doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com High vs. Low

Brent: My family owns four(4)low number 1903's; a typical Sedgley Sporter in 30/06 and a Sedgley cut/shortened action Mannlicher in 300 Savage [not marked but with written provenance to an employee's lunchbox gun, as it is identical to a standard Sedgley .22 Hornet Mannlicher except in caliber]. The other two are an Alvin Linden/Buck Dunton saddle rifle and a 1903 Classic Sporter by Fred Adolph. To answer your question, this is our take on the Low Number situation. The two Sedgleys, we would fire with no hesitation, having never heard of a reheat treated Sedgley letting go. The other two we would fire at a special hunt, such as a Primitive Bolt Hunt [no scope/iron sights] but -would not- fire hundreds of rounds through them. Having grown up in a gun family I am lucky [and I know it!] that we don't justify owning a rifle by shooting it, we can shoot plenty of others and still never use/hunt them all. We have been very blessed in this way. However I understand other people are not in this lucky situation and or actually want to shoot their rifle. I will leave it at this; being as honest as I can, we don't shoot ours regularly but I have stood at the range alongside people spotting who do, with no fear. I think your story is a service to all of us, who own low number 1903's or are thinking of buying one.

GOD Bless

H

When you buy one of these classic oldies, it seems that most of the art, the part that makes is so, so much different from a bubba sporter, is in the wood and barrel profiles. And relatively little of it is in the action, though a tang here or there might be shaped a bit. So maybe, in hind sight, I coulda/shoulda swapped out that receiver, if reheat treating wasn't possible. Though many a collector might cringe at that, I really wonder, why not? The parts that I value are almost assuredly everything except the receiver actually. Wouldn't a quick swap, much like replacing a broken firing pin, be worth it, simply to keep the gun in the game?

Just thinkin' out loud today...

I am really confused, I looked at Accurate Powders 2016 reloading guide and for most powders, cartridges and bullets, they usually
give a starting load and a maximum load and a maximum chamber pressure. But for Accurate 5744 and the 30-06 cartridge they
do something different, they just say for the 30-06 and Accurate 5744

REDUCED LOADS - NO OTHER LOAD RECOMMENDED
ACCURATE 5744
160 (L) LYMAN #311672 27.0 2,085 3.035
173 (L) LYMAN #311041 25.0 1,920 3.015
200 (L) LYMAN #311299 22.0 1,625 3.250

where from left to right you have the grain weight, (L) stands for lead, LYMAN #311xxx is the mold number and the next number is the powder charge in grains followed by the velocity in fps and the cartridge overall length.

Here is a link to their reloading manual

2016 reloading manual

I don't do any reloading so I don't really what to make of this.

First, let me congratulate you in coming through an experience which I have shared as unscathed as you did. In my case, I know what the problem was and was able to avoid it happening again for years in the future.

The year was 1960 and I was preparing myself for my first encounter with the Marine Corps, in the form of their Platoon Leaders Class, at Quantico, Virginia. I was due to graduate from college in a few days, and twelve weeks at Quantico was to result in my commission as a Second Lieutenant, prior to my starting law school in the fall. Although I had been firing center fire rifles for years, I had never fired a .30-'06, so this session with a M1917 Enfield was supposed to introduce me gradually to the increased recoil of the M1 service rifle then in use.

With economy in mind, my first loads were with cast bullets propelled by a reduced load of IMR 3031, the all purpose powder for my varmint rifles. I selected 30 grains as appropriate both for the 150 grain cast bullets, as well as some 200 grain bullets I also had available.

I set about loading the cases with my Belding & Mull loading tool, which for those not familiar with it, is a neck sizing only operation, with depriming and sizing as separate operations. Since I was going to use a Belding & Mull powder measure as well, I had a loading block to hold the sized and primed cases for that purpose.

For those not familiar with the Belding & Mull measure, it is a device which is capable of extreme accuracy, often used by bench rest competitors. However, rather than emptying the measured powder directly in the case, it makes use of a charge tube to hold the measured powder, which is then poured into the prepared case using a powder funnel.

As luck would have it, right in the middle of this exacting operation the phone rang and I answered it. Somehow in the process, I lost track of which cases were empy and which already charged. As a result, the cases in one row of five received no charge at all and another five received double charges.

60 grains of IMR 3031 is a slightly above maximum load for a 150 grain bullet, but it is dynamite for a 200 grain one. I don't recall how many shots I had fired before I loaded the fatal 200 grain bullet into the chamber, but it had been enough to zero the rifle and accustom me to the recoil.

The head of the case simply evaporated, and bits of brass were driven down the bolt raceway on the left side of the action directly into my face. When I recovered and reached up to feel my face, my forehead was covered with blood, and I thought I had but a few moments left on earth. Fortunately, that proved not to be the case, and I survived a sadder but wiser young man. I did graduate from college, I was commissioned in the Marine Corps and spent three instructive years on active duty, right at the time when the war in Vietnam, from which I emerged unscathed, was heating up.

I have understandably been leery of low numbered Springfields. Consequently, I have approached them with extreme caution. My understanding is that the only ones who are extremely dangerous even when fired with the correct ammunition, are ones which were improperly heat treated, and allowed to reach a much higher temperature than normal in the heat treating process, resulting in chrystallization of the steel and turning them into booby traps.

General Hatcher writes in "Hatcher's Notebook" (pp 214-5) that at first during the forging process the receivers were sometimes being overheated. Without relying on measuring equipment of any kind, the workmen were judging the temperature of the metal in the furnace by its color when heated. After an investigation of the cause of brittle receivers, pyrometers were installed in the furnaces, and it was established that temperatures judged correct "by eye" could be as much as 300 degrees hotter on a bright sunny day as on a cloudy overcast day. This was identified as the cause of the "burned" receivers with chrystallized steel.

Soon after the pyrometers were installed, the method of heat treatment was changed from single heat treatment to double heat treatment and double heat treated rifles and the nickel steel rifles which followed them were referred to as "high number" Springfields, starting at serial number 800,000.

There is an easy way of determining whether a low number Springfield is one of the dangerous ones. The act of drilling and tapping the receiver for a receiver sight or a scope mount will reveal whether the metal is hard on the surface and soft underneath, as it should be. Should the metal prove to be glass hard all the way through, then it is probably unsafe to fire.

General Hatcher's investigation of accidents with the Springfield at the National Matches revealed that one of the most frequent reasons for blow ups turned out to be the use of grease on the jacketed bullets to prevent metal fouling in the bore. The grease inevitably found its was to the neck of the chamber and built up to a degree that finally a case neck was unable to expand sufficiently to release the bullet, causing pressure to soar. Excessive lubrication of cast bullets could cause the same result, as could use of a slightly oversize bullet in a chamber with a tight neck.

Rifles do strange things. I was firing once at a match at Fort Benning, Georgia when I shooter down the line from me suddenly got up with his rifle and hurried to the armorer's van. The rifle he was firing, a pre-64 Model 70 Winchester, was missing the top half of the receiver ring and the corresponding top half of the barrel above the chamber. The shooter had fired a shot, had it scored, and was attempting to reload when he first noticed that the accident had happened. Obviously no barrel obstruction had been involved, since the bullet reached the target 600 yards away. The only plausible explanation seemed to be that there had been a fault in the barrel metal which suddenly gave way and caused the barrel around the chamber to split, taking the top of the receiver ring with it.

If there was enough left of the receiver in the case at hand, it might resolve the mystery by determining whether of not the receiver steel had chrystallized. If that is not the case, then looking elsewhere to a possible double charge or excessive lubricant which had migrated to the case neck. Barring those possible explanations, then the blow up must remain a mystery.

Reading this thread has prompted me to re-read stuff I first read years ago on low number Springfields. There has been a lot of conjecture and misinformation written about this subject, and many even feel that Maj. Hatcher's report on these guns was incorrect and placed the blame in the wrong places. What is known is that failures are pretty rare. However, when they do fail, the results are fragments of shrapnel rather than bulging metal and venting of gasses.

Apparently, the U.S. Military made the attempt to re-heat treat a good number of these single heat treated receivers. The results were OK with the ones that weren't burnt in the first place, but it did nothing much to help the ones that were bad. Burnt is burnt, and you apparently cannot unburn steel that has been overheated and turned austenitic. Actually, it seems more likely that the damage was done, at the much higher temperature during the forging process than later during heat treating.

Several people have commented about being happy that Brent wasn't hurt. Well, he wasn't killed or seriously injured. But having experienced a complete head separation, I can tell you there is some pain when this happens. Seeing his picture brought back some memories. But in my case, the powder and brass particles were more concentrated in a peculiar V shaped pattern around and between my eyes. I later learned that was an intentional deflection of gasses designed by Paul Mauser when he came up with a different bolt shroud and improved gas handling characteristics in the 1898 action.

I have been hit in the face with boxing gloves many times, and hit in the face with brass particles and hot powder gasses at high pressures only once. I'll take the fist inside a boxing glove any day. I'm sure Brent will shoot again, but it will be hard not to blink the next time he squeezes a trigger. Take Brent's advice. Wear those shooting glasses. If he hadn't been wearing his, we might never know about this and his next dog could have been the seeing-eye type.

Brent, I am glad to learn that your eyes & fingers survived.

I have thought a lot about low-number 03s and Krags and why the 03s fail and Krags do not. My idea is that the Krags were case-hardened by men who were very skilled and were not under any war-induced pressure to hurry the job. The low-number 03s that fail are the 1917-1918 production actions, where production was everything and some less-skilled workers were given tasks that really needed better workers. Your RIA action was probably produced under those conditions. Do we ever read of 03 actions made in 1910 or 1912 blowing up?

Michael's 44 grains of 4895 is about 10 % lower than the ordinary GI M-2 150 grain load. That was 48 to 52 grains, depending on powder lot, etc.

Could there have been a problem with gas checks? Normally, they adhere to the base of the bullet, but not 100 % of the time. For a time, gas checks were hard to come by and there were/are some made from beer cans, etc. If a gas check had come off a bullet after being seated, or when being chambered, and was sitting loose on top of the powder charge, I would expect the confined powder to burn differently.

Once again, glad there was no permanent damage,

Richard

Waterman: Not wishing to be picky, but while you are right a higher incidence of failures fall in the 1917-1918 period, failures occur spread throughout the 1904-1918 period.

HTH

H

As for date of manufacture, the barbrel was stamped 10-12, so October 1912?

The Rock Island serial number was 200,000 something as I recall.

I doubt a gas check came off since they are seated in the neck and not hanging in space down below. Even so, it would be so light lying on only a moderate percentage of the powder, I can't see it having much effect that way.

Fred, I don't know what to make of that reloading stuff you found. I took my numbers from the Lyman Cast Bullet Book, 4th Ed. Most manufacture's manuals seem to be very lacking in cast bullet data, esp for modern cartridges.

Interestingly, the same reference for the .30-40 Krag with this bullet starts at 19.0 gr and has a max of 26.5 gr. The .30-06 started at 28 and goes to 38.5 (this for the 210 gr 311284 bullet that I was using).

Then going down slightly in weight to the 311299 (200 gr), the Max for 5744 is only 29.5 in the .30-06. Seems odd that a lighter bullet would have MUCH lower max than a heavier bullet in the same cartridge and for only a 10 gr difference in weight that seems like a lot of difference in the Max charge. The pressure of this 29.5 gr max load is 33,200 psi, just slightly higher than the pressure of the starting load for the heavier bullet. Peculiar.

For those interested, here is a link to a discussion on this over on Jouster M1903 page.

http://www.jouster.com/forums/showthread.php?58765-Low-Number-03-catastrophic-failure-recent

For those interested in 1903s blowing up, here is another.

I'm posting this simply because of the similarity to my experience - same powder, slightly smaller charge. Same result.

http://www.shilohrifle.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=284436#p284436