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New to the 03 world. I have read a lot about the low s/n range receivers blowing up. Without stirring up a firestorm, I would like you 03 experts to answer a simple question--Would you feel safe firing such a rifle that was in good condition with reduced loads? I am talking only about firing less than 20rds. per year if that.
Everyone has opinions, I would like to hear yours.
daveboy
You're going to get a LOT of opinions on this subject, so I'll start out with mine.
As I've said many times before, I'm not a member of the "Shoot a low numbered M1903 even once and you'll die"-school. Most low numbered M1903s are probably safe, especially with reduced loads. On the other hand, I'm not sure I'd like to be around one if something "bad" happens in the chamber, like a case separation. I agree with Bruce Canfield, who said in his '03 book that there is a small, but present chance of something bad happening. I choose not to shoot my low-numbered M1903s - I have several high numbered '03s I can use and just don't see the point.
I may be treading on thin ice, here, but it also seems to me that someone knowledgeable said that the type of powder you use in reloads is important, not just the "quantity". You might want to check that out, if you decide to go ahead.
The other side of the coin:
I find there no be no safety hazard with LN Springfields and fire them indiscriminately with ball ammo and handloads. I fire thousands of rounds a year as I have my own range. I believe these rifles to be safe with the load for which they were designed. Most LN Springfields have worn out multiple barrels, which is many thousands of rounds. I have experienced case head separations with no problems (too many reloadings), as the rifle diverted the gases as it was designed to do. I have never experienced a problem with the LN Springfield. I have blown up a 98 Mauser (overload) and my bestest friend blew up a Ruger 44 mag with an overload (I can still hear the pieces zingging through the air). If you fire weapons long enough, you will experience some sort of problem along the way. There is an inherent danger in the sport - period.
LN Springfields were made like most other rifles at the time. I do not know any standard of acceptance of a weapon as being successful as having them literally wear out barrels and numerous other parts and still be firing. They have outlasted the Shuttle in time of service.
Accept them for what they are, and if it makes you nervous, don't fire them. I might point out that you might also want to add MANY other rifles of that period and earlier that no one seems to hesitate to fire to that list.
I have never had a friend injuried in any way by a LN Springfield. I have had friends killed on motorcycles, car wrecks, airplane crashes, horses (an ex-girlfriend is a vegetable due to a horse rollover), had a friend killed trimming a tree, one killed roofing a house, a friend run over and killed by a police car, I was shot while playing pool for money, I had a high school buddy choke to death on a chicken leg, and I had a friend crippled for life playing high school football and another crippled when he fell off a fence backwards into a 55-gallon steel trash drum and broke his back. He was a bull rider waiting his turn in the chute. Go figure. Those who worry about LN Springfields must have little else to do.
Oh yes, I momentarily forgot all my classmates and close friends killed in RVN and my neighbor crushed by his Model T in his driveway when it rolled off the jack (his wife was watching from the kitchen window). By now you probably realize that I believe the relative risk of a LN Springfield to be so much lower than other probabilities of injury and death that I think I will take one out tomorrow and blast away at some paper targets. I have been firing a LN Springfield since I was a teenager, and I now qualify for Social Security; so if that bugger is going to fail and get me, it better hurry!
Oh yes, my only time in Intensive Care was when my then twelve-year old daughter's Arabian jumper kicked me in the chest. It was ungodly painful for weeks after I regained conciousness (when I opened my eyes, the horse had his muzzle in my face - he knew I was badly hurt and he wasn't going to leave me). I liked that horse and he died of old age in the pasture without ever kicking anyone again.
Your choice - watch TV or go make some loud noise with a LN Springfield!
Jim
I grew up in Hawaii and recall many years ago a Hawaiian gunsmith who would buy Low Number '03's mail order. He would sporterize these rifles by rechambering them into .308 Norma Mag. I spent many an afternoon at Koko Head Range and saw many of his sporters being shot. I never heard of one blowing up. I did manage to break a low number in half when I rebarreled one and used too much force with my receiver wrench.
As I understand the problem, the forge house at Springfield (RIA, also) would take the molten steel up to temperature by eye, using no pryometers to test the melted steel temperature. Let's say on many days they were perfectly correct. Well, you have a well made low number and it will be a very safe rifle. However, on many days they were wrong, so good luck to you. As luck may well be a necessary element.
Any rifle may fail, but the way the LN 1903's fail sets them apart.
Thanks for the replies so far.
As I understand it, Springfield and the Ordnance Dept. discovered early on that these rifles could be unsafe and changed the heat treatment technique at around SN 800K or so. But, if the Ordnance Dept. truly believed them to be unsafe why weren't these early rifles pulled from service?
Understandably we were at war (or soon would be), but during the years between WW1 and WW2 why didn't the Army pull them from service? When the Army demobilized after WW1 they had to have a huge surplus of rifles so wouldn't that have been a great time to make the problem go away?
Is it because the Army didn't truly buy that they were unsafe?
I'm sure that I am not the first person to be perplexed by this.
daveboy
Another way to state the problem is that some - not all - LN receivers are brittle due to being overheated during manufacture. When assembled, they were proof tested & accepted into service. They will work fine as long as they stay withinh their design limits. When thinks occur outside their design limits such as bore obstructions, the wrong ammunition or failure of a case or primer releaseing gas into the action, the receiver has no margin of strength & shatters. The later rifles, the so called High Number or Double Heat Treatment (vs. your Low Number or Single Heat Treatment rifle ) or even later Nickle Steel receivers is that the DHT & NS rifles can stand much, much more pressure (but are not indestructable.) Since there is no practical way to distiguish between a LN receiver that has been burned & one that has not, all are suspect.
the issue.
not that it will fail out of the blue.
its how the receiver handles a failure.
i shoot my SHT rifle, i dont recomend that anyone else do so, if you choose to do so, practice range safety, and dont shoot next to to other people that dont know whats going on...
Buy a copy of "Hatcher's Notebook" to get the complete story on the low number 03.
You can then make an informed decision on whether to shoot yours or not to shoot it.
Personally, I shoot mine once in a while.
Daveboy,They kept them because the military was a penny pinching out fit before WW11.They had LOTS of M1917 rifles,but didnt ever really like them,and got rid of them by giving them to any country that needed rifles.They keep the 03 because it was their rifle of choice.The brass was willing to risk the odd failure which might not cause harm.Ever see anyone with stars on their collar at the range?Me neither.A big part of the failure was bad WW1 brass.With good brass there may never be another Ln failure ever,but who knows?
most the recorded failures came from obstructed bores, wrong ammo.{8mm Mauser} or from tin plated bullets.
not read about the brass issue..maybe i missed that..havnt looked over Hatchers in a while.
The brass issue was how the problem with some receivers was discovered.A company named National Brass & copper was given a contract and produced soft headed cases. A case that lets go in the Head area can be dangerous,in a receiver that is made of burnt brittle steel,since it burst rather than stretch. This burning of the steel in low numbers occured in the forging shop prior to heat treating(See Hatchers Notebook for details). Most are safe.But?
Shooting any rifle from that era, especially a 03 single heat treat, entails a bit of risk. Metallurgy was not a mature science and process controls were primitive.
The “single heat treat” receivers, which were all pre 1918, were made with poor process controls. It is also evident that new hires were not sufficiently trained and there was inadequate oversight of the old hands. Some of the Single heat treat receivers were over heated in the forging room. This burnt the steel and made these receivers brittle.
In 1918 brittle receivers had shattered at a cartridge manufacturer. Finger pointing between the Arsenal and the Cartridge maker forced Springfield Armory to acknowledge that they had a problem. Improvements were made after the failure analysis. Process controls were improved in the forging shop, and an additional step was added to the heat treat. The Double heat treat receivers were made of the same low grade carbon steels materials as the single heat treat, but due to a better heat treatment process, is a little stronger than a properly made single heat treat.
The steels used in the double heat treat and single heat treat receivers are now used in cheap construction reinforcing bars (rebar). No one today would ever use the stuff in a safety critical application like a rifle receiver. :thdown:
In 1928 the Army finally decided on what to do with the single heat treat receivers. When rifles came in for rebuild, they scrapped the single heat treat receivers. But the Army did not, and never did, withdraw SHT rifles from service.
Recently a friend showed me a low number RIA USMC rifle he had picked up at CMP South. It was rebarreled in Dec 1927. The Marines used and rebuilt their SHT rifles all the way up to WWII.
SHT receivers are riskier to shoot, as when something goes wrong, they do not fail in a ductile fashion. Failure pictures show a lot of shattering, fragments. Even today, people acquiring CMP 03’s report SHT receiver cracking with what sounds like minor loads. These must be receivers with burnt steel.
Micheal Petrov took several SHT rifles, fired a 8 mm Mauser cartridge in one, and did some other crazy stuff with another. The rifles did not blow up. He posted the pictures, but withdrew them after too many people criticized him. Wish I could have seen/copied the pictures before they were withdrawn.
So, what I am saying is that SHT receivers have been know to shatter. They may not have a decent margin of safety in an accident. Breakage is rare, but has been known to happen. Good SHT receivers were used for decades. The trouble is, was, and will be, knowing before it breaks, if your receiver is a good one, or a bad one. :ugh:
The Army could not figure it out, so they scrapped low number SHT receivers when the rifle went back to depot.
The 03 Springfield was not an improvement over the M96 Mauser or the M98. The M98 Mauser is a far safer action, the inner collar and gas venting ability of the action are superior to the 03. A M98 will provide better protection to the shooter if a case head failures. In a 03, a lot of gas gets vented straight in your eye.
There are pictures of 03 blowups on the Springfield Armory website. Springfield Armory Museum Search using M1903, damaged rifle, and photograph
Some examples: http://www.rediscov.com/springar/full/671-SA.1.jpg
http://www.rediscov.com/springar/full/632-SA.1.jpg
Good reading guys.
I appreciate the lesson.
daveboy
No matter what the cause, the fact of the matter is that a LN receiver will fail catastrophically whereas a HN receiver failure will be less than catastrophic.
The Army did not issue a recall because they considered the failure risk to be very low with standard GI ammunition and because the budget would not allow it. What they did do, however, was to order that when those rifles were received at depot level for rebuild the receivers were to be scrapped.
That policy was dropped during the early days of WWII, when every rifle was needed and M1 production was not yet up to meeting requirements. In the wartime emergency, the small additional risk involved was considered acceptable.
It is of note that NRA members who owned low number rifles (from any source) could exchange the receivers through DCM for double heat treated or nickel steel receivers as long as supplies lasted.
Jim
Read in one of Elmer Keiths books he talked about when he worked at ogden he said they had rebarreled many low# and he had shot them w/ proof loads his opinion was that if it had a late bolt in it it was safe- some people feel that the bad ones have already blown up or been destroyed if they were going to do so- I still shoot mine -WW2 bbl. WW2 bolt
Every time the LN issue comes up there are lots of references to Hatcher’s notebook.
Hatcher noted in his book that the experienced and highly paid craftsmen that did the heat-treating at Springfield were “jealous of their exclusive skill, and who both hated and feared these newfangled pyrometers which threatened to make useless their special knowledge”. Also, as slamfire1 already pointed out, the investigation started with some finger pointing between the ammo companies and Springfield Armory.
If I’m not mistaken, Springfield Armory used the same class-C steel and heat treatment from the introduction of the Krag rifle up until 1918. Certainly the process needed to be updated with modern instrumentation. I get the impression that Hatcher had to convince a lot of people that the process they had been using for at least 24 years was not good enough. He had to build a strong case to change the procedure at Springfield, and to get them to admit that their heat-treatment was anything less than perfect.
To this end, he devised at least one very specific destructive test, clamping the receivers in a vise and beating on the side ribs (not the receiver rings) with a hammer. This test showed a case where SHT receivers would crack and DHT receivers would not. To me this only proves that the thinnest part of the receivers, the side rib, was brittle from case hardening. It doesn’t tell us a whole lot about the receiver rings. The fact that he did not show any receiver rings broken with a hammer leads me to believe that he didn’t find any that were brittle enough “all the way through” to illustrate this point with a hammer.
Hatcher made his point very well, and his book is an excellent resource. He got the process changed at Springfield Armory, and 60 years later his book is still making people scared of LN rifles. If all rifle failures were documented by an authority in such a convincing way, I wonder how many other rifle designs people would be scared to shoot.
Any time you attempt to change people's thinking about a long-standing practice, there's so much flak that, sometimes, you have to concoct demonstrations to get your point across, even though they may not simulate real-world situations. In other words, sometimes the ends do justify the means.Quote:
Originally Posted by Coal Burner
In reference to shooting LN 1903s, a little risk analysis by those with the most knowledge of the subject is invaluable. From what you guys have said here, I, personally, would have no problem shooting a LN 1903, especially with reduced loads. It seems alot safer than shooting a Santa Fe or National Ordnance rifle!
Most of these brittle and burnt receivers occured in the forging shop,not in the heat treating shop where pyrometers were already in use. The old tomers in the receiver forging shop judged the proper temp. by the color of the steel which could vary depending on the light conditions. When it was realized that that was the problem pyrometers were installed in the receiver forging shop,and receiver heat treatment,was changed to DHT. fixing the problem.
so.
what do you think those old timers would say about all the plastic guns being made today...
or the majority of modern hunting rifles made with Cast steel??
Ruger, Browning, Weatherby, and im told that Remington has went to cast steel... things that make you go hmmmmmm.
Got in on this topic late but here's my opinion.
I have a 4 digit Springfield. The friend I bought it from bought it off a widow who said her husband hunted with it. My friend never fired it, he didn't fire any of his guns, he was handicapped. When I got it, the bore was full of carbon, apparently someone had fired the hell out of it. Took some doing to get it clean.
I took it to the range, covered it with a blanket, put on my old Corps Steel Pot, safety glasses, put my head down and fired. Loaded, fired again. Ok, it fires.
Now it's a safe queen as I have other 03's. But if the need ever came about, it could be loaded up and fired. I am confident about that.
Are you that confident about your low number 03's?
“Michael Petrov took several SHT rifles, fired a 8 mm Mauser cartridge in one, and did some other crazy stuff with another. The rifles did not blow up.”
Just to clear this up a little.
Because it had got to the point where several people were parroting the idea that a case failure would blow up ANY low-numbered 1903 I did some experimenting. I took five (5) low numbered actions both RI & SA checked the headspace and fired at least one arsenal AP that I cut the head with a hacksaw so that it would fail. A lot of gas and brass particles and because the actions were designed for a case failure they held. I had one action that was not in any shape for a rebuild or sporter so I fired a couple 8mm Mauser cartridges through it. These were Remington and nothing happened, I suspect if I was using German ammo the rifle would have failed.
The crazy thing is, at least some of the LN's were properly made. They present no risk at all. But, how do you find one? When I was in Viet Nam we always looked for the person with a small propeller on his straw hat. That's how we spotted the VC. Perhaps someone could come up with a similar solution.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Calif-Steve
Propellers?:D I missed those completely. If only I had known!:bow:
Jim:cool:
awesome!!
heres a good one..
my dad, the one thats started me down the 03 path, purchaced a nice Remington 700BDL varmint in 25-06, that i doubt had ever been seen more then a box of ammo.
my dad being the hard headed fellow that he is, refused to trash the NM 06 brass that he loaded some 10 times for the 25-06, loaded one more time a load 10 grains over the max, by mistake, thought he sit it 52 grns and ended up with 62 grns, making for a case head failure..
hands me the rifle with the bolt locked.
so i wrap the receiver in and ice pack, open the bolt, and observe the bolt head cracked, first 700 bolt ive seen do that.
shot the same load, in his 1903 chambered in 25-06 that i built, same issue with a case head failure, bolt opened ok, split the case, no damage to the 03 what so ever..
ill convert the 700 bolt to a M16 extractor, though i did send the rifle with no bolt off to Remington with a letter saying the bolt was lost, so 200.00 later he will have a spare bolt.
i had to ask him. if he had an issue with the 700, why shoot them in the 03??
said he shot the 03 first, and didnt notice the case issue until later, after the 700 problem.
iv told him time after time, through that box of old brass in the scrap bin, some new brass, and to get his eyes checked...
told me he didnt want his eyes adjusting to the glasses..gawd..
and I'll say it again because I appear to be the only one saying it.
The LN rifles were made more than 90 years ago. Since then, they have been rebuilt, welded into drill rifles, loaned to foreign countries, and been through who knows whose hands. The few in original condition command pretty high money. The more typical inexpensive LN rifle has a history that you don't know.
The first '03 I ever bought was a LN. I didn't know about the LN SHT/forging issue at the time and I just never got around to firing it. Glad I didn't because when I finally tore into it and examined it in detail I found that it had probably been a drill rifle for part of its existence and had a thin, irregular receiver ring under the wood line. I doubt that welding and grinding improved things for it strengthwise.
So here's my take: There's lots of HN rifles with a greater margin of safety and less tendency to come apart in sharp little pieces if something goes horribly wrong. The risk to the shooter (wearing proper safety equipment) in a failure is minimal but the rifle won't heal up afterwards. The nice original ones are too precious to shoot and there's no good reason to shoot the un-nice ones. I recommend shooting something else.