Early Rock Island '03

[Bret4207]

Anyone know where I can get an early, 30xxx, Rock Islang Springfield re-heat treated and wat it costs. Is It needed for a cast boolit rifle? Found one bubba-sized for cheap.

[fourarmed]

There may be those who disagree, but I don't think re-heat treating one of the actions is likely to improve it to any practical degree, if at all. I would not be afraid to use a low-number '03 with mild cast loads. See

http://m1903.com/03rcvrfail/

[Bret4207]

Thanks, thats quite a disertation. I'll have to find my Hatchers book and read up. I asked the shop owner about the low number recv'r. He said, "Hey , I shot it and it was ok." Not the definitive answer I was hoping for. I have a feeling that the "low number '03" tale may be the same as the "Krags with broken lug", "93 and '95 Mausers being really weak", "lever actions aren't ever accurate" tales. Legends blown a little out of proportion. Still, I won't throw caution to the wind on this and I'll research it a bit more. Actually the guy should pay me to take it. I've seen some bad stock work before, but this one is a prize!

[Jumptrap]

I have a feeling that the "low number '03" tale may be the same as the "Krags with broken lug", "93 and '95 Mausers being really weak", "lever actions aren't ever accurate" tales. Legends blown a little out of proportion.

Bret,

I have encouraged folks to use a little logic when considering such reports.

Consider this: Although it is claimed that most of our folks marched to the Great War armed with 1917 Enfields, more than few thousand were carrying...low numbered Springfields. Hmm, I haven't read any tales of soldier's rifles coming apart in their hands.....although I am sure, it happened...probably because they jammed the muzzle full of mud. Hatcher went to great length to tell the story in great detail as to the board's findings and the recommended cures. How many of us are going to take any rifle we own and whack it with a hammer to see if it shatters? The Krags are slobbered over and they were made with the same techniques employed in the newer 1903's. I wouldn't hesitate to shoot any low numbered Springfield rifle as long as it appeared in serviceable condition.

[StarMetal]

Mark, Mark, Mark,

You better believe there was a problem and you better believe they came apart in soldiers hands too. In this report I'm about to give you the address for 11 noted receiver failures happened in training, not some muddy battlefield. Read this if you don't believe.

http://m1903.com/03rcvrfail/

Joe

[ammohead]

Bret,

Industrial Heat Treating
430 W 600 N
Salt Lake City, UT 84103

Sorry don't have a phone number. Maybe a google search would turn up something. They have done 2 mauser 98s for me. They do nice work and prompt. About $65 if I remember right, 4 years ago.

I have a five digit 03 and shoot the bejeesus out of it with cast. Have even come close to beating curmudgeon's gorgeous 03 a couple of times in Winnemucca. It hasn't been reheat treated and won't be as I intend to shoot only cast in her and not too hot ones at that.

ammohead

[Buckshot]

...........Many of the Eddystone 1917 actions were improperly heat treated and were very hard, just like the early 1903's. Close to 100,000 low number Springfields went to war, and then were subsequently returned to store and also sold to civilians. During WW2 quite a few were air dropped to the French underground.

I've posted photo's of the old low number 1903 NRA Sporter that belonged to my great grandfather, then grandfather and then me. The one I blew up! According to it's serial number, it had been made in 1911. I don't know how much the military shot it or it's history with my ancestors. I do know that I shot it a great deal.

What caused it's demise was a lack of good reloading technique on my part, and it got a double charge of IMR 4227. The casehead blew and the action was unable to contain the high pressure gas and shattered.

Due to the cone breeching (to aid feeding) correct headspace is a major issue. Best to be breeched very tightly. Even so, the 1903 allows quite a bit more brass to hang, unsupported by the barrel walls then say, a Mauser. And that is what happened to my rifle. The brass case failed, so then did the action.

In actuality the compressive strength of the old hard 1903 actions is a magnitude greater then the correctly heat treated, or double heat treated actions. However they have no ability to withstand a suddenly applied force. To visualize this strength, think of a knurl tool used to impress this feature into steel. They do this by swaging steel out of the way of their teeth.

They're wound into the rotating steel gradually to form the shape over a few seconds. And they are used over and over and over again. However, if you took one of these form rolls and struck it with a hammer it would break.

Personally, if I had a low numbered 1903 in good shape, and properly headspaced I'd have no problem using it, following my new loading proceedures :D.

But the bottom line is, due to their brittleness they are not as safe in some circumstances as a properly heat treated one. Not that they are a hand grenade with it's fuse lit, as the rifle leans there in your gun cabinet. They won't fail unless conditions are set up to HAVE them fail.

..............Buckshot

[Jumptrap]

Mark, Mark, Mark,

You better believe there was a problem and you better believe they came apart in soldiers hands too. In this report I'm about to give you the address for 11 noted receiver failures happened in training, not some muddy battlefield. Read this if you don't believe.

http://m1903.com/03rcvrfail/

Joe

Josepi,

I didn't open the link tonight....bedtime for bonzo here...BUT, eleven failures out of how many rifles? If I recall correctly, it's numbers below 280,000 something for Rock island guns and 800,000 something for Springfields, now lets toss in an extra 500 blowups for whatever/wherever reasons and calculate the ratio of total guns versus catastrophic failures. Pretty damned low. Sure enough, there was a problem, so noted and recognized. But as Buckshot has said.......these rifles are not hand grenades with lit fuses waiting to explode at any moment. Again, I'll say.........if I had one, I wouldn't hesitate to shoot it. I wouldn't hesitate to shoot a Krag. I'd say if the Krag hadn't been out of service....except maybe with some Guard units....back in the WW 1 days, they could have yanked a bunch of them and whacked them with a hammer and they'd have shattered. These two rifles were made in the same armory, probably by many of the same workers, using the same heat treating procedures and PROBABLY using the same steels of the day. I doubt we'd see cracked locking lugs on Krags had they used double heat treats or nickel steel. I think the Warren Commision wrote all the bad press on the early 1903's. Anybody who would report Lee Oswald killed JFK with a Carcano, must have had something to do with the 1903 story.

[STP]

Tpr Bret,
"Bubba-ized" low #? Geez, don`t hesitate...
Bring it back to as-issued condition if you can, then shoot it.
Quality brass and safe loading practices will not endanger you, unlike the post wartime incidents by baffoons that should take up golf.

[StarMetal]

Jumptrap,

The 11 failures were just ones in training. There were more failures in battle or actual use. That site has the statistics of failure per how many rifles produced. Interesting too even after the new heat treating process there were still a few failures, but interesting with those is although the actions destroyed themselves they only bent, not shattered.

Another theory to why some blew up besides the mud in the bore theory, is they think some soldiers having run out of ammo were trying to fire 8mm Mauser ammo. I don't know how feasible that is as I've never tried to chamber an 8mm Mauser round in a 30-06 to see if it would work.

I too wouldn't hestitate to fire one of the low serial number rifles either. I have a Krag and I shoot the heck out of it.

Joe

[StarMetal]

Buckshot is right about the badly heat treated ones are brittle. When they were testing those rifles for problems they had some that wouldn't blow until 80,000 to 100,000 psi!!!!!!!!!!!! Hatcher pointed out another problem that Buckshot inadvertantly mentioned in his blowup. Buckshot said the case head let go. That's what Hatcher said was one of the problems with the 1903 due to it's bolt and chambering mechanism almost a whole entire 1/8 inch of the case head was not supported and the brass alone held the pressure at that exposed part. The brass let go and the gas wrecked the gun, not the receiver giving up the ghost.

Joe

[Bret4207]

Hmmm, I read the attached article from m1903.com and looked at Hatchers note book. After going through it all it really sounds to me like it's the same crap shoot you get with todays rifles. In the past year or so I've seen 12 or 13 modern rifles of American make, ( Marlin, Savage, Remington and Browning come to mind), that have "blown up". That's to say nothing of peestols. Maybe it's more of a legend than we give it credit for.

[StarMetal]

Trp Bret,

I'll bet you a high 90 some percent of those modern rifles that blew up did so due to something other then rifle or steel quality such as drastically overloaded reloads, plugged bore, etc.

You fellows are reaching for stars (no pun intended) ...those wrongly heated treated 1903's had BRITTLE receivers..that's all to it, no legend, no wise tales.

You want to get one of those low serial numbered 1903's and shoot cast out of it fine. You want to shoot jacket high and hot loads..you're nuts.

Joe

[Bret4207]

Joe- 2 posts ago you said they were fine. Now you say they aren't. I'm going by Hatcher and M1903.com and believe that yes- they are brittle. But I've also read all of P.O. Ackleys books. There were "brittle" Krags, Japs, Carcano, Mannlichers and Mausers. There were also soft ones. I have a soft '09 Argentine that you can bend with a hammer blow. My personal theory is that there's a variety of reasons for the "blowups" just as there were with the Ross rifles of WW1 vintage. Enerything from mud to oversize bullets to poor tempering to over charges of powder. Could be any number of reasons why the "blew". No one ever seems to wonder if a double charge of powder got by the inspectors or if a jacket ruptured in the barrel or if the bore was so fouled by jacket metal that pressures increased beyond reason. We just don't have all the facts to simply say they're all brittle and unsafe. Jsut as with the military Ross that allegedly can be put together wrong and have the bolt come flying out into your forehead. Yet, there are documented experts that say there is no way it can happen. But lore has it that it's practically a certainty. We just have the historical record to go by and we make assumtions from there. I knew a WW2 Marine who swore all Jap Arisaka actions would blow up. He swore he saw 3 in a row go killing the Jap soldiers using them. Today lore has it that the Arisakas, except the very late cast ones, are very strong. Go to some other sites and you'll find guys swearing Marlin 45/70's "blow up" all the time. No barrel obstructions, no overloads. They're just weak and poorly designed. 4 posts down the same guy will tell about his repro 1873 44-40 that is so strong he can load it to 44 mag levels. I saw a series of posts a couple years ago in which a guy claimed and had photo's of 2 "blown" 110 Savages. Claimed it was factory loads in good weather. B.S.? Who knows. We don't know anymore than what we are told.

All this doesn't really matter becasue I'm passing on the '03. But thanks to all for the information.

[Bullshop]

Seems I remember reading in Parker Ackley's Handbook for shooters and reloaders that they too demolished several low # Springfield actions with a sharp rap from a hammer.
BIC/BS

[KCSO]

I aslo read that E C Crossman said that the loss on the early 03's was less than 1/2 of 1% and that there was NEVER a proven cause for any of the failures. I wil say this from personal experience. I took a Rock Island made in 1903 and hit it with a ball peen hammer 100 times, no damage. I then dropped it on concrete 20 times, no damage. The gun was then barreled and shot with hot 30-06 condom loads for 25 years( 2500?). Since then the gun has been relegated to cast loads and has survived about 3000 of those.
So far no problems, when the gun does let go I will report it.

[StarMetal]

Tpr Bret,

I exactly say to shoot them was fine, I said I wouldn't shoot them with high end or max loads. I just shoot cast out of my Krag. As far as the Arisaka's that soldier saw blow up, well I'd have to know the circumstances on that. I respect them for being one of the strongest actions in the world, even today.

Most of what you said could be applied to just about every mechanical devise in existance.

ksco,

Your one example of a 1903 Rock Island doesn't tell the tale. One would be nuts to think that every single low serial numbered 1903 was bad or brittle. My God, by the means they heat treated them, surely they had to make more then just one right. They tested alot of low serial numbered rifles and found them brittle and wrongly heat treated...that means they took some and specifically had a test to determine their heat treatment hardness and found that some were really bad.

Why do you fellows have to insist they blew up because of some other reason like plugged bore, oversize bullet, double charge? Couldn't some of the have blown up because they were indeed brittle or defective?

In that article I gave the website for did you read where they tested properly heat treated later models of the 1903 and although they did get them blow up in their tests, they didn't shatter???? That's a big difference. It's like that test Jumptrap did with the Mosin Nagant...he kept loading it till it gave up the ghost and that was with a full case of Bullseye and the rifle didn't exactly disintergrate, it merely swelled the chamber, locked the bolt up and ruined some of the bolt, nothing that seemed life threatening. How would you like to test a brittle low serial numbered 1903 with a full case of bullseye? I wouldn't.

Joe

[Bret4207]

Bullshop- Yup, Parker hit one and kerblooey, she shattered. If you go through his tests you see a lot of "strong" actions didn't do so well. His testing to destruction was interesting. I think it would have been better to do mabye 50 of each action and see what a bigger sample would show. Lotsa $$$ for that. Jumptraps testing of the MN was along the same lines. There's another action rumored to be "crudely made" and "of questionable strength and quality" according to some older texts. Now we consider them tanks.

[Bret4207]

Joe- I'm not insisting they didn't "blow up" becasue there were brittle. I'm saying we don't know what caused it. I have most of the older gunsmithing books and looking at them you don't see much about any Springfield having problems until you get to the late '40's. All of them mention that ALL Springfields are a pain to drill and tap becasue of the alloy used and heat treatment. Those guys were contemporary with the '03 and you'd think it would be a major issue to mention. Of course these same books talk about converting Krags to wildcat calibers pushing 3500fps in 22 caliber. Maybe their expectations were different. I'm only ponting out that much of what we "know" is anecdotal, opinion or very old information and if anyone has seen the old wives tales fly out the window, it would be this cast boolit group. How many times have we seen guys completley demolish some "law" that says you can't do "this" with a cast boolit?

I'm not going to go on with this forever. It would be interesting to get a few dozen low number '03's and have a modern lab test them to destruction and find out exactly waht the problem is. May well be brittle metal. Or maybe it's a combination of a dozen other things. Who knows?

[Wayne Smith]

Guys, You are missing one critical clue! According to Hatcher, it was ONLY the Springfield, Mass made Springfields that had the problem. NONE of Rock Island Springfields had the brittle heat treating problem. NONE!! None of them blew! NONE!

According to Hatcher, Trp., you have one safe rifle, safe for up to 50,000 lbs pressure.

[sundog]

Somewhere in all my readings about the 03's I ran across a report about the Battle for either Okinawa or Iwo Jima. Many 03s went ashore for that battle, and from pattern of previous blow ups it was estimated that there should have been at least 3 or 4 failures. There were none. Sorry, can't cite the reference, but I do remember reading it. Anyone else remember this? sundog

[StarMetal]

Wayne Smith,

You're missing one critical point, reread my post on that site of failures. Forget what Hatcher said, this is what was said incase you overlooked it:
Rock Island Receivers.

The overall failure rate of the 22 Rock Island manufactured receivers was 7.71/100,000, nearly double that of those manufactured by Springfield. (See table 2 (http://m1903.com/03rcvrfail/t2.jpg) and figure 1 (http://m1903.com/03rcvrfail/f1.jpg).) Rock Island produced rifles for 11 years, starting in 1905 and ending in 1914, and then during most of 1917 and early 1918, There were no receiver failures of rifles manufactured for five of those 11 years (1905-6, 1913-14, and 1917), a higher percent of years than Springfield Armory (33.3% compared to 45.5%). Receiver failures occurred in rifles made between 1907 to 1912, with the peak rate occurring in 1912 at 20.27 per 100,000, about two and half times the peak rate for any of the years of manufacture for the Springfield Armory rifles.

The average time to failure for Rock Island receivers was 11.6 years with a range from 5 to 23 years. While the range is narrower than that for Springfield receivers, the average years to failure were similar (12.48 years compared to 11.6 years). Of the 22 receiver failures in 1917-1918, 11 were made at Rock Island and seven at Springfield, and four were so badly damaged the manufacturer could not be identified. Rock Island receivers likely accounted for the majority of the receivers that failed during these two years.


So it just wasn't Springfields.


Sundog,


It was also mentioned in that article I spoke of in one of the earlier posts that someone (would have to go back and read it) said they were concerned about the blowups because the ammunition quality was becoming worse and worse by the minute. Maybe by WWII the ammo was made alot better and consistant then in the War to end all wars.


Joe

[sundog]

Joe, now that you mention it, there was also a discussion in that same research that talked about the ammo.... Gotta remember that by then (WWII) '06 ammo was being produced primarily for the Garand which has very specific pressure requirements due to the gas system. sundog

[StarMetal]

Sundog,

You're right about it being made for the Garand mainly. I was thinking, how about machinegun ammo. I know for a fact that the German machinegun ammo was very very hot stuff. In WWI did the Americans employ a hotter machinegun ammo? If so, using that coupled with say a really fouled bore or some other complications definately would raise pressures to dangerous levels.

Joe

[45 2.1]

If you guys have found and tried some really old GI ammo from the teens and twenties, you will find that the cartridge brass was a little different than we have now. Some of the problems they had were to do with the load and the brass formula. Some of the powders weren't as progressive burning as we enjoy now either, they produced larger pressure variations than acceptable now.

[StarMetal]

Bob,

That article I posted mentioned something pertaining to the brass and that it was how almost 1/8 inch of it was unsupported by the breeching system and I'm sure that was a cause of alot of the failures.

Joe

[Wayne Smith]

Starmetal, thanks for correcting me. What's your source? I don't see a source listed for your charts. Obviously I need to increase my reading!

[Bret4207]

Joe's referencing the link posted in the earlier post on page 1 of the thread at www.m1903.com. I will have to go dig Hatchers book back out and look at it again to see what I missed. I think the main thing is there were a lot of unknown variables and to assume everything we've been told is gospel is a bit much.

[brimic]

From my understanding, maybe I'm wrong though, is that there were some rifles in a certain serial number range that were known to be impropery treated, but because noone could be sure if rifles made previous to that serial number range were considered questionable in order to err on the side of safety.

[sundog]

Here's an interesting read:

http://m1903.com/03rcvrfail/


The author even mentions what I attempted to get right (blame it on poor memory) earlier about the Marines in the Pacific in WWII, but I got the year, island, and number wrong. It was Guadalcanal, 1942, and the expected failure would have been one or two. There were none. Also mentioned, and I think Joe brought this up, was the [poor] quality issues with military ammo in the years following WWI. sundog

[TCLouis]

Years ago I watched a low number gun in REALLY great condition languish in a local pawnshop.

I considered buying it several different times purely as a cast bullet gun.

BUT

If one subscribes to the "tested by time theory" would it be a reasonable assumption to say that the "weak" low number guns had already failed and all that were left were fairly strong? I find it hard to imagine that there are many Springfields that have not fired more than a few mil-spec rounds.

Just something that I always wondered.

[Bent Ramrod]

I recall an article in the Rifle magazine back in the '80's by the guy that used to do their cartridge drawings. He was a Springfield collector and had a bunch of low-numbers around, both receivers and whole rifles. He was able to shatter several of them with fairly light blows with a plastic hammer. This experiment wierded him out enough so he announced he would no longer shoot his low-numbers, although he had shot them without trouble. He took one of the shattered receivers to his gunsmith, asking him (as a joke) to fix it. The smith glued the pieces together with epoxy, and the writer took it to the next gun show as a conversation piece.

At the show, he met somebody who said he used to work for R.F. Sedgley in the '20's. R.F. would buy the low-number recievers, grind the markings off them, "re-heat treat" them with an acetylene torch, put in the later alloy bolts and proof them with a couple of standard rounds coated with grease. If the bolt set back in the action, he'd put one more thread on the barrel, give it a half-turn in, cut a new extractor slot 180 degrees from the old one, rechamber (if necessary) and remount the front and rear sights. As the guy said, it wasn't exactly Griffin and Howe, but if the working man wanted a custom rifle, a Sedgley Sporter was available and the price was right.

Maybe there is some difference in the linear strain experienced by a brittle receiver in firing and a sharp blow at 90 degrees. My Springfield is a double-heat-treat and I load to the original velocities for military matches, shoot cast for practice otherwise. I haven't tried hitting it with a hammer, either.