The Kingston Armory 22 M1 Garand

[airedale]

A few months ago I was wandering around in one of the local sporting goods stores and spotted one of the new Kingston M1 Garands. Never saw one before and never heard or read anything about them. When I got home I did some investigating and found that they were made right here in Liberty NY. It's concept is a rifle built to duplicate the original M1 Garand in look and feel right down to the weight. The action is based on the tried and true Ruger 10/22 and is made from steel instead of aluminum, the trigger is a custom Jard that gives a beautiful 2 1/2 pound crisp pull all inside a nicely figured walnut stock with Garand style hardware and sights along with a lifetime guarantee. From all that I have read about this rifle it has been getting a big thumbs up for looks, function and accuracy. For me it was one of those guns that just weighed too heavy on my mind so I bought the darn thing. I will be putting that bucket of 1400 Remington Golden bullets I picked up at Bass Pro on the cheap to good use wringing this baby out. 

Al

Edited August 4, 2017 by airedale

[ATbuckhunter]

Beautiful rifle! That's one heavy .22! 

[Pygmy]

Pretty cool, Al....!

My 1943 vintage Springfield Armory M1 Garand is about 2 feet from my left hand SMILING at me as I type this...

Looking forward to your report  !

[grampy]

First I've seen this!  And how cool is that gun?  Really cool!  Put her through some paces and let us know what you think.  Look forward to what you have to say!

[Chef]

I've had land In liberty for years and never knew I'll have to check them out


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[TACC]

Keep us posted on the range report

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[airedale]

 

Here is an update on my Kingston M1 Garand 22 LR rifle I picked up during the summer, it has been an adventure for sure right from the get-go, in one word a "JAMOMATIC!" after my initial go around with this rifle.

 So it's a long one, let's start at the beginning and the timeline, I started out by going to RimfireCentral.com for some research, I have been a member there since it's beginning and it is the source for information on Rimfire firearms. There are several members that purchased M1s and all had somewhat similar problems as myself and we all tried putting our heads together diagnosing the maladys these rifles possessed.

I started with an attempt to contact Kingston Armory, below is an email I sent to Kingston after trying a bunch of times get them on their contact phone number that is always giving a busy signal,and the email I sent to them..

Hello,
My name is Al from Central NY, I have tried to contact you by phone but keep getting a busy signal so I will give an email a shot. 

I purchased one of your M1 Garand 22 LR rifles from Herb Philipsons in Oneida NY a few days ago. Yesterday was the first chance I had to shoot the rifle, and as per instructions I cleaned the gun up well of any excess packing grease wiped the barrel clean and with several brands of different ammunition proceeded to try this new rifle on my own back yard range. I know new guns especially autoloaders require a breakin period to gain reliable function but this rifle showed to have serious problems right from the first magazine shot through it. Failure to function properly came in every possible form I can think of. Stovepiping, failure to feed, failure to eject, weak firing pin strikes, I had another Ruger 10/22 magazine on hand and the results were the same. So after around 150 rounds with no improvement I quit for the day and decided to see if I figure out what the problem was. 

I have been a big time shooter my whole adult life, I can usually diagnose most firearms problems. I cleaned the rifle up extremely well and the only thing I could come to and see possibly wrong was that the bolt was not going completely into battery after every shot. I hoped that maybe being a steel receiver gun it may take a little more shooting than an aluminum receiver Ruger 10/22 does to smooth out. (wishful thinking) But I believe precise bolt face and chamber alignment may just off by a just a tad or the extractor size may be off ever so slightly.

Next day it was back to the range with three different brands of ammo for another try. Malfunctions did start decreasing from the previous session to around one or two every magazine full, still way too many but I was hopeful and especially happy with the accuracy I was getting. The last two magazines full fired flawlessly. I thought to myself maybe after a couple of hundred more round she will smooth out and work properly. I went into the house and brought out a new box of Winchester 555 32 gr hps and a box of Federal Champions and loaded up the magazine with Federals to start. When I fired the second shot KABOOM!! the magazine flew out and the steel plate glued to the bottom had been blown right off. The case head on the cartridge had fractured most likely from not going completely into battery. 

That was pretty much it for me, I own a couple of dozen various rimfire rifles, many that are autoloaders and several autoloading pistols and never had anywhere near the function-reliability problems this rifle has. There is no possible way this rifle was inspected properly by quality control in house at the factory for function and reliability before being boxed up and released to be sold.

Any other time would not have been able to box this rifle up fast enough, send it back and tell the outfit that made it to shove it where the sun don't shine and give me a refund. All that being said I absolutely love shooting this rifle, I have a 100 yard range set up especially for rimfire shooting and I was making music on the reactionary steel targets when it functions, I could not miss with this thing. Somehow I will get this rifle to fire reliably.

So in the back of the booklet that came with this rifle instructions say to call first with any problems, I just tried calling again and again and keep getting a busy signal so here is an email.

Epilog, several days still getting busy signals and no replies to any emails yet.

========================================================================

It is a pretty good bet that not many of these rifles were made and released because of the problems it has, one of those deals where everyone was in a big hurry and they failed to get the bugs out which ended bringing down the works.

Because of having no success contacting anyone from this outfit I smelled a rat and from where I stood as time went by with no response the hand writing looked to be on the wall. The life time warranty did not mean squat to me and there was no way I was going to box up and send this rifle in for repair. I knew if they folded I would not see my rifle again and possibly not be compensated at all.  

The saving grace is the Ruger 10/22 design this rifle has, I know it can be made to function with some extra tinkering and to me it is worth the effort because as bad as it has malfunctioned I still love the gun and it will work 100% when I get done with it because I will do whatever it takes

==========================================

My gut suspicions were correct and sure as heck this Kingston Armory folded and sold off whatever assets they had a few weeks ago, I have been trying hard to make contact with anyone affiliated with this outfit with zero success,there is nobody to complain to or get help from.

========================================================================

At first I was just going to pack up the barreled action and send it to Connecticut Precision Chambering, they are  top notch Ruger 10/22 gunsmiths that will make the Kingston work like it is supposed to. But I decided to give it a shot myself and see if could get it done myself.

After reading what the Kingston Garand owners on RFC diagnosed as their possible jamming problems I sat down and disassembled my rifle again and proceeded to address all of what has been discussed as a perceived problem.

First of all I gave the action a good cleaning again and then polished all moving surfaces of the bolt and receiver where there was contact with very fine crocus cloth first and finished up with a buffing wheel on a dremel.

I then replaced the extractor with a Volquartsen.

I also have a Volquartsen firing pin but it would have required some slight modification as the pin hole is not the same so I  polished up the stock firing pin and made sure there was no burrs and tried it before messing with the Volquartsen.

Put in an extended length JW charging handle along with spring and polished charging rod.

Put everything back together and fired off several magazines full of various ammo and the rifle performed without one hitch, so far so good. When I get a little better weather temp wise I will give her a good test.

I think I may have got this rifle straightened out, this is a great rifle that with a little better quality control and better parts sourcing could it have been a real winner, Too bad!

Al

 

 

Edited November 10, 2017 by airedale

[Curtiss Poteat]

Are they still in Business? I have the M1 and there are two of us that would purchase the M-14 version. Are they in production?

[airedale]

As I stated above Kingston Armory company folded a couple of years ago, as far as I know the M14 model never made it into production and none were sold.

 I love my Garand, but it took a lot of work to get it working right, it is one of my most fun rifles and I shoot it all the time. I removed the Jard trigger and installed  a complete Volquartsen trigger assembly this past summer.

Al

[Chef]

Pretty cool, Al....!
My 1943 vintage Springfield Armory M1 Garand is about 2 feet from my left hand SMILING at me as I type this...
Looking forward to your report  !

I have a 43 Springfield as well, also picked up a Winchester 13 not too long ago


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