FYI, my video is complete and posted at Forgotten Weapons this morning. I was expecting the bolt to actually come out of the gun, but it didn't. When the locking lugs hit the bolt stop, the rearmost lug sheared off and left the bolt still in the receiver (the bolt stop remained intact). Still, it would have done a real number to a shooter's face if they were firing it when that happened.
There is a long-standing urban legend about the Canadian Ross rifle, a straight-pull bolt action that was used in lieu of the SMLE by Canadian troops early in World War One. The story is that the Ross would sometimes malfunction and blow the bolt back into its shooter's face, with pretty horrible results. Well, I wanted to learn "the rest of the story" - could this actually happen? What caused it? How could it be prevented? In short, what would a Ross shooter need to know to remain safe? And if I could get some cool footage of a bolt blowing out of a Ross in the process, all the better.
Well, reader Andy very generously provided a sporterized Ross for the experiments, and I started reading into what the issue really was. Turns out that the legend was quite true - you can put a Ross MkIII bolt together the wrong way, and it will allow you to fire without the locking lugs engaged, thus throwing the bolt back out of the gun at high velocity. However, the issue was recognized fairly quickly, and the vast majority of Ross rifles were modified with a safety rivet to prevent this from happening. It is also quite easy to determine if a Ross is assembled correctly, once you know what to look for.
The video was interesting. I notice you pulling the bolt head forward about 1/4" several times after you have got it into the unsafe position, and it snapping back into the "8 & 2" position when you let go of the bolt head. You finessed it onto the guide rails quite convincingly; you must be naturally deft and perhaps gave it some practice as well!? Of course the pressure of the left hand locking lugs on the guide rail also depends on the strength of the firing pin spring, and some are quite weak after all these years.
I assume the deformation of the bolt lugs prevented you closing the action fully on your second and third attempted shots. You could have taken the needle files to the bolt threads and got them to close fully probably. Might have been interesting to see how many threads were needed to hold the bolt in.
As the rifle is now buggered up, you could have packed a case full of pistol powder and tried to blow it up. You wouldn't have, but it would have been interesting to see the high speed film of the attempt.
Definitely you've explained the bolt head positioning indicators well and that should help a lot of people who are not familiar with the Ross.
It's a pity you couldn't get hold of a copy of The Ross Rifle Story, as that provides a great deal of background info, both on blowback incidents and the experiments made by the authors of that book.
I get the feeling you came away from the exercise with a bit more regard for the Ross than you had before?
Last edited by Surpmil; 06-26-2013 at 10:44 AM.
“There are invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions. It is not generally realized to what extent the words and actions of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind the scenes.”
I didn't spend much time practicing installing an unsafe bolt; I simply didn't find it particularly difficult to do. I do have a lot of hands-on time taking apart all sorts of odd guns, so it might have come to me more quickly than other folks. Actually, I've been trying to get the bolt back into correct configuration since finishing the video, and haven't been able to yet. I'm wondering it I might have deformed one of the teeth in the bolt sleeve.
Further testing would have been interesting on its own (how many bolt lugs necessary to hold the action, behavior with a massively overcharged load, etc), but they are pretty well outside of the question I was trying to answer, which was what actually happened to soldiers in the field. As it stands now, there is no damage at all to the barrel, receiver, trigger, or really anything but the bolt head - so I'm keeping the gun around for possible conversion into a Huot replica some day.
I wouldn't say I had a low regard for the Ross before doing this; I just didn't have much experience with it at all. I was expecting a rifle more or less the same as its contemporaries, and found that I enjoyed shooting it much more than the other guns of that era that I've used. There is definitely a place for both a MkII and a MkIII in my collection when I find the right ones. Same for The Ross Rifle Story - I would really like to find a copy that I can afford to buy, and it will be an excellent addition to my library.
Here's a comment that was strangely left out of Frank Iriam's "In the Trenches, 1914-1918", which by the way you would find interesting ForgottenWeapons, and a lot cheaper than The Ross Rifle Story. I don't know why it was left out as the book was supposed to be a verbatim copy of his account written in manuscript in the 1920s and 30s.
Now we have been told by lots and lots of people who were not there, and did not happen to have lived through it that the Ross rifle was a failure as a military arm, and that 1st Division was handicapped by being armed with it , and lots of men lost their lives through its jamming in critical places etc. and so on. Even men who did live through that fight, [St. Julien] but happened to hail from Merrie England will tell you solemnly it [the Ross Rifle] was no good and never was. I cannot see it that way at all. If even a small fraction of the attention, time and money and labor of experts, had been put on the Ross, that has been spent on the Enfield and Springfield, we would now have a rifle that Canada might be proud of.
The 8th Durhams had short Lee Enfields and they got into the gassed area early enough to suffer a bit from rust and corrosion. Several of us tried to use Enfields in that defence, but you had to pry under the handle with the blade of a bayonet to turn the bolt each time and if you succeeded in turning the bolt up, it was then another task to drive it back and then ahead again and in most cases it could not be done for the bolt seized fast in its channel from corrosion and would not repeat even after being driven and forced a couple of times back and forward. Oil might have helped but there were no oil wells on our part of the front then. This record does not come from a base camp in England, neither does it hail from [the School of Musketry at] Hythe or [the N.R.A. ranges at] Bisley [Camp], nor yet from the lines of the motor transport back of [Mont] des Cats. Conan Doyle said St. Julien was the greatest (unsupported) infantry defense in military history, and he has an uncanny way of getting at the truth of things (the old Ross did it).
PS: I assume you meant a "MkII" would be part of your collection?
Last edited by Surpmil; 06-26-2013 at 10:59 AM.
“There are invisible rulers who control the destinies of millions. It is not generally realized to what extent the words and actions of our most influential public men are dictated by shrewd persons operating behind the scenes.”
How's this for an epilogue? I just won a batch of rifles at Rock Island Auction which includes a pretty nice looking MkIIIB (which is why I was bidding on the lot). It's in full military trim, and looks like it will be an excellent shooter for me. Gotta say, I wouldn't have given it a close look before the time I spent doing this video.
I still am keeping another open place in the rack for a MkII, though...
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