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I have a chance to acquire an `03 Springfield reciever with bolt and trigger but nothing else. The serial is 750,XXX. I know the cut off point for soft recievers is near this number but don`t know the serial number. Can anybody refresh my memory on the cut off point?Robert
This is all I found
http://m1903.com/03rcvrfail/
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I found one from the CMP, looks like any Springfield over 800k is good, but I have also heard of people shooting the low # 1903's without issue
http://thecmp.org/cmp_sales/rifle_sales/m1903-m1903a3/
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800,000. But lower than that isn't "soft"- they were all case hardened, and harder than woodpecker lips.
I have a Springfield made in 1914 serial just under 500,000. I figure I'll shoot cast loads only in it.
The "low numbered" 1903 Springfields are not known to fail at a greater rate than those with "high numbers". The issues is what happens when they do fail. The low numbered receivers, being brittle will shatter and turn into grenades. The high numbered receivers will swell up, but not shatter.
It is not factual to say none are reported to have failed. All military rifles have failed from time to time. It is factual to say that the low numbered 03 do not fail at a great rate than high numbered 03. The army did an extensive study of these and found failures in both types, but no statistical difference in the rate of failure.Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyWarrior
I would be careful, were I you, about the causal use of the word "lie". It is an offensive word, a fight starter and does not add credibility to what you say. People can disagree without one being a liar.
Julian Hatcher and others who were there during all this report otherwise. Having seen a picture of what's left of a low serial number gun after an over pressure round I wouldn't want to shoot one if I didn't have to. As Char-Gar said it's not normal everyday shooting that causes the issue, it's one of those pesky little one in a million issues that causes the problem and as he mentioned the same problem still would trash a later receiver, but the receiver would stretch and swell in a safe manner .
The basic problem is Springfield Armory personnel were heat treating the receivers without proper equipment to measure the temperature they were being heat treated at. Army Ordnance started getting reports of Springfield's catastrophically failing and literally exploding and sometimes seriously injuring people when overpressure rounds or to a lesser extent rounds with flawed cases were fired through them. When they checked the heat treatment plant at Springfield they found that the personnel were judging temperature by the color of the steel alone and that some receivers were heat treated well in spec and others were dangerously off. The problem is there is no way of knowing if the receiver was correctly heat treated or not until the action fails.
Hatcher also stated that Remington M1917 barrels made during the war had the same issue due to a manufacturing shortcut to avoid having to source properly dimensioned barrel blanks. Remington hit on the idea of using cheaper steel bars that were the correct dimensions for the barrel past the chamber and heating the end for the chamber and forging it to the dimensions needed. Some of the barrels were overheated in the process.
wouldnt happen to be a former member under a different name would ya?Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyWarrior
Springfield Arsenal continued to heat treat the early 03 actions the same way it had head treated the Krag actions. The difference was in the design. The Krag did not trap escaping gas while the 03 did. The Hatcher hole was put in as a way for the gas to get out should it get loose in the action.Quote:
Originally Posted by Minuteshaver
Buckshot, one of our members blew up a low numbered 03 some time back and posted a series of pics of the remains of the action. It was quite an eye opener. He took the action apart with cast bullets and a DOUBLE charge of powder.
I have seen high numbered 03 locked up by pressure in the action, but the did not fragment. They just swelled up like a toad and that was the end of that action.
High pressure gas can get turned loose in any rifle due to ammo failure. I once was firing some 1930s Remington Palma match ammo in my 03 when one round felt different. I looked down and smoke was pouring out of the action and the striker was at full cock. Some of the gas had come back through the bolt and blown the striker back to full cock. The case body had a generous hole in it. I checked the target and sure enough the hole was there but 6" out of the group. I ejected the case, checked out the rifle and it was fine. The rifle was one of the good old double heat treated actions. Yes, I did have on shooting glasses. This was back about 1961 or so.
Bottom line is low numbered 03s don't fail any more than high numbered 03s. But when one does fail...Whoa Nelly!
That is the problem; overly hardened and brittle receivers on Springfield rifles with serial numbers below 800,000. They were subject to sudden and catastrophic failure. The 800,00 number was for the Springfield Amory rifles, the number for the Rock Island Arsenal was below 285,00 or so(I'm dealing with memory here). This did not mean that all these rifles were going to fail, only that the possibility existed. They did replace the receivers on models sold to civilians at no cost and recalled the ones in service. Part of the problem was also traced to ammo but you can start a real argument when you say they are completely unusable. I myself like the nickel steel receivers used later. Just my experience anyway, james
No, your original post was not pointless, just wrong. Your follow up post is factual, but tells us nothing new. Do you have anything we don't know to offer up on the matter?Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyWarrior
Folks with low numbered 03 receivers can shoot them or not, that is their choice. However they should know the consequences in the unlikely event that one should go kaboom, which does happen ever now and again. Yes, most likely due to the ammo, but that is not the point. Most kabooms are ammo related in whatever firearm.
What's the story on the No.4?Never seem a failure like that before.
Lyman Alaskans had an eye relief long enough that they were sometimes placed with the scope rear in front of the bolt handle. This eliminated reshaping the bolt handle (and stock) for scope clearance. The one pictured is even a bit more forward to clear the receiver sight aperture.Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyWarrior
Bruce
Man! True Texas lingo. How I love it! :happy dance:Quote:
Originally Posted by Char-Gar
The USMC preferred to bore out the "Hatcher Hole" in low number receivers to vent gases in the case of a ruptured case head. Sedgley and some other Gunmakers annealed and re-heat treated low number receivers before building custom sporters from them.
Not all low number receivers were in fact brittle, but an unknown percentage were. There was no non destructive process for determining which were brittle and which were safe. Hatcher wrote of at least one incident where a low number receiver shattered when a low pressure guard cartridge was fired, though the same rifle had survived many full powered loads.
Many receivers shattered if stuck a sharp blow with a mallet. There may be few if any dangerously brittle low number receivers left out there, because most of the brittle ones were discarded after armorers became suspicious during the Hatcher Hole boring process or found cracks on inspection during re-barreling. I expect any experienced machinist could tell by feel if a receiver was brittle under the carburized layer during the boring process. Metal that hard can seize a bit and shatter it.
Lefty o I think you are correct especially when he mentioned shooting hundreds of military bolt rifles chambered in 30-03 and 30-06��Quote:
Originally Posted by lefty o
m1's slamfired huh. go bark up another tree. the receiver bridge in an M1 prevents that. any M1's that slam fired would have failed inspection from any armorer worth a ****. your still not very humble.Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyWarrior
Threads like this become more of a study in human nature, that anything about guns, bullet casting or reloading.
I agree, I received a PM from HappyWarrior consistent with our old friend, Mr Humble. Perhaps we should ignore him and as you say focus on the main topics of this forum.Quote:
Originally Posted by Char-Gar
figured out who he was on his first post in the thread.Quote:
Originally Posted by JMax
Yes, ignoring such folks is a good course of action. In all matters we are bound to have differences of opinions and experiences. We should all give our input to the topic and move on, unless further detail and clarification would be helpful. Trying to prove that we are right and others are wrong is never helpful.Quote:
Originally Posted by JMax
I learned a long time ago, that sooner or later the truth will out. Bickering about it just demeans ourselves and others. I know it is tempting to call a fool a fool, and have done so on occasion myself, but it is never a good or helpful things to do.
A possible cause of slam fire with a Garand is if the rifle has been subjected to too many rounds that generated excessive gas port pressure. The bolt slamming hard against the rear of the receiver can distort the leg of the firing pin and jam the pin in the forwards position. Another reason that the 1930's era M1 Ball was considered unsuited for use in the Garand rifle and why long range match loads sometimes require a adjustable gas plug for safe use.
In normal operation with suitable ammunition a well maintained Garand is extremely unlikely to slam fire.
I've owned only one Garand but have fired several in various conditions. When restoring my Garand a gunsmith gave me a flier he had received detailing the known causes of slamfires in the Garand. It may still be here someplace or other.
I have no reason to doubt that Sedgley and some others had LN 03 receivers re heat treated. Hatcher mentioned that as an option considered at the time with the decision being that it would be too expensive and might not cure the problem completely.
The failures of LN receivers seem limited to certain years of production and certain months of those years. I'm sure that modern testing methods could weed out the bad receivers. Most defective receivers were probably weeded out in the normal order of events as worn barrels were replaced and Hatcher Holes drilled.
It has been an interesting thread - at times almost excessively interesting, but may have helped us make up our minds about all sorts of things.
I think the situation is about cleared up. Some of the pre-800,000 rifles are perfectly good, as they didn't get the temperature wrong all the time, and a high proportion of the failures were due various unwise practices - it may have been more, veiled by natural reticence - or to the use of defective wartime ammunition. Eliminate those and use only SAAMI-spec ammunition, and the risks become much smaller.
As far as discussion as a combat sport is concerned, the trouble is that all this was about cleared up by General Hatcher's record of accidents. Others have pinned fair to middling reputations on saying pretty much the same things, but he pinned a very large one. About all that has changed since then is that unless you are lucky enough to find a near-mint early Springfield, the one you have is likely to have experienced a lot more shooting than it had in the 1920s.
I'm not sure what slam-firing semi-autos brings to this issue, but if it happens, I think it would be as the bolt slams shut after firing a round. (I have the French Permanent Commission's specification which produced an exceeding good military revolver in 1873, and says the parts should "click into place in a military manner". But if a rifle could be slamfired that way, men could surely have been told to close it wimpishly.) So this would be comparing a slamfire with the rifle pointing where it was desired to fire, with an explosion in which direction didn't matter.
The best heat treatment and nickel steel must be reckoned improvements in any rifle, and so, I think, is an aperture sight over an open one. But I agree that the Springfields so often mistrusted are made to a beautiful standard of workmanship and finish, which wasn't equalled later.
I think the main virtue of the "Hatcher hole" is that it caused the gas from a ruptured case to be squirted in a safe direction after the receiver ring has either gone toad-shaped or suffered no damage. High-speed gases are reluctant to change direction, which is why a revolver's cylinder gap isn't a much worse source of velocity loss than it actually is. A gas is an almost perfect spring, and escaping gases can achieve a far higher velocity than the bullet. If the receiver ring is liable to burst, it will burst through impact, not pressure buildup, long before the gases change direction and are channelled through a hole.
Here is my photo of a double ring bulge, experimentally induced by an obstruction in a condemned shotgun barrel. In the time it took for the shot and obstruction to move two inches, the pressure wave that produced the bulge has bounced back to the inside of the cartridge, bounced forward, and after about thirty inches of travel, has hit the shot again and made another bulge.
Attachment 199787
GEE! I`m glad that I didn`t ask a controversial subject question?Robert
Well after the way my simple question went both South and deep into left field with comments far from what I asked for I thought I`d share some info. The action in question went for $63 + 10% commission + 6% tax. I passed on getting it.
Moderator: Please stop and remove this thread.Robert
That entire article is a total statistical joke.
Conclusion the doctor(he is only an MD not a Phd mechanical engineer or any kind of engineer for that matter) tried to talk his way out of real testing with garbage statistics.
If you want to analyze the low number Springfields you have to run destructive tests on them. When you do that they break. You do real testing with the real items since they still exist.
But please do not drop one because it might break. It is clear that with a million or more defective receivers that dozens of US Army and civilians could have lost their jobs if the cover up was not thorough.
Attachment 200406
Quote:
Originally Posted by HappyWarrior
No need to stop and remove, the offender was banned and thread cleaned upQuote:
Originally Posted by Hardcast416taylor
Well here's my Sedgley Springfield in 30-06Attachment 200499
It came with a 1 3/4 power scope along with the original peep sight. Don't have any pictures of the rifle with the scope on it but the mount looked like it was made by Sedgley, it has the "S" stamped on the under side of it. I also have the original leather sling which is also stamped "Sedgley of Philadelphia"
Just wondering if there is a list of Sedgley serial numbers out there because it has #5 stamped on the tang which is where Sedgley placed his serial numbers. Serial # 5 would make it one of the first produced by Sedgley.