Exactly my feelings as well!
|
   
   
|
|
Exactly my feelings as well!
Fatigue is a metallurgical term that has a precise meaning. It DOES NOT "set in" due to 100 years. Fatigue is caused
be repeated cycling of reversing stresses, and depending on alloy, stress level and things like local stress concentrations
like notches, gouges, stamped letters in critical locations, will cause a crack to form after a number of cycles. In some
extremely poor designs, cracking can occur in a few hundred cycles. For good designs, where the maximum stresses
are below 50% of yield strength for steel - a part can have an INFINITE fatigue life - meaning it will NEVER crack from a larger
number of cycles.
Words mean things and metal fatigue is a term which should be used properly, just like cylinder throat, barrel throat,
sprue plate and many other terms used on this forum. Making up your own definitions based on what you think might
make some kind of sense is not helpful to communication.
Bill
If it was easy, anybody could do it.
For good designs, where the maximum stresses are below 50% of yield strength for steel - a part can have an INFINITE fatigue life - meaning it will NEVER crack from a larger number of cycles.
That is correct. Question; are receivers heat treated (hardened) to better hold in the pressure of the cartridge firing or to harden the surface for smoother operation, less wear and to prevent galling of one part moving against the other?
A follow on question; if you say to better hold in the pressure of the cartridge firing then why isn't the barrel heat treated as such?
Larry Gibson
Just my 2 cents here. It's the barrel that contains the lions share of the stress produced by firing the cartridge. The action is only used to hold the bolt to the barrel and keep the two from separating. In other words, bolt thrust is the only thing the action is taking care of. If the action is ruptured through the reciever ring, I would humbly submit that the barrel had to go first, so you were screwed anyway.
That said, shooting a rifle bolt through the RH side of your face is no way to end your shooting season.
Different cartridges produce different percentages of bolt thrust based on the body, shoulder, and neck design of the brass, and the trick with any of these cartridges is to just make sure you brought enough gun to handle it.
Now, in all honesty, the early 03's probably would be just hunky dory for 99.99999% of cast shooting, or shooting factory ammo. As has been pointed out, "if they were going to blow up, they probably would have done so years ago".
The thing is, you're all experienced reloaders right? Got any kids or generations that look up to you? How about a neighbors kid? A nephew? Do any of them know what you know about exactly how to use your firearms and load for them?
What if you get killed in a car wreck? Don't you think that one of these folks would cherish your personal 03-A3?
I know mine would.
Now, couple that with a young person who is trying to follow in your footsteps without your expert guidance, and does like I did when I was 19, and puts a double charge of unique under a cast lead boolit on accident. When I pulled this stunt, I was using a PF Winchester model 70. I had to beat the bolt open with a mallet to get the brass out, and when I did, the letters on the bottom of the case had been stamped flat, and the primer fell out. The rifle was chambered in 30-06.
I really am thankful that I was using good quality equipment that day, because it saved me from my own foolishness, and I got to learn a valuable lesson for cheap.
That's why, I am dead set against allowing questionable firearms to remain in service. I have condemned several so far as being unsafe to shoot, much to the dismay of the owners, but not one single person thought the next 100-200 rounds were so valuable as to be worth reconstructive surgery to their arms and face, (or that of their children who would be next in line to make the gamble).
Nope. This here is America, and we are swimming in good quality rifles that will take just about anything you can throw at them. There is no reason to hold onto junk that is well documented as being unsafe, and I submit to you that if your were really all that serious about the collectors value, you
A. wouldn't be shooting it in the first place.
B. wouldn't have chosen that rifle anyways
and
C. Do I really need a "C" here fellers?
You do realize that junk is junk, but the junk they sell at wal-mart is a safer bet than the best Mauser, 03A3, or Arisaka that was ever produced right?
It's called quality control.
It's not an option these days.
It used to be.
Yeah, I know, I didn't answer a thing. Just a few of my personal thoughts on this subject.
I don't personally care to shoot them, but if you do, then more power to ya.
Last edited by MBTcustom; 07-20-2014 at 03:27 PM.
Precision in the wrong place is only a placebo.
Originally Posted by goodsteel
Tim,
Are you referring to an early number 1903 Springfield as an 03-A3?
Are you sure you want to be saying 03-A3 here???????
I thought the 03-A3 was a much later Springfield that had an alloy receiver...... Nickel steel if I remember right.
Eutectic
I think I'll quit shooting any firearm older than me !
Guessing it would cost more than getting another receiver, but with all current high-tech, still no non-destructive way to check/measure these old receivers ?
That is kinda the crux of one of the debates here. One of the positions is that the suspect receiver would not present a precipitating mode of failure, it would simply fail. One cycle good, the next kablooey.
Another position is the opposite. In that view, yes, the event of failure would be preceded by cracks, stretching, etc, etc, that could be observed and measured.
Goodsteel brings up an excellent point as well. How much of the pressure generated during a firing cycle is contained by the integrity of the barrel? It would be interesting to know how much pressure is commented in the direction of bolt thrust.
A simple test really. Who wants to have their rifle action annealed? The action and bolt both annealed to as soft as when they were before heat treating.
How long before lug set back starts? How long til the lugs show galling?
I'm no engineer but I can easily see that the action and bolt do far more than "just" contain the pressure of firing. Where does that bolt thrust go? How long can soft steel lugs in a soft steel action last before they set back?
I am certain that if the early breech loader smiths felt heat treating the action wasn't needed it wouldn't be done. Modern manufacturers surely would eliminate that step as a cost saving measure if it could be done away with. The fact it hasn't gone the way of the carrier pigeon tells me all I need to know.
You will learn far more at the casting, loading, and shooting bench than you ever will at a computer bench.
. . . and a third, Pb2au, is that the low-number receiver would fail "without warning" when you tried to shoot an 8x57 cartridge in it, whereas a "good" receiver might hold, and vent gas.
In the last week or so in this forum I've seen discussion of '03s, 1916 Mausers, and "last-ditch" Arisakas. In each case, the "nay" group subscribes to the idea that the receivers might fail without warning under normal loads, due to undetectable flaws and too-close margins. And in each case they seem to be filling in certain blanks in the data with imagination, calling it caution, and passing it along as received wisdom.
Near as I have been able to sort out:
* Low-number '03s have a record of failing under overloads like obstructed barrels and 8x57 ammmo. They are documented to fail as low as 80,000 lbs. They do not appear to be documented as failing under normal loads, but have a lower margin of safety than a "good" '03. Since they pressure limit for .30-06 is 50k, it does not seem to be necessary to retire these rifles, but would be prudent to test them with dye penetrant. This assumes for safety's sake that any given low-number '03 receiver is a "bad" one. There's also the statistical issue of encountering a bad vs. good one. Dutchman's engineer is correct that if you have a bad one, the risk is 1:1 of having a bad one. But that's like saying that if out of a million planes I buy a ticket for one that will crash, my risk of being in that crash is 1:1, so I should act as if every plane will crash.
* I've learned that '96 Swede Mausers occasionally blow up w/o warning, though probably dye-penetrant would have revealed a crack beforehand, so it sounds like Swede Mausers are at least as big a crapshoot as low-number '03s. This is not a dig at Dutchman or Swedes, just something I was surprised to hear about.
* Nobody seems to be dye-testing their Krags or Rolling Blocks, nor are they panicking about them despite a history of cracks and Kbs.
* 1916 Mausers when imported were tested by EH White labs at 98,000lbs (thank Wilco for the link). This is less than some other rifle receivers but is strong enough to handle 7.62 NATO ammo. Again, the widespread perception, which appears false, is that these rifles could "blow at any moment" under normal loads, based again on filling in the blanks with imagination and passing it along as received wisdom.
* Warnings against "Last ditch" Arisakas appear to confuse them with "school rifles" which were never intended to be fired with live ammo. "School rifles" have undoubtedly failed. Near as I can tell, the so-called "last ditch" Arisakas have mid-war detail changes to simplify production, but the receivers are as safe to shoot as early Arisakas. The warnings against shooting late-war Arisakas that are genuine rifles (not trainers) appear misplaced. Again, people filling in blanks with imagination, in the direction of nay-saying, and passing it along as received wisdom.
I'm no thrill seeker, but want to make choices based on facts, and not be cowed by fearful supposition passed off as facts.
While the discussion has come close to blowing up a couple of times, I am pleased to see that it is still being discussed. The fact of the matter is the question what to do with them is 100% a question of an opinion, and not to be completely answered to the point of making a lasting universal decision to start with. No one side of the issue will prevail over the other, period.
What this thread has done however is to revisit an issue that needs to brought to the fore periodically, and I would estimate more emphatically now, in that casting being more popular than ever for a very, very long time, these rifles are reaching new owners as the previous generation passes them along, and this thread (it is my hope) will continue to bring knowledge to the shooting community as long as this forum exists.
Debate away gentlemen!
More "This is what happened when I,,,,," and less "What would happen if I,,,,"
Last of the original Group Buy Honcho's.
"Dueling should have never been made illegal in this country. It settled lots of issues between folks."- Char-Gar
Yes, you are right. Had a bad case of the dum dum earlier.
Precision in the wrong place is only a placebo.
Honestly, I have to agree with you here.
However, as a person who could potentially be held liable for any mistake that might be made by a client in his choice of rifle, I find myself being more and more biased against anything that sounds shady (warranted or not), so you'll just have to take what I say with a grain of salt. As an individual, you are perfectly free to take whatever chances you want to, and more power to ya.
In contrast, anything I give my blessing to had better be able to stand up to extremely close scrutiny by industry professionals, most of whom believe the early 1903's are unsafe, along with LD Arisaka's.
That said, I have a rifle right here made from a LD Arisaka and I love it to pieces. Would I ever sell it? Not no, but heck no! I'd sooner run a chop saw through it myself.
There's a slight difference in opinion here.
Precision in the wrong place is only a placebo.
Point made for sure. I think in the grand picture, obviously all three components ( barrel, receiver, and bolt)work together to do the job. My curiosity lies in how much of the force is being commuted to the bolt face. Again, this is just my curiosity.
As to the question of how much support the receiver ring gives to the barrel during the pressure cycle of the firing of the cartridge, i suppose a person could take a chambered barrel, tie it to a tire, put a cartridge in it and figure out a way to slingshot a nail into it to set it off. Then just sit back and see what happens. And yes, this would be entirely unscientific. Goodsteel, you got a nail, chambered barrel and tire laying around?
As the early '03 receivers had a case hardened surface not unlike the Krag action and writings forever it seems say the steel was (or could be) burnt.... But let's say overheated during the heat treatment process as a higher vote in # of writings. My suggestion would be not to trust a dye-penetrant test as a holy grail of some sort of OK..... You could get false readings because of the above.
As far as the late war Japs (sorry.... last ditch Arisakas is a new one for me as it's been years)
But I can tell you from my personal witnessed experience in 1949 about one my father had.... Yes they talked about these 'last ditchers' (by other names) even back then. I watched my father tie this 7.7mm in an old tire..... off the side of the bank.... He loaded the 'last ditch' 7.7 with a 'blue pill' he had loaded... He pulled the trigger with a 50' cord. It sounded like an explosion off down the bank.... But it was still there when we walked down. I watched my father 'beat' the bolt open with a rawhide mallet. He repeated this three times! Today I wonder how the extractor lived through it all! By the third shot the wood was toast (from all the gas from blown primers) or he may have shot the other two rounds he had!.... The load he used (THIS IS NOT A RECOMMENDATION!!!) was a reformed Denver 43 '06 case, a Peters #12 primer and a 215gr .303 bullet... Oh the powder? All the 2400 he could get into the case!!!!!
Many years later in the 60's he re-barreled this very same action to a .308 and made a maple stock for it. I still have the old thing....
Am I going to check it with dye-penetrant before I shoot it? HECK NO!!
Those three; (100,000 psi rounds) this is a rough psi guess.... and several thousand full power 'J' words target shooting has been test enough for this ol' girl!!!
Eutectic
Last edited by Eutectic; 07-20-2014 at 10:10 PM.
You're probably pretty close and a little on the conservative side there Eutectic. I punched that load into quickload and got an estimated pressure of 172,212 PSI. You have to figure that some of that probably didn't burn and got blown out the barrel, so 100,000-120,000 PSI sounds like a good guesstimate.
The point I was making is that the barrel is what takes most of the pressure. The action takes only the rearward pressure (bolt thrust) of the cartridge.
The action does nothing to add to the strength of the barrel. In fact, if anything, the barrel is reduced from a 1.2 diameter to usually less than 1" with a real nice helical fracture point set up at 10-20 TPI.
All the action does is hold the case in the barrel and pop the primer.
However, if the bolt lugs give way, and the pressure decides that the path of least resistance is towards the rear of the rifle instead of behind the projectile going in the forward direction, then you are going to get a compounding error that is going to make you rethink your load data.
The good news is that most decent bolt action war rifles had safeguards, and extra lugs built in (1903 is no exception) so that if the main lugs gave way, there was a backup in the rear, as well as a pressure relief hole so that it went no further.
Therefore, if the receiver ring is cracked, the problem is not that the radial pressure containment has been compromised, but that the cracked receiver allows the bolt to ride further away from the barrel (read increased headspace) than is safe, thus setting up a potential chain reaction that could lead to a Kaboom.
What is much more likely is that you experience lug setback on the receiver, the bolt, or both (usually manifests itself as a hard bolt lift).
Lug setback can happen one of two ways:
1. The receiver, the bolt, or both were not hard enough, so the mating surfaces get swaged and deformed before they let go completely.
2. The receiver, the bolt, or both were hardened too much, so the mating surfaces develop cracks in their junction points which will give way very quickly once compromised.
The second is definitely the more scary of the two scenarios, because when trouble happens it happens suddenly, and that is what the worry is with these actions. Others, like the Spanish Mausers, are of the first category, and they can show many warning signs before the big event (Hard bolt lift, soft surfaces that are easy to scratch, etc etc etc)
Contrary to common belief, there is no way to tell if a receiver was case hardened too much, or too deep. Usually if the surface of the metal is hard, it is considered a good action, but hard is hard, and without destroying it, there is no way to be sure if it was hardened too much and made brittle instead of malleable. You just have to make your best guess and hope it was right.
That said, doing a proof load (proof loads are available for many calibers if you care to search for them) should tell the tale (like Eutectic's dad did). If an action will take 80,000 PSI, then it's save to assume that it's good for half of that for many many years.
Precision in the wrong place is only a placebo.
A dye penetrant test allows you to detect an already-cracked receiver. So you can disqualify that receiver without question, no matter the model number or serial number.
The resistance to dye penetrant tests seems to come from people who think that even an uncracked 03 receiver wil suddenly burst without warning. Apparently from this assumption they conclude that there is no point in knowing whether a receiver is cracked because they would declare it unsafe based wholly on the serial number, or model, etc. They imagine that even if uncracked it might fail with any given shot.
The problem with that theory is that there seems to be no evidence that uncracked low-number 03s fail at normal pressures.
There appear to be Swedes failing at normal pressures, but possibly they developed cracks which with cycling reached critical length. If so a dye test might have prevented the Kb.
I'm a retired aerospace, machine shop owner. The crack test for ALL magnetic steel parts that go on a aircraft is, MPI (Magnetic Particle Inspection) or Magnaflux. Penatrating die would not be aproved for crack testing on steel but, it is used on aluminum parts.
Tim (GoodSteel) is right about the role of the action and barrel. A receiver ring, it's self, can not fail until the barrel exceeds it's yeild strength. If that happens, not even a A3 will hold together.
To give a better understanding about the above statement, P.O. Ackley, in his destructive testing, actually blew the barrels out of the Arisaka he tested, w/o hurting the threads and had to go to smooth bore, tool steel barrels to try to complete his test, he never did blow it up. I don't remember the last powder charge but, it was a duplex, using lots of B'eye. He had the metal tested and as near as they could tell, the Arisaka's were made of a steel simular to our medium carbon steel.
I have and have read Hatchers book. In one part of it, he talks about striking the rail on the receiver with a hammer and it shattering. That should have been a non destructive test, right?
Maybe I missed it in this long, long, long thread but, was there any modern day, document failures of the LN '03's? I do realize that the 03 has a rather infamous, unsuppoted chamber and I'd (if I had one) would be more worried about that, than any of the receivers.
Now, I'm not recommending shooting high pressure loads in old milsurps but, many of them get a bad rap, because the steel is "old" and this thread has brought out a lot of good info on "old" steel and objective opinions can be drawn with that info. Krags get a bad rap, based on there single locking lug but, Savage used a single locking lug on their 340 and it was chambered for the 225 Winchester (52,000 CUP). I collect GEW 88's that have two locking lugs and were used, in WWI & II with the JS ammo. People say that it's unsafe to shoot them, also.
I do think that rifles w/o good gas venting should be modified to help/fix that as, almost everyone could mistakenly put a load together that might pierce a primer.
Let objective "common since" rule.
Frank
Last edited by frnkeore; 07-21-2014 at 01:45 PM.
MTBF has nothing to do with fatigue or fatigue life. This is a statistical
method of using Green's function to describe a statistical probability of
failure in a complex machine. Not very applicable to what we are
talking about.
YES, there is an infinite fatigue life limit, as described, it is a hard, cold
scientific fact.
No, AGE alone has ZERO to do with fatigue in metals. And NO, "everything
wears out" is not true, as far as cracking from metal fatigue. Parts may
rub against one another and wear until they have too loose a fit to be safe,
but this is not metal fatigue, which is a specific, clear metalugical phenomenon
of progressive crack growth from reversing stress cycles.
If mean something else, don't use the term "metal fatigue".
To Larry's question way back - surface hardening increases the surface yield
strength, so can substantially protect against both abrasive wear and metal
fatigue. Many aircraft crankshafts are hardened on the surface by a
process called 'nitriding' which involves submersion in an ammonia gas
atmosphere at very high temperatures. This produces an ultra-hard surface
layer, but only a few thousandths thick and brittle as glass. However, it is
very wear resistant and substantially increases the fatigue resistance of
these extremely expensive crankshafts.
Bill
Last edited by MtGun44; 07-21-2014 at 04:12 AM.
If it was easy, anybody could do it.
Dye penetrant is an approved method for ferrous (steel). For the past 20 years I have managed both machines shops and NDT labs in the aerospace industry. Dye penetrant is widely used and approved by both milspec and Boeing standards for steel. For inspection of ferrous components Magnetic Particle Inspection (MPI) is preferred for its subsurface detection capability but dye penetrant as still widely used for some applications.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dye_penetrant_inspection
http://www.contech.com/Dye_Penetrant.htm
http://www.penetrant.org/dye_penetrant.html
http://atrona.com/liquid-dye-testing.html
Liquid Penetrant Testing is extensively used for the evaluation of wrought and cast products of both ferrous and nonferrous metals, power metallurgy parts, ceramics, plastics, and glass objects. Because of the vast differences among applications for penetrant inspection. Liquid dye penetrant is a perfect method for examining for stress-corrosion and fatigue cracks that are insidious, usually there is very little or no warning of their presence. This is why it is very important to provide early detection on such structures as cranes, bridges, vessels, piping, where there is risk of possible hard economic consequences, injury or loss of life.
Last edited by M-Tecs; 07-21-2014 at 10:43 AM.
Oh I get that. It's like being an SR-71 technician at a gathering of aircraft mechanics, and not wanting to be smeared by conventional experts for mentioning that you routinely sign off on a plane that is dripping fuel from every seam. So when they talk about the sanctity of fuel systems and show horror photos of fires, you don't say this:
"The component parts of the Blackbird fit very loosely together to allow for expansion at high temperatures. At rest on the ground, fuel leaks out constantly, since the tanks in the fuselage and wings only seal at operating temperatures. There is little danger of fire since the JP-7 fuel is very stable with an extremely high flash point."
. . . because the facts would not help your situation at that point.
Posting Permissions
| BP | Bronze Point | IMR | Improved Military Rifle | PTD | Pointed |
| BR | Bench Rest | M | Magnum | RN | Round Nose |
| BT | Boat Tail | PL | Power-Lokt | SP | Soft Point |
| C | Compressed Charge | PR | Primer | SPCL | Soft Point "Core-Lokt" |
| HP | Hollow Point | PSPCL | Pointed Soft Point "Core Lokt" | C.O.L. | Cartridge Overall Length |
| PSP | Pointed Soft Point | Spz | Spitzer Point | SBT | Spitzer Boat Tail |
| LRN | Lead Round Nose | LWC | Lead Wad Cutter | LSWC | Lead Semi Wad Cutter |
| GC | Gas Check |
