Same this is the sky is falling on CMPicon. My same response here.

Wow, shocked shocked that one of the primer sources on the 1917s in actually working on them was not even brought up, AKA Chuck in Denver AKA Warpath.

My take is this is not remotely solid. Nor backed up by facts.

One of the first ones was that WWI ammo was highly suspect and quality control was poor. Suddenly production went form nothing to 100s of millions of rounds. If fact bad ammo was one of the key issues with the 1903s.

Chucks experiencing is that Eddystones had fewer cracks than others. Any cracks were due to the use of the wrong tools.

We have pictures of the plants in WWI and they DID NOT use pneumatic tools.

As there is a witness mark, even if they had done so you took to to the WM and stopped.

Wrong tools and corrosion is going to make it an iffy proposition.

As for head space, these are being mis-charactrized there as well. They were battle rifles. It is standard for the head space to be long.

The biggest issue with head space is a case that is no longer usable. The Military did not care about re-using cases. They did care about them working when fouled.

There were no SAMMI specs then.

I have had something around 12 of these and I don't know how many more I have looked at. None were cracked, all shot fine.

These were commonly used as a basis of a cartridge change to larger calibers.

The steel used was Nickel Steel, not the standard steel (1903 went to that 1920 or some such). Its got more stretch.

And how many millions of P14 and 1917s were made? 5 million? How many 1903s ? there was a reason 75% of the troops were issued 1917.

So, 3 out of 4 rifles were 1917. Begin to get the picture?

I had one that had a 1917 barrel put back on (different mfg) done with a pipe wrench, thread cut and it still shot fine (they didn't get the chamber quite right) - I broke it down and sold it as was and kept the stock (nice R) - it in fact had a short head space that I got a bolt given to me that was wrong and worked in that rifle.

Any rifle that has an unsupported head has a possible problem, any mil surplus rifle has a possible issue and you need to check it out, but there is nothing specific to the 1917s let alone Eddystone that was other than one off failures that occurred.

Lets keep the rumors and innuendo out of this.