So How Was The Steel in These Rifles?

[CINDERS]

Thank you Bruce really appreciate your information, as you say metallurgy was in its infancy I mean Lithgow only started in 8th June 1912 besides we were on the other side of the world from the mother country.

I've never seen or come across any info or pics of actions of lee enfields that have had catastrophic failures from poor metal the USA's 1903 had the heat treatment saga's which has been well discussed here to which I found to be fascinating with regards to what it entailed and how they found & fixed the situation.

[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.

[CINDERS]

The Lee line surpmil from stories I've read from actions in WWI in France and WWII in Africa the Lee enfield was fairly reliable in atrocious conditions and could function with a fair bit of crud in the action be it mud or sand.
One story circulated was the WWI boys if there was to much mud in the action they would have the rifle butt down and urinate on/into the action to flush some of the mud away and hopefully carry on bit like what happened at La Drang with the mortar tubes to cool them !

The Germans in WWI when they first encountered the Old Contemptibles were astounded at the volume of fire and its accuracy thinking they had encountered a MG battalion but not so as each soldier had been proficiently trained in musketry, sadly by the end of 1915 there were very few of the originals left.

[togor]

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.

The M1903 because of the aperture sight and the windage adjustment, as compared to the open notched sight of the Gewehr 98.

In benign conditions at the range, one can dial in the M1903 sights perfectly. My two pre-war models original to the first rebuild era have no wobble.