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Old April 1, 2010, 08:24 PM   #51
Gunplummer
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I have been paying attention to this thread and it has been quite an education. Years back, I left them alone because of the bad reputation they had, and almost no one brought any in. With all the info that was posted, it would seem that the story is much more complicated than it appears. I do see them in a different light now, but am still leaning in cautions direction. A lot of rumor and conjecture was laid to rest for me on this thread, but there is always that chance some of those studies were correct.
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Old April 1, 2010, 09:02 PM   #52
Brandy
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National Brass and Copper Tube Company was one of the companies that made the soft head ammo that would probably fail in any cone breeched rifle.

Cone breech rifles need good cases, hence my unanswered challenge for anyone to produce a properly headspaced low number 03 that has "blown up" with modern (post WW II) ammo.

Another of my unsafe low # guns that has seen 100s of rounds of post WW II ball and still is intact.



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Old April 2, 2010, 06:06 AM   #53
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Quote:
National Brass and Copper Tube Company was one of the companies that made the soft head ammo that would probably fail in any cone breeched rifle.

It is probably the primary offender. It is significant that it was folks from this company who first "discovered" the brittle receiver problem when their M1903 rifle blew up. Somewhere in my ammo collection, scattered over three states, I have about 200 rounds of ammo made by National Brass....during 1917-18. According to my less than scientific file test; those cases are much softer than other .30 caliber cases made during WWI.

Brandy, I read your posts with interest. Rifles blew up for a variety of reasons. Cleaning patches in the bores, failure to remove the grease or cosmoline from the bore, soft cartridge cases, etc. The Army came had a .30caliber guard round. That round had a low muzzle velocity and a bullet with a rounded ogive. There is an instance where a soldier claimed that his M1903blew up when firing a guard round.

Lots of guns blew up during WWI and WWII. Machine guns blew up with regularity because of the failure to set headspace and timing. The M2 .50 caliber machine gun still blows up for the same reason.
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Old April 2, 2010, 03:59 PM   #54
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Nothing yet said indicates there were no early '03's with improper heat treatment bad enough to contribute to failures. This issue is clearly confused by having multiple variables involved in each failure. For example, did the copper tubing company make some soft brass that contributed to the problem? It sounds like they did. Does that mean it was solely responsible for the failure? It doesn't prove that, either. After all, their second gun never blew up that I see any mention of. Were the brass tubing company engineers blowing smoke about the out-of-spec case hardening and "burned" steel? Hatcher didn't think so, but admitted he wasn't a metallurgist, so that's fuzzy.

And all the above begs the question of safety upon bursting. Clearly, from hammer shattering alone, low SN '03 receivers, even when properly heat treated, are more brittle and less tough than either the later double-heat treated steel or nickel steel receivers. That may not make or break someone's decision to own and use one, but it certainly can't be called a desirable feature. Even if when a burst is caused by egregious abuse of a properly heat treated low number gun, the fragments from that burst present a greater hazard than the burst of a more malleable late receiver.

I don't want to exaggerate the danger, because it is not great. But given the logic axiom that even one exception disproves a rule, neither should it be dismissed as an entirely 100% baseless rumor. I think Dr. Lyons does a good job of putting the risk in perspective without just entirely blowing off the heat treating issue:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Lyons
Injuries Caused by Receiver Failures

Hatcher had data on the injury caused by the receiver failures for 43 of the 68 accidents. Three men lost an eye (7% of the total accidents) and 6 more (14%) had unspecified injuries considered serious or severe. The remaining 34 failures (79%) caused minor injury. The risk of serious injury from the failure of a low numbered Springfield receiver would be about 0.7 serious injuries per 100,000 rifles manufactured.


Putting Risk Into Perspective

It's hard for people to personalize risk to their own situation. The following are some risks of dying with common place activities that are of similar magnitude to serious injury from the failure of a Springfield receiver.

Risk of One Death per 100,000 population in a Single Year Caused By:

Riding a bicycle 100 miles

Smoking 14 cigarettes

Living 20 months with a smoker

Traveling 1500 miles by automobile

Traveling 10,000 miles by jet aircraft

Conclusions

The problem of Springfield receiver failures was a rare event throughout the service years of the Springfield rifle despite statements to the contrary. It was also concentrated in certain years of manufacture suggesting that an important component of the failure was human error in heat treatment. The heat treatment problems had been present long before the manufacturing pressures of 1917. The receiver failures were also compounded by a design flaw in the support of the cartridge case head in the Springfield rifle, and this problem was exacerbated by uneven manufacturing of brass cartridge cases during 1917-18.

Eleven receiver failures in 1917 prompted an investigation and a change in the heart treatment of the receivers. The decision in 1928 to replace the low numbered receivers as rifles were returned to arsenal for repair was an effort to provide soldiers with a greater degree of safety. The board of officers recommended that the low numbered receivers all be withdrawn from service, but the general responsible for reviewing this decision did not concur with the board's decision, and left most low numbered receivers in service until replaced by the M1 Garand in the early 1940's. He took a calculated risk, and the risk paid off. There were no further receiver failures after 1929.

It also suggests that ammunition manufactured during World War I likely played a major role in receiver failures.

{his complete piece is here: http://m1903.com/03rcvrfail/}
The only hard point of hard disagreement I detect is that Brandy says his spreadsheet showed no correlation between failures and early heat treatment, while Dr. Lyons found a correspondence to specific years of manufacture, indicating it was a factor. The General who refused to withdraw early numbers from service appears to have proved that if the guns had been in service for awhile without blowing up, then they were highly unlikely to do so later. That fits with both the early bad heat treatment and early bad ammunition theories.

There is an old corollary to Murphy's Law that says wherever more than one mathematician is involved in an erroneous calculation, the fault will never be placed. That certainly applies to multiple variables.
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Old April 2, 2010, 05:58 PM   #55
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best discussion

Very good. This has been the best forum discussion about low-numbers that I have read through - ever. Compliments to y'all.
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Old April 3, 2010, 01:47 PM   #56
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Dr. Lyons used Hatcher's Notebook for his analysis. That database is incomplete. Some of the pictures I posted earlier are accidents dated after Hatcher's database ends.

His analysis is invalid as it does not account every low number that ever shattered.

It would have been interesting to find given that a receiver shattered, what was the probability that it was a low number receiver. I will bet that number is closer to 99%.

Dr. Lyon is just another opinionated person justifying his use of low number receivers. He just uses statisitics.

Any one can do the same, but do it for yourself. Don't try to convince the simple or weak minded that it is safe, unless you want the responsibility that comes when someone hurts themself based on your bad advice.
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Old April 3, 2010, 03:30 PM   #57
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Maybe I confused you as to my position? I'm on the side that avoids those low numbers for shooting because of the shattering failure mode, and am not in agreement that bad heat treatment is a total fraud that should be dismissed out of hand. Lyons isn't, either. But I do concede the vast majority of those early rifles survived actual service. The matter of risk is open to revision with more complete data, and I expect Lyons's mention that all the blown guns came from specific early years of manufacture supports your contention that an analysis of probability of bursting by year would put practically all such instances in the low serial number range.

Lyons used Hatcher, but not exclusively or blindly. He had four sources in his biography and he points to some of Hatcher's errors in his notes:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lyons
I've used the detailed information that Hatcher provides in his notebook, and supplemented this with information from Campell and Brophy, and Ferris’ book on the Rock Island Arsenal Model 1903's (The Rock Island ‘03. Published by C.S. Ferris, 1992). There are some minor problems in Hatcher’s book. For example see the table on pages 446-47. He lists receiver by date of failure, and the list is consistent until 1923 when he lists three failures, then four in 1924, then four in 1923, then three more in 1924. I checked his dates against the detailed report of the failures (see pages 448-482) and concluded his dates were correct, but his sequence was wrong. I have grouped them by the reported year of failure in the table.

Hatcher reports 24 Rock Island Arsenal receiver failures but only provides serial numbers for 22 (see page 443). One Rock Island receiver, number 445,136 is said to have failed in 1918, but Rock Island did not reach this serial number until 1919, after double heat treating was instituted. There was obviously an error in reporting the serial number, or the date of failure.

There are also two Springfield receivers (numbers 946,508 and 951,718) included in the low numbered receiver table, and counted among the 68 said to have failed. These I used to estimate the rate of failure for high numbered receivers.

Brophy has an error in his table of serial numbers on page 445. His table gives the beginning serial number for Springfield Armory for 1913 as 531,521, but the beginning number for 1914 as 510,561. I chose to use the serial numbers provided by Campbell for 1913 to 1917.

I also included the early 1918 receivers manufactured at Springfield Armory in the 1917 tally. Since Rock Island Arsenal had not been manufacturing rifles since 1914, I place their 1917-1918 rifles in a separate category.

I made no effort for allocate the 11 receivers to either manufacturer, or calculate an overall rate. If the failures were all from one arsenal or the other, then it would change their relative positions. If the failures were distributed similarly to the current allocation, then rates of each manufacturer would rise, but their relative position would stay the same.
Lyons isn't perfect. For example he points to Hatcher's error regarding failure of RIA SN 445,136 as being post double-heat treat, but should have said it was post Nickel Steel adoption (assuming Hatcher correctly reported that nickel steel at RIA began with SN 319,921). But flaws don't always totally invalidate a result. If you consider some later failures in the civilian sporters or in rifles sent to foreign military services that the Army never heard back about, you would likely have to raise Lyons's 0.7/100K number some; perhaps even double it over enough time. But I don't think its realistic to expect it to be off by an order of magnitude. A thousand blown sporters or foreign military service rifles would have got somebody's attention and some publicity.

As I suggested, shooting a low number Springfield includes an element of playing Russian Roulette, but doing it with one cartridge in a giant revolver that has a cylinder capacity on the order of maybe 70,000-140,000 rounds. I realize that's based on surmise, but if you inflate Lyons's number too much it becomes increasingly improbable that the problem went unremarked, unnoticed and unreported.
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Old April 3, 2010, 07:50 PM   #58
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think

Slamfire: You pretty obviously have strong feelings about this issue. Those feelings certainly clouded your last post.
Normally, you make a clear argument - the shattered receivers were impressive.
But....
Quote:
His analysis is invalid as it does not account every low number that ever shattered.

It would have been interesting to find given that a receiver shattered, what was the probability that it was a low number receiver. I will bet that number is closer to 99%.

Dr. Lyon is just another opinionated person justifying his use of low number receivers. He just uses statisitics.

Any one can do the same, but do it for yourself. Don't try to convince the simple or weak minded that it is safe, unless you want the responsibility that comes when someone hurts themself based on your bad advice.
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His analysis is incomplete. Is that the same as invalid?
The "bet" about the 99% probablility - you are, in essence, making up a statistic.
The opinionated person, etc. - argumentum ad hominem - just because he is opinionated does mean that he is wrong. Just because he uses statistics does not mean he is wrong.
It is also improper to suggest that there is a vast group of people (just another opinionated person, after all) who try to justify untenable positions. (Y'know...we all fit into that "opinionated person" suit - you surely do and you just made up a statistic to go with it. Easy to do, ain't it?)
The extension that a person is "simple and weak minded" if they are accepting of the use of Lo#Spflds is unwarranted, as is the suggestion that the only persons who could be approached would be "simple or weak minded". The last assumption - that someone will hurt themself is also unwarranted.
A number of these things are common enough problems in emotional arguments, common enough that they have names but i was too lazy to look them up.
What we need here is clear thinking.
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Old April 3, 2010, 10:45 PM   #59
Brandy
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Actually my challenge was....

That I would pay $1000.00 to anyone who could produce a correctly headspaced low number 03' that "blew up" with modern ammo.

I ran that for about 15 years when I was a really serious 03 collector (Pre WW One only) and never got a taker. Just another gunwriter myth that gets repeated w/o ever being tested.
"Microgrooves won't shoot cast bullets."
"Semi-auto rifles jam"
"Revolvers are more reliable than Semi-autos"
"You need a 600 yard rifle to hunt Antelope"
and so on.
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Old April 4, 2010, 02:09 PM   #60
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I think your money is safe, but not necessarily because no fatally flawed heat treating was ever done. That may well be impossible to settle, as the number that have not already been shot enough to prove they don't suffer a fatal heat treating flaw is likely small. And, by definition, they are not being shot. If I owned an unused low number gun, unless it could be inspected non-destructively by x-ray or sonics, I would be sure to keep it intact and secure its collector value by not letting anyone shoot it.

For modern purchasers, I think the issue is the failure mode for low number guns with bad headspace or that get defective brass or that suffer an overload or other abuse. That failure seems likely to pose more hazard than a similar failure in a late number gun due to greater fragmentation. I realize that's speculative on my part, but I doubt anyone will volunteer the resources needed to prove it one way or the other? It's just that it would stop me from buying or recommending a low number Springfield to use in Vintage Military Rifle matches or for sporterizing. But that's a personal decision.
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Old April 4, 2010, 08:31 PM   #61
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Then there were all the great chambers developed that were deemed a marginal success over the parent cartridge, for some 40+ years would pass before suitable powders were developed that allowed the chambers to catch up with their potential, with longer barrels and new powders some are still getting better. The same powders help LNs today. The difference between slow burning and fast burning powder is sudden shock.

Not the same but 308 W rounds have been fired, by the best, in the 30/06, the shoulder is erased and is never formed, the 30/06 shoulder is forward of the 308 W .388, again until the case fills the chambrer pressure can not be an issue.

As to head space and blowing up, Hatcher moved the shoulder forward on a 30/06 .125 thousands, he fired standard ammo in the modified 30/06 +.125 chamber thinking the rifle would blow up, instead he formed cases for the HATCHER MODIFIED 30/06 +.125 chamber, it is still being done today by mistake when an 8mm57 is fired in an 8mm06 chamber, instead of blowing the rifle, when the 8mm57 cases are extracted they come out as 8mm06 cases with very short necks, the difference between the Hatcher modified chamber and the 30/06 is the same as the difference between the 8/06 and 8mm57 within .003 thousands, Hatcher did not consider moving the shoulder forward .125 lowered the pressure (big time) when he fired 30/06 cases, so before the pressure gets serious the case must fill the chamber first. Head space is something we talk about, a lot, but do not understand. If Hatcher had full length sized his cases between firings and using the same cases over and over etc. with total disregard to head space yes, failure is built into that technique, for the most part all is forgiven for firing a new case in a rifle with head space, again I have an Eddystone with .016 thousands head, but I will spare you the details.

I have close to 100 FA 58 National Match cases, I have been told and have read there was a problem created when Frankfort arsenal took a short cut, they eliminated, 1 process as a result the case heads were too soft and were sold to a scrap yard, before I knew about the possibility of a problem, I loaded and fired them, now the cases are retired with the BN cases.
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