Replicating Hornady M1 Garand Match Ammo.

[Mitch Rapp]

There was a discussion on the CMP forum about Hornady's Garand Match ammo, and Hornady's head ballistics guy offered up the load that they use. thought I would post it here, as it seems to work well in the Garands, as well as in the 03s and 1917s. My M1 and 1903 both like it.

Here is what Dave Emary said they use:

Our nominal load is 46.5 gr of Varget. We had one lot in 2009 that we had to load with RL-15 because we had no Varget at the time and had to make a delivery. The RL-15 was the black and higher charge weight powder that some guys have reported. Varget is less temperature sensitive than the RL-15. I can say from experience this load shoots very well at 600. If you can find N135 it is absolutely the best powder going in the Garand with a 168. 46.3 grs. In my tests it will out shoot the Varget a little at 600

Asked later about the overall length he said:

The factory load is 3.250" I load my personal ammo to 3.315

The bullet they load it with is their 168 grain A-Max. I bought a box to try, and have since made a mirror load since the Garand Match ammo is almost $30 for a box of 20.

 

[Scott Hearn]

Excellent info. Thanks for posting it.

Also I've not heard a bad word about A-Max bullets.

 

[ldp4570]

I'm glad I still have a lot of Milsurp Greek!!

 

[flatwins]

I need to pick up a couple hundred rounds of the Greek stuff then after that I plan to reload. So thanks for posting the Hornady load!

 

[BJS]

Good info! Just the type of stuff I've been looking for.

 

[Copper01]

The Hornady staff, that put on the reloading clinic at the CMP shoot, stated that most M1s shoot best with the bullet 0.020"-0.030" off the rifling. That is probably why the personal handload data is a little different than the commerial load oal. Other than that little snippet of info, the remainder that was presented was the same as in the OP.