Bent Luxemburg FN49 receiver, who can help?

[browningautorifle]

Typically seen on the Egyptian 49s

Really...never heard of it. Now another thing to look for when examining a possible purchase.

The material will be stretched regardless so trying to "Press" it back to true or straight will result in an excess of material and as described, a weak spot.

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[deadwood83]

Really...never heard of it. Now another thing to look for when examining a possible purchase.

The material will be stretched regardless so trying to "Press" it back to true or straight will result in an excess of material and as described, a weak spot.

It was new to me too. I went looking for more of the same as described by waw44, found SVT40 slamfires which mentioned FN49s and out of battery discharges, and that lead me to... fn49 out of battery - Google Search
Attachment 117317

Apparently not that uncommon. The extent of checks I did on my FN49 prior to firing the first time was "gas not closed all the way, everything moves freely, no missing parts, no corrosion, presence of oil on the rails, looks sweet" then I put in some PPU 8mm and ripped a mag (meaning fired all w/o incident). I expect that is most people's experience but now I think I need to give mine a much closer look.


@Lee Enfield:

With very careful setup it wouldn't be too hard to TIG but I'm not familiar with the method of manufacture. If the entire receiver was heat treated or hardened then with the weld you've created a big weak spot unless the owner you saw had access to an industrial furnace (or one of those new fancy $1-4k home furnaces as found on This Old Tony @ YT.) Also a TIG would require a total refinish. TIG without surgical prep (especially bluing and oil removal) nearly always results in weld porosity, and then you have a ticking time bomb.

Prior to any attempt at repair, the most important part will be knowing why this happened and addressing that. Without RCA and addressing the problem, waw44 may find himself right back at the same spot. It will be harder to see if the action had an OOB or slamfire. But if a previous owner had used heavy reloads trying to push the envelope, or perhaps put a magnum primer in a reload then I think we should be able to tell by the locking surfaces. It could be as simple as just buying some hot hunting loads with soft primers and beating the poor thing to death. The first Luxembourg rifles were delivered around 51 and the most widely available .30-06 at that point in time is likely M2 ball...

Either way, bright spots and mild smearing on the locking surfaces should show if it is an ammo issue. Since the Lux rifles were '06 it is less likely to be OOB since the '06 rifles had the FP stop. However waw44 mentioned an egyptian trigger group, so for all we know it may also have an egyptian bolt without FP block.