So How Was The Steel in These Rifles?

[Surpmil]

Canada's Ross Rifle wasn't exempt from issues with poorly tempered steel. Replacement bolts arriving from Canada in 1915 were found to have "soft bolt heads" which Lt. Col. Harkom, technical advisor to Canada's Standing Small Arms Committee was ordered to "get busy and repair them". He developed the crude Harkom Method as a field expedient in which the bolt heads were re-tempered by heating them with a blowtorch hoping to reach 1,200 F. then "pepper" them with Ferrocyanide of Potassium. With virtually no quality controls in place the re-tempering was haphazard and it was a miracle that any of the bolt heads stood up under service conditions.

I've wondered how much this was a problem of soft boltheads and how much a problem caused by the small contact area of the first model bolt stop with the tip of the rearmost interrupted thread on that side of the bolthead.

Ross seems to have suffered some QC problems once the war was well underway for the same reason other manufacturers did: a high turnover in workers who didn't stay long enough to learn their jobs well, and in some cases probably didn't pay much attention to what they were doing knowing that they wouldn't be fired and could easily get more work somewhere else. The average length of service at the three factories making the Patt.14 in the USA was something like a month IIRC. Workers were literally scampering from factory to factory according to where the best wages were offered.

So was it a case of "something must be wrong with the boltheads" because no one could tell Sir Charles that his bolt stop was too small? It was later changed to a larger contact area and apparently the bolt thread deformation problems ceased at that point.

The comment about "a miracle that any of the boltheads" hardened by the Harkom method stood up in active service is attributed to a gentleman hired by one of Ross' American steel suppliers to defend the quality of their product, which of course implies that there was some arguing back and forth over the matter.

And we all know there was plenty of funny business carried on once the war began and companies were heavily involved in war contracts: the buyer has to have it and is in no position to argue so cut the quality and raise the prices!

[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.

[Eaglelord17]

I've wondered how much this was a problem of soft boltheads and how much a problem caused by the small contact area of the first model bolt stop with the tip of the rearmost interrupted thread on that side of the bolthead.

Ross seems to have suffered some QC problems once the war was well underway for the same reason other manufacturers did: a high turnover in workers who didn't stay long enough to learn their jobs well, and in some cases probably didn't pay much attention to what they were doing knowing that they wouldn't be fired and could easily get more work somewhere else. The average length of service at the three factories making the Patt.14 in the USA was something like a month IIRC. Workers were literally scampering from factory to factory according to where the best wages were offered.

So was it a case of "something must be wrong with the boltheads" because no one could tell Sir Charles that his bolt stop was too small? It was later changed to a larger contact area and apparently the bolt thread deformation problems ceased at that point.

The comment about "a miracle that any of the boltheads" hardened by the Harkom method stood up in active service is attributed to a gentleman hired by one of Ross' American steel suppliers to defend the quality of their product, which of course implies that there was some arguing back and forth over the matter.

And we all know there was plenty of funny business carried on once the war began and the US companies were heavily involved in war contracts: the buyer has to have it and is in no position to argue so cut the quality and raise the prices!

The Ross Rifle was never a fully developed design. Arguably the 1916 version of the rifle worked out all the kinks, but by that point it was too late. The Lee Enfield also had it's own developmental kinks, the worst being the sighting issue which was discovered in the Boer War and likely resulted in more than a few British lives. The difference being they had a extra two decades to figure out the design, experimented on and carried by troops in basically every climate on the planet. The Ross didn't get that, he went though 3 major design variations in about 7 years (1903, 1905 and 1910) and even then didn't particularly care for the fine tooning which comes with such a project (such as larger bolt stops, etc.).

The other major thing the Ross had working against it was the British wanted it to fail. It was a sign of Canadian independence and it embarrassed the British regularly at Bisley. Purposely redirecting the ammo that worked in the rifles to the machine guns and issuing out of spec British ammo isn't the sign of a good ally.

[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.

[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!

[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.

[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.

[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.