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Wwii M1a1 Question


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Hey all,

 

I'm consulting for a WWII game and I was wondering if the "typical" WWII M1A1 was parkerized with that gray-green parkerizing. Not in front of my copy of American Thunder....

 

The guy is starting to put the "skin" on the model and I want to make sure he gets the right color. Any links to some high quality photos of the correct WWII color?

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QUOTE (gijive @ Mar 27 2006, 01:31 PM)
According to "American Thunder", the originals were black oxide (blue). I believe most were parkerized during rebuilds, originals from the factory should be blue.

Great, thanks. Wish I could carry that book around with me. Such a great reference. Strange, if you look at Canfield's book on U.S. weps of WWII he says most should be parked. I'll defer to the specialty book on this one!!

 

Oh yeah, having only fired my Kahr SBR, does the M1A1 fire from an open bolt when I semi mode as well as FA? I assume it does.

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A fresh park looks grey. I've read that years of storage in cosmoline created the greenish tint.
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I have seen many M-1's and M-1a1's and not being the expert, my question is:

 

I have seen some with park'ed receivers and park'ed barrels, some with park'ed receivers and blued barrels, and some that were all blued. Now these were all original guns, not Kahrs. Which one is the correct configuration or did they come this different from the factory?

 

http://www.machinegunbooks.com/forums/invboard1_1_2/upload/html/emoticons/unsure.gif

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Some years back I had the dubious "honor" of processing about 800-900 torched M1 and M1A1 Thompsons which were to be rewelded (never happened). I would say that out of that lot 85% of them were parked, and

probably half appeared to be mint condition. The remainder were blued, and most of them looked mint. Its pretty

easy to identifiy a used/refinished gun vs. a mint gun as there are places where the parts and mechanism wear which are not eliminated by being parkerized. The trail is cold on this of course but from examining this and many other lots of Thompsons my opinion (yes, I know, everybody has one) is that most M1 and M1A1's were blued off the production line, but apparently some runs or lots - were parkerized. In a production environment black oxide (which is only called bluing in the gun business) is easier to do because the parts do not have to be sandblasted or etched - they can be blued as-is right of the machines. Parkerizing requires that the surface be etched - usually done by sandblasting - to allow the parkeizing to "take". Plus Savage, being a large gun manufacturer had production black oxide lines in place. One final note - it is correct that the original WWI-WWII parkerized finish, when new, is slate grey in color. There is no specification for any green color or tint in the military technical specifications for the finish. The specs say color should be "grey to black" and even allows for streaking and discoloration as long as the parts are evenly coated. The distinctive green tint is the result of cosmoline getting stuck in the porous finish, or linseed oil migrating into the finish from caring for the stock, or the effect of air, light, and oils over time. If you unwrap a Mint condition 50-75 year old part, and the cosmoline has not turned to shellac, degrease and thoroughly clean that part, and it will be slate grey, not green.

 

Bob Bower/Philly O

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