The 03 Springfeild Low Serial Number Controversy

[milboltnut]

Hey guys,
I'm sure this has been beaten to death here and everywhere in the gun community, BUT.... recently I have been studying the 93 and the 95 Mauser designs. The reason I'm referring to the Mausers to the 03 is this.... I read Hatchers notebook on 03 and seen that cartridge case failure, which wasn't an issue until the .30Gov't came to be, was the reason for receiver failure (on the 03). As Hatcher said, a relief hole was bored to prevent a ruptured case from causing any future failure on the receivers part. But the Army decided to double heat treat to prevent any further complications from any field conditions that would contribute to receiver failures.

Going back to the 93 and the 95 Mausers.....

The bolt on the 93 has a gas relief hole next to one of the forward locking lugs... I read this in this book by Wayne Zwoll and Frank DeHass.

If you would like to read up, here's the link..

Bolt Action Rifles - Frank De Haas, Wayne Zwoll - Google Books

I have a 93 action 1916 Spanish Mauser and it has a receiver thumb cutout that also serves as gas escape for this design.. for some 93 and 95's... (and as we all know the 98's) as per this article.

So what confuses me is why did the Mauser Brothers do away with the relief hole on the 93 bolt and the thumb cutout/gas reliefs on bolts.. and on some of the 95's? They both were chambered 7mm Mauser. I have a 95 Chilean short rifle in 7mm and a 93/1916 Spanish in 7mm. The 95 doesn't have gas reliefs at all but the 93 does... go figure. Paul and Wilhelm.. where were their heads???

I guess the bottom squared bolt was deemed unnecessary for proper feeding so they went with round bolt faces.

Going back to the original intent of this thread... the 93/95 Mauser strength with safety features added and taken away, shows that excessive pressure was the culprit to the early 03 failure, not necessarily receiver strength.

I hope I made some sense of this. Thanks.

Any thoughts would be appreciated...

Information

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[Doco overboard]

Maybe by that time the thought was case metallurgy and repeatably for manufacturing had largely solved the problem of gas control in the Springfield's and the 93 and 95's were never designed for a high pressure cartridge so the ammo components were known to be more than adequate for the intent and the Mauser(s) had to remove manufacturing steps for marketing/sales reasons. Case problems however were surely remained on the mausers minds in the 96 and 98 and the buyers paid for the best product they could get?

[milboltnut]

that's what I was thinking.... adequate for the cartridge/pressure