So How Was The Steel in These Rifles?

[Bruce_in_Oz]

From the official 1903 Specification S. A. 212, for the Ml 1 SMLE:

Barrel: 110ACrucible or Siemens Martin steel

Bolt Head: 34F Special gun Iron.

Bolt Body: 56a Crucible Cast Steel.

Somewhere in the "crypt" is a similar document, but dating from the 1930s. When it surfaces I will feed it through the scanner / OCR process.

There may be an on-line source for the analysis of these vintage irons and steels.

Also remember that metallurgy was in its infancy. "Heat to cherry red and hold for X minutes before quenching", is the sort of thing you will find in vintage texts / instructions.

Cherry Red? Day shift or Night shift? Fine day or rainy? Start of shift or end of shift? We have seen "Monday morning and Friday afternoon" cars, so.......

Serious Pyrometers were a couple of decades away.

EVERYTHING was basically "overbuilt", just in case.