*M1 Carbine bolt disassembly *
By serger

27 October, 2002

Before I begin talking about the carbine bolt safety needs to be addressed

  1. Field strip the rifle. If you don’t know how go here. The bolt assembly has spring loaded tiny parts under compression. Wear Safety glasses and be sure you know where the parts if they become airborne are going to impact. (Preferably someplace safe and not in your eye or anyone who might be watching.) Also you can stab your self with the screwdriver you will be using so watch out for that.
  2. Since these parts are tiny, most notably the extractor spring plunger (stud) they are very easy to lose. I recommend if you’ve never torn one of these down to be very deliberate and cautious and do the teardown on a cookie sheet with a tee shirt on it so you can control the parts and see them. There are bolt disassembly tools for this weapon and if you are going to be playing with a lot of carbine bolts I’d suggest getting one. It will make your life easier.

Here is an exploded drawing of the bolt.

  1. Bolt
  2. Firing Pin
  3. Extractor
  4. Extractor Spring
  5. Extractor Spring Plunger
  6. Ejector
  7. Ejector Spring

To tear down the bolt what you need to do is to slide out the extractor. It’s the piece in the fore ground. Under the bottom of it is a plunger or stud that pushes it up. You need to get under the extractor with a screwdriver and push it from right to left.

I use 2 small screwdrivers to take the parts apart. One holds the extractor stud down and the other walks the extractor out.

When you slide the extractor out you will have the little stud pop up. Cover it with your hand so it doesn’t fly off and become lost.

The stud is the tiny part in the middle.

When you have the extractor out the firing pin will fall out the bottom. The ejector will pop up and you can pull it and it’s spring out. The only thing left to do is to take a small tweezer or toothpick and remove the extractor spring. When this stuff is done you’ll have a pile of parts that look like this.

Notice how small the extractor spring plunger is. I’ve spent a lot of time on my hands and knees trying to find them when they fly away. Just be careful and deliberate and you’ll probably not have any bad things happen.

Also in the picture above there is a small cutout on the ejector you can barely see. That part has to be aligned to the firing pin or you can’t put the bolt back together. Be advised.

To reassemble, place the place the extractor spring in it’s hole. Next place the firing pin in the firing pin channel of the bolt. It will only go in one way. Next place the ejector and spring in its hole. Note the cutout on the side of it. You will have to compress the ejector to get the extractor into the bolt. Now start the extractor pushing up on the firing pin to lock it into the bolt. When it is about at the end of travel you will be able to push the ejector in and the end of the extractor will lock it into the bolt.

Now for you are in for the fun part, compressing the extractor spring and retaining stud to allow it to go under the extractor-retaining stud. I usually place the bolt in a shop vice with soft jaws to hold the bolt so I can get the extractor on. Today I got lucky and didn’t have to use the vice but that generally not the case. You need to compress the extractor spring with a punch (I used the flat blade screwdriver I tore it down with because it aligned with the cutout on the stud) Once the stud is compressed below the point where the extractor can be slid it you slide the extractor to the home position. You’re almost done.

One last thing, shake the bolt assembly. The firing pin should slide back and forth easily. You should be able to push on the extractor and it will move a little. You should be also able to compress the ejector slightly and have it move also.

That’s it.

Thanks for the read

serger


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