Gallery of Dramas. Broken Enfield Parts!

[jmoore]

As a continuation of a previous thread:

Is this a common failure? by rumpelhardt

Here's some photos of failed components for your consideration. Feel free to add your own tales of woe, preferably with photos! (Even slightly fuzzy ones as some of these are-sorry! ?low batteries???)

Most of the following fractures are quite "granular" in appearance, unlike typical "fatigue failure" break lines that show a combination of fracture propagation modes. Really, if there were signs of deformation surrounding the break, it would be tempting to call it ductile tension failure, but these look more like fractures found in cast iron. Note too, that most of the components are of Indian origins according to the various markings.

The cocking piece that shows the most typical appearance for a fatigue failure in steel is an Ishapore (corrected origin of mfg on 12 Dec 2010) manufactured part. Some burnishing on most of the fracture face, showing repeated cycles before failure.

Anyway, some horror pictures!:


Photo#1.1-Damage on the bolt body face is due to an attempted removal of the bolt head stub.
ETA: Unfortunately, a more detailed photo won't help much here as the stub has been extensively modified in texture during some previous removal efforts.


Photo #1.2a-This bolt head doesn't belong to the bolt assembly above. I've several more as well!

Photo #1.2b-ETA: supplemental photo as also shown in post #13.

Photo #1.3a

Photo #1.3b-Don't know HOW you would attempt to repair this failure! Very sad.


Photo #1.4a

Photo #1.4b-??????


Photo #1.5-A real close up of these fracture faces would be grand. ETA- So ...there's better on post #13.

Photo #1.6- Minor failure (the cross pin) that could be fairly dangerous! Rotate the safety lever, but the cocking piece won't be restrained! Wartime emergency safety variant- worse than nothing!

Several photos leave a bit to be desired. Please give me a few days to improve the results. Hopefully, this will spark some discussion and further contributions, regardless.

No condemnation of the rifle is intended here! It's just something that I find interesting about any mechanical device- failure modes. Made a fair living dealing with it so far... and "wasted" a lot of time studying it whilst getting a degree that's hardly been used....

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