Check your M1917's for safety issues. Eddystones especially..

[cplstevennorton]

Guys,

All the books make a huge a fuss on the M1903 low number. But the documents paint an entirely different picture on the low numbers, than what the books state.

But what I did find, that I have never seen in any book, is there were a lot of safety issues with the M1917's. Even in WWI, Andrew from Archival Research Group found more M1917's failed than low number M1903's.

This is in a string of documents where they are inspecting M1917's to be sold to NRA members immediately after WWII. This is just the tale end of the docs where they recommend that no one fire live ammunition out of a Midvale Steel M1917 (Eddystone).

They also had substantial problems with every maker and M1917's not headspacing correctly. A lot of these rifles were sold with paperwork declaring they were not safe and they should only be used in Drill practice or in firing blank ammunition.

They did not mark these rifles in anyway as not being safe, and the paperwork on these is most likely long gone for most. These rifles are sitting in our safes as we speak...

Please check your M1917 rifle's headspace and examine it for cracks. In the docs they detail that they looked for cracks of M1's with black lights. I assume then everyone can do the same now.

Just keep a look out as everything in our books focus on only the M1903 low numbers being unsafe. Well our authors failed to warn us of problems with the M1917.

Just a heads up...

Information

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[browningautorifle]

Interesting after all these years. I had an Eddystone myself years back...just like new and shot it regularly. Never occurred to us then that there might be problems.

[Ridolpho]

I'm pretty sure this has come up in the past and is related to re-barreled Eddystones. Something about excess force being used in the process resulting in cracks. I don't think it has been suggested the metallurgy of the receivers was originally a problem as with the low number 03's.

Ridolpho

[cplstevennorton]

I must not have hit submit on the 2nd part.

This seems to extend way past re-barreling. I haven't seen one mention at least that this has anything to do with the ones re-barreled.

[Brian Dick]

I always understood that they could be cracked from original factory barrel installation. I read or was told somewhere many years ago that the reason was there were hydraulic barreling machines being used with semi to skilled labor both male and female doing the assembly in wartime.

[Doco overboard]

I seen a cracked m17 for sale one time. It was a Remington with a JA barrel. Viewed from the top it was cracked plain as day at about the one o'clock position on the ring and extended back nearly a 1/4". I had read in the past cracking was a problem associated with the Eddystone rifles but had also been found on the other makes to a lessor extent.

I wonder if the cracking and tight barrels could be from the way the threads were cut on the barrels. My understanding is that a certain amount of clearance needs to be apparent on square threads at both the top and bottom of the threads. If the barrels were manufactured slightly out of spec in a hurry I suppose the cracking could occur when the rifle was proofed or later on when it was placed in service.

Something else I observed after working on a few there was a gap where the extractor cut met the inside threads of the receiver. If rifles were allowed to become wet water could easily get in there and freeze but to what extent could that even happen who would know.

[browningautorifle]

I don't care about cracking from a barrel install, I'm listening closely to the suggestion of metallurgy failure. First time this has been past me.

[rcathey]

I don't care about cracking from a barrel install, I'm listening closely to the suggestion of metallurgy failure. First time this has been past me.

I’ve been following and thinking about how to best share my thoughts on this.
Now I think I can just give a, “yeah, what he said!”

Would be very interesting to see more documents pertaining to this.

[browningautorifle]

more documents pertaining to this

I think Steve has found these in his pouring over things at the library, wish we could just nail it down. I haven't had one for years though... Still, did I miss the part where it talks about metallurgy? Cracks we got...

[Doco overboard]

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