So How Was The Steel in These Rifles?

[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.