So How Was The Steel in These Rifles?

[CINDERS]

Ferrocyanide of Potassium fumes would not have done ones disposition well either Sapper740 just my take on the safety aspect of chemical handling & use.
No doubt they had the appropriate PPE & MSDS..............

[Eaglelord17]

Ferrocyanide of Potassium fumes would not have done ones disposition well either Sapper740 just my take on the safety aspect of chemical handling & use.
No doubt they had the appropriate PPE & MSDS..............

The gunsmithing book I have from the 30s mentions how to deal with this....

Get a electric fan and blow the fumes away from you.

[muffett.2008]

Well Cinders, get off the greenants nest and the pain will eventually subside. I don't mean to have a go at you, but

Let me ask you a question, would you expect Lance to divulge the hard gleaned information carefully gathered and fact checked prior to the publishing of his books.
Or Ian Skenerton or any other Researcher for that matter, it would make for poor sales if we had prior knowledge,why buy the book,let's just ask on the Web......may not get the right answer but what the heck, it's the Internet after all.

The cost of Researching archives is not cheap, tracking one line of information often leads to accessing more files and it just goes on and on. Just on that search alone my costs not counting time would exceed $400.
The research costs on my Rifle Club History ran to $300+
The links given were good and if followed should have arrived at the answer to your question, that's assuming anyone bothered to follow them up......or maybe just wait for an answer on the Internet.

[Claven2]

In fairness to Ross, there was a dizzying array of * changes to each Ross mark as the design was tweaked.

The bolt head issue really only showed up in sustained rapid fire under duress, and it’s not surprising to me it did not really show up until battle in the western front.

Had the 1916 version remained in service a few more months, it likely would have stayed in place, I think.

[Surpmil]

In fairness to Ross, there was a dizzying array of * changes to each Ross mark as the design was tweaked.

The bolt head issue really only showed up in sustained rapid fire under duress, and it’s not surprising to me it did not really show up until battle in the western front.

Had the 1916 version remained in service a few more months, it likely would have stayed in place, I think.

Yes, you've hit on what I was about to add to my previous post: did the deformation occur when there was no jamming due to soft or oversize ammo, bolts being kicked open etc.? It seems not as the rifle was declared to function properly with Canadian ammo in the report prepared under the authority of F.M. French in 1915.

Considering the lack of a full length forend, the unsuitable bayonet and attachment, the overall size and the complexity of the mechanism, the SMLE was a better choice for the trenches. Likewise, the wiser step would have been to make the Ross the standard sniping weapon throughout the BEF in a cut-down configuration with a suitable overbore mounting of the Aldis scopes. The SMLE was never suitable as sniping weapon; it would have been far better to use prewar CLLE's in that role, but those had probably all been scattered to winds by late 1915 like Kitchener's "New Army" they equipped.

[CINDERS]

We don't have your drop bear green ants muffett2008 here in West Au, however we do have the red bullant (Sargent ant I call them) which actually made it into Lofty Wisemans SAS Survival book as being one to avoid very aggressive, swarm attack & can leap 6".

The info is all in there in his book if you buy a copy.

I'll tell you a story ~ I spent allot of time operating a LIMA crawler lattice boom crane the contract ended so I was only able to find a small 6 tonne wobbly crane to operate (tractor type a BHB).
Anyhow I'd been on the new job a while when another crane driver who I knew (There is a difference between a driver & operator) came up to me asking what I knew about LIMA cranes well I'd just spent ages on one so answered all his questions.
Unbeknown to me he had done the back door trick found out they were getting the sister crane to the LIMA I was on, he had run to the office after I'd filled in the blanks in his brain and white anted me out of attaining that machine but no probs life comes around.

I was going past him whilst he was building up the LIMA he was on to a combination 150' main & 20' fly jib but if you had over 150' main regardless of main boom length or fly length apart from having the max chair weight on you had to wedge the tracks and have your walkers to the rear plus split your luffing bridle because you have to put mid point suspension in the main boom.
Well I watched the performance of his efforts he had the boom pawl in which is a ratchet system that locks to boom drum from powering down sort of a safety feature, so what was happening you say well the boom would pick up then the fly would start to come up then stop, at which point the entire crane tracks & all started to lift and the boom stayed put!
There was much yelling at the riggers the crane driver was getting flustered up & down trying to get the configuration off the ground it was pretty funny watching the performance anyway he saw me parked up and yelled at me WTF is wrong with this crane.
I said you have to wedge the crane ???????? (Place packing in front of the front idlers in the gap between the ground & front grouser plates) he said what the ???? is wedging I said well you know it all go and check the load charts it's all there in the fine print, eventually he twigged and got the combination off the deck but it was funny.

If some one asks me something I may know a bit about I will tell them as I do not play secret squirrels if I have learnt through omissions or painful episodes why would I want to put someone through it just to prove a point I'm not better than you and vice versa equal.

I've been through 2 barrels just getting load data for my 6.5 x 284 5 different powders & 6 different projectiles and if someone asked me what were the best loads I'd found well I'd tell them but warn them to start 10% under and go from there and good luck.

My load data my very conservative estimate on the cost to me 2 x brls $1000 each $300/Ea for fitment and probably another $1500 - $2500 in gear & powder/projies/primers so the all up cost for the info roughly say and easy $5K. (This does not include the $2500 for the AMP annealer)

I guess everyone will be queueing up when they release the remaining JFK assassination information that apparently Trump ordered released.

Sharing stuff or information I think that the metal information on the Lithgows would be a very interesting subject and I do not think it would hurt sales or anything like that in fact may help them with "I never knew that" so I was only asking to know if I ever find out one way or the other it will be interesting.

But given how this world turns I'll be dust before the secret squirrel divulges the answer.

[CINDERS]

As a very quick postscript I watched that same crane driver some years later completely destroy a 110 Tonne capacity American crawler crane wrote it off it was like a comedy of errors they way he got himself in a bind with the result one written off crane, thankfully no one died or was injured.

The sad part the new owners of that crane were on their way to look at their new purchase, he was sacked on the spot !
I spoke to his rigger and asked a few questions without going into a long dialog he put the load down had the boom pawl in got kickback could not release the pawl hence the boom fell over backwards.
Yeah life has a funny way of getting back at ya!

[Alan de Enfield]

Isn't there a saying something along the lines of :

"If you want to shoot boar, use a Mauser, if you want to go to war use a Lee Enfield, if you want to shoot targets use a Ross"

[togor]

Isn't there a saying something along the lines of :

"If you want to shoot boar, use a Mauser, if you want to go to war use a Lee Enfield, if you want to shoot targets use a Ross"

Target rifle was a US M1903 as I have heard it.

[Surpmil]

Target rifle was a US M1903 as I have heard it.

Which is pretty much another way of saying "Mauser" given the royalties paid to them for the design?

But as we know, most rifle designs can be made to shoot very well with the right QC in manufacture and ammo. Some do have definite advantages however.