The rear sight assembly. I haven't stripped and sanded it yet. Still on the "to do" list. Pictures are quite crap really. The detail of the rear sight itself and how the sight works is quite impressive, especially the way it clicks when changing range/elevation ect.







And finally, everything together. Most of it anyway.



All this took just one day of constant sanding. There's still some areas with the original paint still on as I couldn't reach those parts, but seeing as they're hidden away inside, I'm not too fussed. Another interesting part of sanding it all down is seeing all the original casting marks. I may be wrong but there's no way these were originally machined on a mill or lathe. More like investment casting such as lost wax casting or something similar.

Next step: Either bluing or priming/respraying. Which one?

Underneath the receiver, there appears to be a machined slot with 2 holes drilled through it. I think it might be for an ejector (which I haven't got). Can anyone confirm this?

stumpy_ned wrote:

Does anyone know what the red boxed area is supposed to contain? Whatever is supposed to be there, I ain't got it.

I checked on my model - surprisingly it has a different construction of that whole area. No slot, no part that would go in there. Model is also marked "M1 Carbine", but even if it's M2 it should be practically the same. I guess CMC changed model at some point in time.

I also don't have a serial number anywhere, just "SMG" logo stamped just behind the rear sight. It even has a different sight - only left/right adjustement, with the range part cast/fixed as a whole, not moveable.

I wonder why CMC would change their design? Could it be possible that it's actually a Tanaka M1 Carbine that has been rebranded? Or maybe a design change was as a result of a change in Japanese firearms laws regarding modelgun construction?

Another update to the M1 restoration: A new basic style of recoil rod has been made. Cheap, easy and functional. Total cost of raw materials was circa £3.

Basically it's nothing more than a stainless steel bolt with a rounded head, wedged into a thin metal tube. The rounded head has then been filed flat to allow it to stay flat against the internal wall of the carbine stock. I've assembled it with the original CMC M1 parts and it works very well, however the spring I am using as a main recoil spring is far too powerful and literally slams the charging handle/bolt forward with far too much force. I'll either trim the spring down every few coils till I get a more acceptable charging motion, or I'll just buy a few different springs from Lee Springs UK.







This end sits flush against the inner wall of the carbine's wooden stock.



This end of the recoil spring has a small indentation set within the inner rod which helps it to seat over the small protruding nipple on the underside of the breach/barrel section (see previous picture from previous posts).



Finished recoil rod and spring assembled with receiver, trigger group and barrel.



So far though, not bad results.

stumpy_ned wrote:

I wonder why CMC would change their design? Could it be possible that it's actually a Tanaka M1 Carbine that has been rebranded? Or maybe a design change was as a result of a change in Japanese firearms laws regarding modelgun construction?

CMC was the original manufacturer, Tanaka took over after CMC went bankrupt. I think they changed markings to Tanaka though, sadly nkoinuma webpage with most info on variants is gone.

Model manufacturers changed design as well as markings at some stages in life of the product, so this is not uncommon. Sometimes there are 4-5 versions differing by minor details.


Results look good indeed :-) Have fun!

Birchwood Casey Perma Gun Blue Liquid on order via ebay. Current DIY spring has been trimmed and still too powerful so I'll just ditch the current spring and buy a more softer spring from Lee Springs UK.

There's two small holes near the rear of the charging handle and a similar horizontal hole which I'm guessing is to hold it all in place. Need to figure out what goes in these holes and a way of making replacement parts so the charging handle locks open after last round/empty magazine.

I will post photos of my M1 hopefully over the weekend. It should help at least to see if there are similarities and differences

Hi Smootik.

Much obliged!

Latest update:
Receiver, trigger group, both barrel sections, bayonet attachment, charging handle, barrel band with sling loop and bolt have now been re-blued to a nice deep texture.

Pictures to follow hopefully sometime tomorrow.

Took a bit longer, and I did not have time for a full stip, but those photos should give you an idea of differences.
This seems to be CMC M1/M2 variant with select fire.

Note:
- rear sight is fixed, can only move left/right by turning the knob.Whole middle part is one piece,
- inside wooden parts there are marks "C63" or "063". No idea if those are added at a later date, or originally made by CMC/Tanaka,
- behind the sight there is only "SMG" stamp, no serial number.
- there is however a manuacture date (?) on the right side: "1978.7"
- various differences in mechanism shape and details.

Let me know if you need some specific parts photographed, I will do that when possible.

Nice looking M1 you have there. Your pictures are much better than mine! Mine are all from a crappy camera phone. As you say, the differences between the two M1's are quite apparent. I wonder why they did that? Having the C63 marking is odd. Could it not be possible that you actually have a real M1 Carbine stock? I've seen real surplus Enfield stocks marked in a similar way.

Pictures of the finished CMC M1 Carbine taken earlier today. All metal parts, even the screw heads, have been re-blued using Birchwood Casey Liquid. The camera phone doesn't do the finished post-bluing pictures justice but take it from me the finish is pretty good and streak and blotch free.



Receiver, trigger group, charging handle and breach/barrel part section.






Fully assembled in it's naked state minus rear sight.




Rear sight and barrel band. The barrel band was easy. The rear sight was a real pain as I didn't have a small enough flat head screw driver to remove the screw inside the sight's traverse dial. Best I could do was remove the paint from the outer surfaces and then dial the traverse sight from one end to the other and touch up the insides with a cotton bud.




Butt plate. Was badly discoloured and rusted so I went to work on it with a steel circular brush attached to an electric drill. Cleaned it right up to it's original shiny metal. There were a few rust spots that caused some pitting but I managed to sand those areas down rather well. I was going to spray the butt plate with grey primer followed by satin black as per Kiwigunners rebuild, but couldn't find anywhere round my way that sold it cheap enough ie for less than a few quid! Instead I just settled for re-bluing the butt plate. Glad I did as I think it makes the butt plate look very authentic in a vintage way.




One thing to point out, a small bottle of Birchwood only just lasted the entire carbine, mainly due to me mucking up the first bit of bluing and having to redo it again. It says on the bottle that it is best to use cotton daubers but I have found that it is best to use a microfibre cloth, as the Birchwood absorbs into the cloth and soaks itself in. Once I finished bluing, I then placed the Birchwood soaked cloth into a plastic sealed sandwich bag, keeping the cloth nice and damp with the gun blue liquid so if I need to use it again all I need to do is whip it out the bag and wipe on.

Still need to take a few pictures of the M1 fully assembled in it's wooden stock but I'll do that tomorrow when the natural light is better. And also still need to rectify the recoil spring and charging handle hold open spring thingy-me-jig. All in all I'm quite impressed with my first attempt at restoring a modelgun.

I see this login thing if I click "host it" without selecting any file first. Need to close browser to get it working again.
Normally forum automatically logs you into the picture hosting.

No clue about the stock. Model ones were manufactured by Tanaka (originally a wood company) for CMC, don't know if they were marked inside - maybe others can check theirs.

Closed everything down and started again. Did the trick.

Forgot to add: Once all the metal parts were stripped down to bare metal, I left everything for about 5-6 days whilst waiting for my Birchwood bluing liquid to arrive. In that time some of the bare metal parts started to discolour with white blotches. I can only assume this is due to the bare metal reacting with the indoor air temperature as it no longer had it's protective coating.

CMC M1 Carbine re-blued and assembled in all it's glory.













Nay bad......

It must look even more stunning in real life :-)

Wow - what a great job!!!!!

Agreed, absolutely fantastic..

Highest regards

MARK