NRA Safety Notice re No 4 7.62mm Conversions

[jmoore]

Sorry, I think I've had enough.

I'm just going to chamber a No.4 to 300/303 Win Mag and see how long it lasts. Just trying to find a Bubba'd .303 barrel so no good barrels have to suffer! (might just round up a .30 cal barrel and thread to fit if nothing turns up in a week or two- plenty of those littering the area!)


I mean, I went and paid for eight years of learnin' and never gots no "Physics" book w/ a big boat on the front! Daaaang.

[slamfire1]

We seem to be getting off topic and moving back into a subject that has been already flogged to death without any resolution.

Are you going to close down another thread because a view contrary to this posting

I don't think anyone is arguing about the influence of oil, grease or water on ammunition and the increased pressures. This is generally accepted by all from what I read.

is being supported too strongly?

The whole issue of what loads actions are designed to support is 100% relevant to this discussion.

If actions are designed without consideration of cartridge case friction, then shooting in wet weather is a total safe practice.

If actions are designed assuming a certain level of case friction, then shooting an action in wet weather is dangerous because of the potential of increased loads from reduced case friction.

In which case the warning from the NRA not to shoot No 4 conversions in the rain is correct.

[Edward Horton]

What Amatikulu is saying is a bunch of Americans arguing about oil or grease on cartridges isn't going to solve a British problem.

The bolt thrust differences between wet and dry were published in the "Textbook of Small Arms" at the turn of the century.

The Enfield Rifle is not going to explode if fired in the rain or if you grease or oil your ammunition. The "Textbook of Small Arms" says "if the action is not to be strained".

What is going to increase strain and head space faster, a wet or dry cartridge case, and WHY do you think there are so many warnings about not doing this.

What our British and Commonwealth forum members need to do is inform the writers of the critical articles that the Enfield rifle was tested with an oil proof cartridge to simulate a wet conditions and the Enfield rifle survived 100 years of shooting. (its the bolt body, bolt head and lug recesses that are "strained" with the resulting increase in head space)

It's not age, its the mileage that counts.

Below is the first rifle I bought after getting out of the Air Force, the receipt is dated Nov 20, 1973. I took someones advice and lubed my .270 cartridge cases when fire forming them. Nine months later this rifle was in a Remington repair facility damage and "strained" with excess head space.

I ignored the printed warnings and thought I had a very smart friend........



Live and learn and RTFM

[Badger]

Are you going to close down another thread because a view contrary to this posting is being supported too strongly?

Slow down there partner ...

Amatikulu is doing his job, following our general spiritual guidance, not pursuing a personal agenda ...

As owners of the site, my wife and I have no interest in letting any thread become as series of literary drive by shootings by members of other members. We're human and we've made past mistakes by either being too quick to moderate, or not quick enough, but in general, we try to maintain a board where people can communicate with pleasant civility, keeping their personal sensitivities aside.

Unfortunately, threads like this are simply dejavu.

I bet I've seen the same cut-n-paste pics with the same cut-n-paste content all over this and other gun related Internet forums over the last several years. Personally, I've never seen any of these threads solve the primary issue, nor do they ever add anything new. They just seem to be a venue and subject where the same people love to get under each other's skin using different approaches, often with the result of getting otherwise good people banned, which has hapened on other gun sites with this same topic.

So, lets everyone recognize when we're all beating a dead horse and it's time to move onto to other yet undiscovered and interesting Enfield topical material, unless anyone actually has something new to say about this subject, that hasn't already been shouted out?

I think this is one of the more outstanding Enfield forums currently on the Internet. It has participants whom I believe are some of the most distinguished experts and knowledgeable people about this genre I've seen anywhere.

I'd like to see it be a place, where everyone regadless of their knowledge level, new collectors and veterans, feel comfortable expressing themselves without any fear of being embarrassed by other posters, who feel a need to overwhelm them with their own singular viewpoint, over and over and over again.

That's all Amatikulu is trying to say and do, so we should thank him for being one of the few people out of almost 12,000 members who has volunteered (actually, I commandeered him .. ) to place himself in the direct line of fire trying to balance strong personalities and maintain a polite and courteous forum, without often being allowed the personal ability to express his own viewpoint because of his neutrally viewed moderator responsibilities. Thanks Neil ....

... and thanks to everyone else for listening and letting me wander off-topic ...

Regards,
Doug (Badger)

[Surpmil]

If actions are designed assuming a certain level of case friction, then shooting an action in wet weather is dangerous because of the potential of increased loads from reduced case friction.

In which case the warning from the NRA not to shoot No 4 conversions in the rain is correct.

I wonder how many millions of rounds were fired from soaking wet SMLEs between 1914 and 1918? I'm sure thousands of them fired thousands of rounds of wet ammo. Sometimes not only wet, but with slippery Flanders mud applied as well.

Were they found to be damaged in any way due to this? Was there a wholesale scrapping of rifles post-WWI for this reason? Were they "stretched" as a result? Did they all need new boltheads fitted?

I think we all know the answers don't we?

Time to tuck this one in, give it kiss and send it on it's way to never-never land.

The No4 is stronger than the No1, ergo we surely don't need to go over all that again?

JMoore, it's going to get expensive trying to recreate 60+ years of firing all kinds of .303 ammo, not to mention the 7.62m out of all kinds of actions and barrels in all kinds of conditions. There really is no test worth a hill of beans compared to THAT test.

And so to bed.

[Edward Horton]

I wonder how many millions of rounds were fired from soaking wet SMLEs between 1914 and 1918? I'm sure thousands of them fired thousands of rounds of wet ammo. Sometimes not only wet, but with slippery Flanders mud applied as well.

Were they found to be damaged in any way due to this? Was there a wholesale scrapping of rifles post-WWI for this reason? Were they "stretched" as a result? Did they all need new boltheads fitted?

I think we all know the answers don't we?

Time to tuck this one in, give it kiss and send it on it's way to never-never land.

The No4 is stronger than the No1, ergo we surely don't need to go over all that again?

And so to bed.

The answers would come from WWI Armourers, the repair depots, the number of Enfields put through FTR and from scraped Enfields we never saw and don't have.



Where are all the Enfield's that these used bolt heads came off of?



To answer your question you would need to know the total number of Enfield Rifles produced and the amount surviving to this day.

What lasts longer, a well cared for engine in your car or the engine from a formula 1 race car that pushes the engine to the limits the entire race.

The person writing this post worked 38 years at a military overhaul and repair depot and sees the world from a different set of eyes. In the U.S. Military condition code "H" is beyond economical repair and is scrap metal you never see in your local gun stores.

[Surpmil]

The answers would come from WWI Armourers, the repair depots, the number of Enfields put through FTR and from scraped Enfields we never saw and don't have.

Where are all the Enfield's that these used bolt heads came off of?

To answer your question you would need to know the total number of Enfield Rifles produced and the amount surviving to this day.

What lasts longer, a well cared for engine in your car or the engine from a formula 1 race car that pushes the engine to the limits the entire race.

The person writing this post worked 38 years at a military overhaul and repair depot and sees the world from a different set of eyes. In the U.S. Military condition code "H" is beyond economical repair and is scrap metal you never see in your local gun stores.

I agree. There is much that we cannot know now as the principals are dead - not to mention their principles!

Except of course that the number of spare boltheads around doesn't really indicate anything, as there were who knows how many spares produced and who knows how many tens of thousands of rifles condemned for no other reason than that wear on the body lugs meant they would no longer HS with a No2 bolthead. (One of the proper dimensions we assume!)

Not unsafe, just not considered worth retaining in service given their expected future lifespan and the cost of overhaul and maintenance.

[jmoore]

Ummm, plus at some point this dicussion was about 7.62x51 variations. Only about 20-28 years of in service experience w/ those...

[ireload2]

In regard to firing wet rifles some of the engineering testing of the M-1 Garand involved just that. The rifle was mounted in a firing fixture and was fired with 2 fire hoses trained on it. It eventually was made to misfire. This was attributed to loss of lubricant on the hammer cocking face. Two things were done to deal with it. The angle on the hammer nose was changed slightly on the engineering drawing and they also issued little containers of lithium grease to apply to the hammer nose. If concern about firing the M1 wet was a big issue they didn't mention it. The preceding came from an American Rifleman magazine about 40 years ago.

I am sure that one could find a way to hurt himself greasing things up just like he could hurt himself handloading. A newbie might not be able to tell the difference between damage due to lubricant and an over charge.

[Surpmil]

Ummm, plus at some point this dicussion was about 7.62x51 variations. Only about 20-28 years of in service experience w/ those...

Doesn't seem long compared to the lifespan of .303, which still soldiers on, but its as long as the projected life span of a lot of weapons systems these days. And of course, it still goes on...