M1903 Barrel Installs

[purple]

I have NOS HS44 and NOS SA44 M1903 barrels which I am planning to install on 2 Remington receivers. It's been close to 20 yrs since I installed a new M1903 barrel and I'm trying to pin down what degree of offset between the draw lines makes for a workable installation.

Both receiver/barrel combinations are 18 degrees by angle finder, or roughly 3/8 inches, away from zero index when turned on by hand to an initial starting position. On searching these forums I have seen 1/8 inches of offset as a recommended starting point for a good install. I also found another comment about 30 degrees ( that's plus of 1/4 inch) as a desirable start point. M1903s aren't Garands, but I look for 9-15 degrees off zero index when installing a new Garand barrel. I use Brownells barrel paste on the receiver face and threads when installing which helps ease them into index after a bit of back-and-forth on the tougher ones. I'm thinking I should be OK with 18 degrees away from zero as a start point. I'd appreciate any experience/comments on this.

Information

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[Chuckindenver]

hand tightened, should be witness marks should be about 1/8 apart, more then that you may have a hard time, getting them to mate up.
always check your sight picture before you call it good, 1903,s are known to have the rear sight off just a bit.

[purple]

So you are saying that this may be a no-go situation? I check for the alignment of the extractor cut when the witness lines match, but how often are the sight bases off center? It seems a person is pretty much stuck with the position of the front and rear sight bases as they are.

[Chuckindenver]

no..if you check in the gunsmith section i have a picture detail on how to rebarrel the 1903.
use the line on the side of the rear sight base. then check your sight picture by sighting down the barreled action as if your were shooting,
another way of checking.
clamp the barreled action by the barrel in a set of soft jawed vise, with a level bubble, square it at the bolt rails.
then set the bubble on the top flat of the rear base, and the front base. all should be level...ill post some pics tom, on how i do this.

---------- Post added at 10:11 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:04 PM ----------

this is barreling the Garand, but the leveling set up is basicly the same. also...no oil, paste or grease should be on the threads, square threads will get hydro lock, iv had guys that couldnt get the index set, and send me the job, i pulled the barrels, cleaned all the oil and or grease, paste ect, and then they indexed right up.. the crush on sqaure threads is at the shoulder, V threads the crush is at the shoulder and threads.
rebarreling the M1 Garand

[purple]

The more info and experience the better. It's tough to find reference material on the critical hand -tight starting point for M1903 barrel installation.

There is a lot more data on the M1 Garand and M1 Carbine, incl original Ordnance Tech Manuals and the excellent Kuhnhausen Shop Manuals, which I have used as my bible for barrel installations and other work on these. When I decided to get into Garand re-building some years ago I got the Kuhnhausen manual, the CMP Garand barrel blocks and action wrench, a Clymer pull-thru finishing reamer, and the Badger Ordnance indexing fixtures which fit on the top of the gas cylinder and the receiver flat between the rear sight ears.

The Badger setup is excellent. Both fixtures are slotted for the use of an aluminum angle stock to check parallelism and zero index. When you use a piece of 36 inch aluminum angle in these any difference from zero becomes glaringly evident to the eye. The other nice thing is that you can set a dial angle finder on top of these fixtures for a confirmatory check on proper indexing. I've done some 30 new and used Garand rebarrels with these and have sure gotten my money's worth from my tooling investment.

You still read a lot of varying experience on the go/no-go hand tight starting point for Garand barrels. The Ordnance TM calls for 9 to 15 degrees of offset for a new barrel. Kuhnhausen uses these parameters as well. If less than 9 degrees the rear of the barrel needs to be roll swaged for a proper fit. If more than 15 degrees the barrel shoulder needs to be turned down. That said, the Kulek book on Garand building says anything up to an 8 o'clock hand tight position should be OK (that's up to 60 degrees-quite a deviation from the Ordnance TM). I did one new install with a new GI barrel from an 18 degree start point and it came up easier than another two at the 15 degree position. I have a new Criterion barrel, which sits at 23 degrees on a receiver, and I think I'll give it a try. Other folks report good results with up to a 30 degree starting position on new barrels.

M1 Carbines seem to be a bit more forgiving. I've done 3 used barrel installs on these with hand tight starting positions slightly plus of the recommended starting position and they rolled on quite easily. As a student/disciple of Kuhnhausen I have used the Brownells moly barrel paste on the barrel threads and shoulder for all of my installs with good results.

I've checked out your write-up on M1903 barrel installations, thanks. I know that everything (sight verticality and extractor cut) SHOULD be OK when the witness marks on the barrel and receiver are aligned. If the sights are out of plumb when the witness lines meet, but are still both on the same vertical plane when checked with a level, I can see that there is enough tolerance in the extractor cutout to rotate the barrel a tad and still have enough clearance for the extractor to function properly. I did this once with a used barrel on a late Rock Island receiver to get the sights vertical and it worked out fine. Given that the front sight is fixed to a milled keyway in the barrel I don't see any real possibility of rotating it. Removal and re-installation of the rear sight sleeve to correct a rotational offset would be possible, but still a PITA. I've removed/installed one ot the collars to replace a worn one, and everything worked out OK when the edge of the collar was aligned with the witness line, which is how they normally appear.

[Chuckindenver]

no dissrepect, but i think your making this much harder then it is..
manuals, and books are nice...but put them away, screw the barrel in ,. mate the witness marks up, finish ream it, test fire...your done.
you should be able to install the barrel in half the time that it took you to type the above post :}

[purple]

I agree with you. Some of us do get overly anal about our stuff. I'm going to install the SA 44 bbl on one receiver in the next couple of days. I'm going to re-park the other receiver before installing the HS44 bbl.

[purple]

Just to close the loop on this I installed a new SA 7-44 barrel on one of my Remington M1903s today and it all went well. The barrel was 18 degrees off index from a hand tight starting position as determined with an angle finder. With a bit of Brownells moly barrel paste on the threads and shoulder the barrel fit up nicely with a moderate effort on the wrench. I used an extension pipe to add 6 inches to the handle of the Brownells action wrench and after a couple of back and forths the barrel drew up to match the witness line on the receiver. At this point both front and rear sight bases were exactly zeroed with the receiver with proper clearance for the extractor.

This rifle had languished in the back of the safe for a few years needing a replacement barrel. The original RA 6-42 barrel was pooched with a throat erosion reading of 307 on the GI C3940 gauge in relation to the 308 reject/replacement reading. Muzzle reading was .303. In spite of the well worn bore the rifle still produced 3.5 inch groups at the bench with handloads.

I don't know if the CMP still supplies their M1903 barrel vice, but this works very well. It is tapered to match the barrel contour and fits up flush against the face of the rear sight collar and clamps together on the barrel with 2 heavy duty socket head bolts. There is enough room between the bolt heads for the ram of my 12 ton shop press to seat on top of the vice.

[Chuckindenver]

awesome. glad it worked out well...sometimes keeping it simple works best...a rule i try and live by.

[Rick H.]

Purple and Chuckindenver: I don't mean to hijack this thread, but one of the replies mention sight collar replacement on an 03. This collar has me somewhat baffled because there is a ton of different opinions on how to remove and reinstall these. A good friend of mine just had one removed from one barrel and reinstalled on a Criterion barrel by a gunsmith in Michigan. I took a good look at the job that was done and impact marks from a hammer or other unknown tool are evident on the front and rear of the collar. Heat was also applied to the collar throughout its length. I also noticed that it appears this collar was silver soldered in place as you can see silver solder "balls" between the receiver and collar. Can either one of you tell me just how difficult a process this is and how it is accomplished? Should this work be done using a press in order to get the collar off and on and how does one reinstall the pin that runs lengthwise with the barrel? Lastly, have you ever heard of honing the inside of the collar to make it easier to install it on a barrel?

Thanks for any help or advise......Rick