Tag Archives: Carbine Stuff

Underwood or Inland?


Examining the various components and miscellaneous parts that make-up my National Postal Meter carbine I got down to a closer look a the butt-plate. Originally I though it was an Underwood, given the description of diagonal checkering in Craig Reisch’s book U.S. M1 Carbines: Wartime Production. However when I Googled “that I found another resource at the fine purveyors of gunny-goodness, Chestnut Ridge Supply, which was a cool and actual visual comparison of all the different manufacturer’s M1 Carbine butt-plate
checkering. I had literally overlooked some information in the book itself. So I took their images and tweaked them for color and size and flipped them sideways to compare.

As you can see compared to the top-picture, what I’ve got is clearly not a NPM butt-plate.

And comparing further the fine checkering visible on the Underwood is also lacking.

Ding! Looks like an early Inland with the more generous checkering to me. Wonder where I can find a “proper” NPM butt-plate?

That’s one of the fun conundrums of Carbines, while National Postal Meter made their own butt-plates, they also integrated and used thousands and thousands of components from ALL the other manufacturers. From Inland (just about everything), IBM (trigger housing and stuff), Irwin Pederson (firing pins only), Quality Hardware (including a very few Union Switch & Signal made receivers), Rock-Ola (operating slides and front sights among other things), Saginaw (three things only: front sights, recoil plate, and piston nut), Standard Products (various little bits including hammers and sears), Underwood (most notably their excellent barrels), and Winchester (a few bolts, and several thousand recoil plates).
So an early butt-plate from Inland is actually quite possibly “right” for my early National Postal Meter carbine, as is also an Inland operating slide (5,000) or rear-sight assembly (5,000) – or an Underwood (10,000) rear-sight assembly.
There was probably only a few totally 100% National Postal Meter component-only carbines ever actually made, and on the first day of training and familiarization – when they took everything apart and each soldier threw every piece into a blanket and they washed the cosmoline off in gasoline and re-assembled them randomly – then there were none.

The Rail

I got the rail for the Carbine.

You can see where the mount clamps, it’s forward – you’re supposed to leave a gap fore and aft so it doesn’t bind on the barrel-band or on the receiver.

The clamping system is a lot like the hand-guards that clamps to the handlebar of my KTM off-road bike.

UPDATE:
The rail installed pretty good.

I used the steel-ruler to check and insure it wasn’t touching at either end by using it as a shim, and then to insure it was evenly rotated side-to-side with the same gap between the wood. While tightening the four screws it was necessary to maintain the same relative gaps-to-metal. A feeler-gauge might have helped.
I took it in and out of the stock several times checking clearances also before a final tightening.

Looks ok to me…Gotta figure out what-height rings work. Regarding ring-height, in an email reply the Ultimak guy said, “When mounting to the Carbine, the motto is ALAP (As Low As Possible).” So far I’m happily impressed with their customer service.

Carbine Match

We shot the Mike Campbell Memorial Carbine Match on Saturday. About twenty guys showed up and blasted away in two stages from the 50-yard line. We shot sighters then got seriouys: ten rapid (90 seconds) from prone. Then twenty rapid seated, in two ten-shot/90 second strings. Most guys finished with 30-seconds to spare! Then twenty rapid standing, in two ten-shot/90 second strings. I shot a 490-15x — Jeebus I like shooting the 200-yard targets at 50-yards! Heh. Dammit I was 11th. My buddy the Expert cleaned it. He kept everything inside the ten-ring, and so the made him do it again with the second stage of guys and he got tired and dropped one into the Nine for a 499 – I forget how many damn X’s he got… Next year we’ll probably shoot it on the 100-yard line instead of the 50 to make the scoring lower.
I came away favorably impressed with the 50-yard accuracy of the little guns, I mean I put 15 shots into a 3-inch circle.
The bottom pasters are where my sighter went before I got out the spotting scope, I was holding on the 9-ring bottom, with the sight set as forward as possible, believing that they would shoot high at such close range. I was wrong. So I held on the center for the rest of the shooting.