This has probably been discussed before but I can across an article on the 1921 National Matches that caught my attention and made me wonder if there's a correlation to early 1903 receivers failing.

"A Quick Note on the Ammunition Issued for the 1921 Matches:
The average (military) ammunition available to the competitor until 1921, utilized a bullet jacket composed of copper and nickel. While the cupro-nickel jacket was acceptable for issue military ammunition, the jacket material tended to leave a lumpy metal fouling in the bore that adversely affected the accuracy of the rifle after just a few rounds. The deposited metal fouling made things worse and caused even more fouling to be deposited in the bore with each subsequent shot. The cupro-nickel metal fouling was the ruination of match accuracy. A formula for “ammonia dope” was readily available to dissolve the lumpy metal fouling, but if you left the “dope” in the bore too long, it could destroy your barrel. A slight slip-up, or a leaky cork in the breech and your rifle bore was history! As a result, shooters resorted to drastic measures to solve the problem. The first attempt to maintain accuracy until the bore could be cleaned with “ammonia dope,” was apparently the use of cosmolineicon on the tip of the bullet. For rapid fire, the entire end of the 5 round stripper clip was dipped into a small typewriter can full of lubricant (either cosmoline, or for the more affluent, a commercial grease called Mobilubricant). Now, no matter how careful you were, you were probably going to lube your chamber in the process. Since grease is incompressible, the chamber pressure rose sharply."

If a shooter was using grease, would that have spiked the pressure beyond normal limits causing the failures?

Carl
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