So How Was The Steel in These Rifles?

[togor]

US service rifles had their adventures with steel, particularly heat treatment.

How was it for the No. 1 and No. 4 rifles?

On the one hand, the British figured out steel making very early on. On the other hand, these rifles were made all over the world. Maybe in a time and place things didn't go so well?

[Surpmil]

It would be an interesting exercise to run some samples through an x-ray spectrometer and see exactly what was used.

I have noticed different stripped receivers have a different ring, but is it the steel or the heat treatment?

In case of the Patt.14 rifles at Eddystone for example it seems to have been the forging/heat treatment than the steel itself.

[CINDERS]

Funny thing is I asked a question a long time ago about a question mark stamping on my 1916 MkIII a member said it was to do with the steel apparently there was something going on at Lithgow.
They supplied allot of printed matter and said they knew the answer and for those who want to know go and find it yourselves, it's like 109 years ago so why not just say to those that wish to know what was the issue at the time.
Rather than throw a pile of printed material out there and state "I know the reason but find it yourselves", I find that a bit unhelpful and well bluntly selfish.
Pic of the ? mark in question, the rifle's serial No. I edited it out so don't panic it's not a ghost gun!!!!!

[Claven2]

Much like 1903 springfields, any guns that were likely to blow up probably have long ago.

The only writings I’ve read on the issue of steel quality and strength in Lee enfield actions was around conversion tests of no.1mkiii and no.4 rifles to 7.62 NATO and supposed changes to alloys and heat treatment of Indian 2A/2A1 actions to handle the 7.62 service cartridge.

303 British is not exactly a smokeless barn burner and the service rifles generally seem to have handled pressures very well over their lives.

Of course all mechanical things wear out, and many an SMLE was condemned to dp status over stretched or worn receivers that fell outside gauge specifications after long service.

[Eaglelord17]

Steel was a very interesting topic when smokeless powder was first being developed. Earliest steel firearms were mostly mild steel by todays standards, and as time progressed better steel was used. It is also why case hardening was so popular for early firearms as it allowed them to harden the steel which otherwise wasn't a option with mild steels. Overall though you don't really want a ton of hardness rather toughness. Hardness shatters, toughness flexes and resists.

Much of the turn of the 19th to early 20th century steel was based off regional steels as they didn't fully understand the metallurgy involved. Companies were also pretty protective of whatever alloys they made as it was a competitive advantage. For example Swedish Steel was a well known steel for corrosion resistance due to the naturally high nickel content in the ores used to make the steel in Sweden.

That all being said the steels selected for manufacturing were more than sufficient for their intended purposes, if there was designs which suffered failures it was more due to issues in the design itself or something else in the process than the quality of the steel. Examples being the poor heat treating practices America was employing on their early 1903s or the lack of a radius on Norwegian produced Krags, or the stretching receivers of Lee Enfields (I am still of the opinion that if it was a 100% sufficient design the receiver wouldn't stretch, no one else seemed to have this particular issue).

[Claven2]

Front locking receivers stretch too, it’s called bolt recess setback. Same thing, over a shorter length of receiver.

My engineering mind would call both phenomena plastic deformation.

[Brian Dick]

I've only seen two catastrophic failures in the past 30 years. One, a new out of the wrap .303 No.4 Mk.2 and the other, a well-used 7.62 L42A1. Both rifles owned and operated by American target/competition shooters. Both blown up by pushing the limits with handloads. The Mk.2's bolt was broken in two at the rear of the locking lugs. The L42A1 sheared off the left-hand locking lug and broke the bolt head in two at the milling cut for the extractor. Both bodies were unharmed, and I fitted new bolts which are still working to this day as far as I know. Both guys were reloading rounds to maximum and beyond and wouldn't take age old sound advice about handloading for these rifles. They were both very lucky as no one got hurt. Hopefully they learned something from the experience. When I see guys restoring these RTI Ethiopian import SMLEs I cringe. When the .310 throat erosion gauge which shouldn't enter more than .25" drops in the breech end, runs through, falls out the muzzle and the rifle is on its second barrel at least, think about the round count and condition of the locking recesses in the body that were hardened .004" deep at best.

[Sapper740]

Canada's Ross Rifle wasn't exempt from issues with poorly tempered steel. Replacement bolts arriving from Canada in 1915 were found to have "soft bolt heads" which Lt. Col. Harkom, technical advisor to Canada's Standing Small Arms Committee was ordered to "get busy and repair them". He developed the crude Harkom Method as a field expedient in which the bolt heads were re-tempered by heating them with a blowtorch hoping to reach 1,200 F. then "pepper" them with Ferrocyanide of Potassium. With virtually no quality controls in place the re-tempering was haphazard and it was a miracle that any of the bolt heads stood up under service conditions.

[Surpmil]

Canada's Ross Rifle wasn't exempt from issues with poorly tempered steel. Replacement bolts arriving from Canada in 1915 were found to have "soft bolt heads" which Lt. Col. Harkom, technical advisor to Canada's Standing Small Arms Committee was ordered to "get busy and repair them". He developed the crude Harkom Method as a field expedient in which the bolt heads were re-tempered by heating them with a blowtorch hoping to reach 1,200 F. then "pepper" them with Ferrocyanide of Potassium. With virtually no quality controls in place the re-tempering was haphazard and it was a miracle that any of the bolt heads stood up under service conditions.

I've wondered how much this was a problem of soft boltheads and how much a problem caused by the small contact area of the first model bolt stop with the tip of the rearmost interrupted thread on that side of the bolthead.

Ross seems to have suffered some QC problems once the war was well underway for the same reason other manufacturers did: a high turnover in workers who didn't stay long enough to learn their jobs well, and in some cases probably didn't pay much attention to what they were doing knowing that they wouldn't be fired and could easily get more work somewhere else. The average length of service at the three factories making the Patt.14 in the USA was something like a month IIRC. Workers were literally scampering from factory to factory according to where the best wages were offered.

So was it a case of "something must be wrong with the boltheads" because no one could tell Sir Charles that his bolt stop was too small? It was later changed to a larger contact area and apparently the bolt thread deformation problems ceased at that point.

The comment about "a miracle that any of the boltheads" hardened by the Harkom method stood up in active service is attributed to a gentleman hired by one of Ross' American steel suppliers to defend the quality of their product, which of course implies that there was some arguing back and forth over the matter.

And we all know there was plenty of funny business carried on once the war began and companies were heavily involved in war contracts: the buyer has to have it and is in no position to argue so cut the quality and raise the prices!

[Eaglelord17]

I've wondered how much this was a problem of soft boltheads and how much a problem caused by the small contact area of the first model bolt stop with the tip of the rearmost interrupted thread on that side of the bolthead.

Ross seems to have suffered some QC problems once the war was well underway for the same reason other manufacturers did: a high turnover in workers who didn't stay long enough to learn their jobs well, and in some cases probably didn't pay much attention to what they were doing knowing that they wouldn't be fired and could easily get more work somewhere else. The average length of service at the three factories making the Patt.14 in the USA was something like a month IIRC. Workers were literally scampering from factory to factory according to where the best wages were offered.

So was it a case of "something must be wrong with the boltheads" because no one could tell Sir Charles that his bolt stop was too small? It was later changed to a larger contact area and apparently the bolt thread deformation problems ceased at that point.

The comment about "a miracle that any of the boltheads" hardened by the Harkom method stood up in active service is attributed to a gentleman hired by one of Ross' American steel suppliers to defend the quality of their product, which of course implies that there was some arguing back and forth over the matter.

And we all know there was plenty of funny business carried on once the war began and the US companies were heavily involved in war contracts: the buyer has to have it and is in no position to argue so cut the quality and raise the prices!

The Ross Rifle was never a fully developed design. Arguably the 1916 version of the rifle worked out all the kinks, but by that point it was too late. The Lee Enfield also had it's own developmental kinks, the worst being the sighting issue which was discovered in the Boer War and likely resulted in more than a few British lives. The difference being they had a extra two decades to figure out the design, experimented on and carried by troops in basically every climate on the planet. The Ross didn't get that, he went though 3 major design variations in about 7 years (1903, 1905 and 1910) and even then didn't particularly care for the fine tooning which comes with such a project (such as larger bolt stops, etc.).

The other major thing the Ross had working against it was the British wanted it to fail. It was a sign of Canadian independence and it embarrassed the British regularly at Bisley. Purposely redirecting the ammo that worked in the rifles to the machine guns and issuing out of spec British ammo isn't the sign of a good ally.