WRA 1.3 annealed receivers? Original?

[silverado7]

Rock,

From information obtained here and elsewhere, is it possible to determine if the Winchester factory annealed their receivers in 1943 or was it field or an after treatment at a later date. When annealed, would the receivers have been reparked?

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[davfink]

1331XXX heel and legs annealed

[Larry G.]

16129x heal only annealed

[ROCK]

From information obtained here and elsewhere, is it possible to determine if the Winchester factory annealed their receivers in 1943 or was it field or an after treatment at a later date. When annealed, would the receivers have been reparked?

The heel and leg type of annealing appear to be done at the same facility. This could have been done by Winchester at time of original manufacture. It also could have been done later but I still believe the same facility was involved. I've only seen heel and leg annealing on Winchesters so I am assuming that Winchester did them.

My understanding is that receivers were annealed after parkerizing. It was a simple process of just dipping the back end of a receiver into molton lead.

Even if a receiver is reparked, the annealed back end will still be darker.

[RCS]

I have never seen anything concerning dipping any receivers in lead in any of the FM, TM or Shop manuals ?

[ROCK]

I have never seen anything concerning dipping any receivers in lead in any of the FM, TM or Shop manuals ?

Neither have I.

I have never seen anything 'official' about this subject. There must be some documentation out there. I know that Hatcher's Notebook has information about a change of the type of steel used in the receiver.

[LavaTech]

There is every reason to expect both Winchester and SA receivers to exhibit annealing to the heel only and/or heel and legs, dependent upon materials delivery date and production time. A Sept. '43 War Dept. directive ordered the return to electric-furnace steel (change back from open-hearth directive of Nov. '42) Many lots of steels varied in specification at this time, after the Feb. '43 change from Chrome-Vanadium steel to a Chrome-Molybdenum-Nickel steel substitute. SA formally protested as they had been using the open-hearth steels quite successfully prior to the W.D. mandated change. The steels required different forging hammers and machining/handling/heat treatments and it was later discovered that there was an improper heat treatment resulting in heel fractures. At this time lead dipping of the heel was found to be a satisfactory resolution to the problem, and dipping of the legs was used later to alleviate a leg breakage problem that was finally resolved by a change to the machining of the locking recesses. My SA #20309XX receiver is one of many originally dipped to cure the leg and heel fracture problem(s). AFAIR, the time periods were generally September for the onset of heel fracture problems, followed in November for the leg breakage problems appearing. Since Winchester made exceedingly few changes to their receiver processing, the leg breakage may have been more pronounced of a problem for them, hence they may exhibit leg annealing to a greater extent - I have only one CMP "B" Winchester receiver yet to build (2.35M, and no complete rifles) and it's well outside of the affected range. This seems to be one instance (at least) where both SA and Winchester encountered "problems by mandate" courtesy of the War Department controlling materials procurement and delivery. HTH

(Sources: Sharpe, Duff, Canfield, and I forget any others, sorry!)

[RCS]

I have seen quite a few five digit receivers in the upper 1940 serial range, most (not all) have had the anneal color to the rear tang. Also I have seen some 1940 receivers in the early 1940 serial number range without any anneal color. You can still locate an early 1940 receiver without the anneal.
Most 1941 Winchesters (but not all) will show an anneal color to the tang area.

Why were these early 1940 and 1941 receivers annealed ?

[LavaTech]

My GUESS would be that more heel and/or leg failures were being seen (at SOME point in time, unless someone digs up more docs to nail that coffin we'll likely never know) from forward repair depots (an assumption) and 'prolly stateside too. With an established remedy already in place......

Have to keep in mind that there were steel requirement and alloy percentage changes throughout virtually all of WW2 production, some more or less "severe" than others. The brittle heel/legs period in late '42 being just one known example that's relatively well documented.

[RCS]

Here is a 35xxx rifle from around April 1940, this receiver has had the low guide ribs welded-up and re-machined, also a 1941 barrel was installed.

With all of this rebuilding why was not the receiver annealed ?