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Old March 5, 2010, 01:04 PM   #1
sp45
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Early 03 receiver question

I just came across an early rock island receiver for an 03 springfield. The serial number is below 1600 and must be first year production. I was wondering what the market value is for the receiver alone.
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Old March 5, 2010, 11:20 PM   #2
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The Early Rock Island Recievers are not worth very much, as it is recomended not to shoot them, as the heat treating was not properly done and they have the potential to blow up in your face.
Therefore no one would want one to make a Custom Sporter rifle out of them for that reason. Sorry.
Most of those guns are recomended for display purposes only.
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Old March 6, 2010, 06:57 PM   #3
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The only way to truly know is to put the receiver on an auction site.

TX Hunter's analysis is correct though, low number receivers have a poor reputation. Some were burnt in the forging process and many shattered in use, or just from hitting the floor. There is no non destructive test to sort the good from the bad, so as a group, all the 1,000,000 low number receivers have a bad reputation.

Of course not all 1,000,000 are brittle. But even so, these single heat treat receivers were made from plain carbon steel that today is used for rebar. Even if they were properly made there is no margin of strength in an accident and when they blow, they fragment. Such as the receiver blown up with a double charge of H4227 and I assume, lead bullets.

Cracked Low number CMP receiver, picture from Old Jouster.


Low number receiver shattered with double charge of H4227





Your receiver would have tremendous value if it were only attached to all the original rod bayonet parts. But those parts are missing. I can only imagine that the cost of building an all correct rod bayonet rifle is hideously expensive. I suspect a correct rod bayonet stock is much more valuable than your receiver.
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Old March 8, 2010, 12:13 PM   #4
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I didn't know if there are people with the correct parts looking for a receiver to put one back together.
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Old March 8, 2010, 04:06 PM   #5
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It might be worthwhile to check out Culvers Shooting Page forums at http://www.jouster.com/forums/. They have a very active M1903 community.
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Old March 8, 2010, 04:43 PM   #6
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This may be of interest!

http://m1903.com/03rcvrfail/
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Old March 8, 2010, 10:13 PM   #7
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low numbers

"many shattered in use"

The original study as summarized by Julian Hatcher in his "Notebook" indicated that by the time of recall (about 1929-1930, after a war and more than 25 years of production) there had been 70 documented failures out of more than a million guns. Since that time....I don't know.
The problem, though, about the receivers failing is the nature of the failure not just that it did. That photo of the double charge of 4227 is a good example. Very probably a double heat treated "acceptable" high number made after 1919 receiver would have failed from such a load. But the low numbered receivers shatter, the stronger receivers don't; they may warp and stretch and crack but they generally don't become shrapnel.
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Old March 8, 2010, 10:33 PM   #8
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Quote:
The serial number is below 1600...
Holy #$%@! That's low.

I guess not THAT low, but cool anyway (to me, lol).


Is there any kind of test a lab could do to examine the martensite/austenite structure of the metal and determine the safety that way?
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Old March 9, 2010, 09:39 AM   #9
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Here are some more LN shattered receivers, I believe these are after the reporting period in Hatcher's Notebook. Except for the 8mm Mauser blowup, he used that picture.











You can find more at the Springfield Armory Musuem site. It just takes forever to find and download them.

The analysis at "Some Observations On The Failure Of U.S. Model 1903 Rifle Receivers" is flawed. It is only based on the information presented in Hatcher's Notebook. Hatcher's database is incomplete.

These LN receiver can be so brittle that they will shatter with a sharp hammer blow. I hit my limit of eight pictures on this forum, so I cannot post the other two. This series of pictures was taken from the old CMP web page. The original thread is gone forever. But this LN receiver shattered when the owner hit it sharply with a hammer. Since the thread is gone, you can wonder how sharply, but as you can see , the receiver is in pieces, not flattened pieces either.


Last edited by Slamfire; March 9, 2010 at 09:46 AM.
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Old March 9, 2010, 10:18 AM   #10
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I feel very confident in saying that most low serial numbered M1903 receivers are safe to shoot. But I also feel just as confident in saying that there is no way to tell if a given low serial numbered M1903 receiver is a brittle receiver.

So, it's like playing roulette. If you bet on one number, you're likely to lose. But you still have a chance for the ball to drop on your number. Personally, I would not take the chance and I don't think that I'm being overly conservative - here's why:

Statistically speaking, any M1903 has a chance to fail in some way. The chance of a catastrophic failure, as a subset of any failure is pretty low, I suspect. Based on that supposition, I have no qualms about taking my M1903 out to the range for a day of blasting at targets (it happens to be a high serialed Springfield). I also know that it's an old rifle - the receiver was made in 1918 - so there is some increased potential for a failure to occur simply because of age and use. But, again, I believe that the potential for a catastrophic failure is vanishingly small.

My receiver is a known quantity: it's a high numbered model that has a well-established track record of not blowing up due to brittleness because it was manufactured using a quantifiable process. Now, if I put a low numbered receiver into my gun, I've increased the chances of a catastrophic failure because I know that it was not heat treated using a reliable, quantifiable process. By how much? I don't know - a specific shot from an individual receiver will either fail or it won't. But, like I said earlier, chances are that it won't. The problem is that the chance that a low numbered receiver won't fail isn't the same chance that a high numbered receiver won't fail. And with my face just inches from that receiver, I wouldn't feel confident in that chance.
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Old March 15, 2010, 02:25 AM   #11
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Receiver Material

I keep seeing reference to case hardened "rebar like material" in '03 Springfields.I am not picking on anybody, but where did this idea come from? I never worked on an '03, the reputation being so bad I refused to. The description of failure sounds like improper heat treating of chrome moly or nickel steel. Mausers, Russians, Carcanos are all cased with junk under them and you don't hear to many stories about receiver failure with them. I recently had a lively discussion about color casing 99 savage receivers. That would react like the description of failure you are talking about, through and through over hardness. Fortunately, most 99s are low pressure rounds and I never heard about any thing bad happening because of it. Like I said, I don't work on '03s, but I used to heat treat a lot of gun parts and I am curious.
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Old March 15, 2010, 02:37 AM   #12
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http://m1903.com/03rcvrfail/
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Old March 15, 2010, 06:21 AM   #13
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third pic

Slamfire: I am sorry that I missed that original set of posts - the "gone forever" set. Question: the third picture in your post......it appears that the barrel split as opposed to the receiver. Is that correct? Is there damage to the receiver as well?
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Old March 15, 2010, 08:50 AM   #14
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Quote:
it appears that the barrel split as opposed to the receiver. Is that correct? Is there damage to the receiver as well?
The receiver was not damaged. I found other pictures where the barrel blew on double heat treat receivers.

The metal used in those barrels and receivers was similiar plain low carbon steels. Based on the number of blown barrel pictures at the Springfield Armory site, barrels failure was common.

The receivers are not the only thing made from low grade materials made by primitive process controls.

Last edited by Slamfire; March 15, 2010 at 09:01 AM.
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Old March 15, 2010, 08:58 AM   #15
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Quote:
I keep seeing reference to case hardened "rebar like material" in '03 Springfields.I am not picking on anybody, but where did this idea come from
Receivers and bolts of SA, serial number 1 to 800,000 were made of Material, Class C Steel. The double heat treat receivers, Receivers and bolts of SA, serial number 800,000 to 1,275,767, were also Class C steel.

Look up the composition of Class C steel, find a close equivalent today.
When I looked at data on Matweb, the low carbon steel used in these early receivers is today not used for complicated parts, non heat treated it is used for rebar.

I use the rebar analogy as a pejorative.
Quote:
Mausers, Russians, Carcanos are all cased with junk under them and you don't hear to many stories about receiver failure with them
Hatcher has a section on low number Springfields in his book "Hatcher's Notebook". Without that record of receiver failures we would be oblivious to the systemic issues associated with low number Springfields.

I never knew there was a problem with firestone tires and Ford Explorers until I saw a database of crashes and deaths. Remember this?: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firesto...re_controversy

I am unaware of any single entity collecting Mauser, Nagant, Carcano failures. Does that mean they do not happen?

I will bet there are. It is just that they are not being reported here.

I have this picture. Don't know the story.

Last edited by Slamfire; March 15, 2010 at 09:16 AM.
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Old March 15, 2010, 12:11 PM   #16
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Heat treat process

I still do not have a clue as to how the '03s were heat treated. All the report said was "go ahead and chance it". I just see the term heat treated tossed around, but nobody seems to know what process was used. Some of the photo's show material that looks crystallized. I never heard of "class C" steel and suspect it is some vague term used by the industry such as "plow steel". I still don't think the '03s were case hardened, according to the brittle descriptions I see here. Anything that can be cracked with a hammer must have had a lot of carbon in it before heat treating.
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Old March 15, 2010, 05:01 PM   #17
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Hatcher has a pretty good description of both the steel and the process used, and what went wrong.

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Old March 15, 2010, 06:02 PM   #18
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It is significant that the USMC issued low numbered Springfield rifles during WWII. There is no known case where one of those rifles blew up using military ammo.

It is a known fact that some Springfield rifles were not properly heat treated. It is also a known fact that some .30 caliber ammo issued during WWII was defective. This defective ammo was made by a little known outfit called National Copper and Brass. The cases are very soft and they sometimes failed.
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Old March 15, 2010, 06:02 PM   #19
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You'd wonder why they added the third lug on the 98 bolt
Part of engineering it right is making a disaster survivable.
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Old March 15, 2010, 08:33 PM   #20
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Quote:
It is significant that the USMC issued low numbered Springfield rifles during WWII. There is no known case where one of those rifles blew up using military ammo.
It that because single heat treat receivers just stopping failing, or is it because the only data base we have is Hatcher's, which ends in 1929?
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Old March 16, 2010, 04:18 AM   #21
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FYI to all: 800,000 was an arbitrary number selected as the cutoff for "low number/high number" Springfield receivers. The actual number is unknown. 800,000 was selected because the change was "around" that number. There is at least one significant recent (ca. 1972) case reported of a Springfield reciver letting go in the 811,000 range that revealed itself, upon advanced lab testing results, to be a single heat treated receiver.
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Old March 16, 2010, 10:14 AM   #22
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Quote:
FYI to all: 800,000 was an arbitrary number selected as the cutoff for "low number/high number" Springfield receivers. The actual number is unknown. 800,000 was selected because the change was "around" that number. There is at least one significant recent (ca. 1972) case reported of a Springfield reciver letting go in the 811,000 range that revealed itself, upon advanced lab testing results, to be a single heat treated receiver.
Double heat treat receivers were made from the same crappy low carbon plain steels. Process controls were tightened up, the heat treatment time doubled, but a double heat treat does not make plain carbon steel unbreakable.

Plain carbon steels are erratic in their reaction to heat treatment. Identical billets will harden all the way through, some will surface harden.

Someone on Culver's is keeping a database of known blown Double heat treat receivers, I think he was up to 29.

Today, no one in their right mind would ever make receivers from plain low carbon steels. You would use an alloy steel for such a safety critical and complicated part. Springfield Armory kept on using Class C steel, and I believe it was because they were ultra conservative and resistant to change in WWI. It took the Rock Island closure, SA using RIA nickel steel stocks and heat treating RIA receivers for 10 years, and the death of the SA chief metallurgist (I guess) for SA to abandon carbon steel receivers in the late 20's.

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Old March 16, 2010, 02:26 PM   #23
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Thanks all. I also have Hatchers Notebook and have researched the history of failures. I beleive that they early guns are safe with military spec. ammo. I have also seen an early serial number that the receiver came apart and the shooter lost his eye. He was shooting cast bullets with fast burning reduced loads. The person who was with the shooter beleives that he double charged the case. In any case I have no intention of shooting llthis gun I am taking it apart for parts. The barrel is 1929 dated. With the number of collectors looking for early correct parts I just thought a first year receiver might be worth something. Also thanks for the leads to the other sites.
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Old March 16, 2010, 05:38 PM   #24
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Lots of guns blew up during WWI. This included 75mm and 155mm guns. US made artillery shells were well known for detonating in the gun tube. Because of ammunition quality control issues; the US Army started the first career civil service professional school: Quality Assurance Specialist Ammunition Surveillance.

The US Army bought some very sorry .30 caliber ammunition during WWI. Some of this ammo was responsible for the destruction of 1903 Springfield rifles and 1917 Enfield rifles. Somewhere in my small arms collection are several rounds made by National Copper and Brass: This stuff is defective due to soft cartridge cases. This company had not made ammo prior to WWI.

This is a pretty good paper on Springfield rifle failures:

http://m1903.com/03rcvrfail/
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Old March 17, 2010, 01:43 PM   #25
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Plain low carbon steels?

I still don't see anything here to say how the guns were heat treated, and I'm not going to spend the money to buy a Hatcher's book. Apparently it didn't have anything technical in it or someone could tell me the chemical analysis of the steel used and a quick rundown of the process to heat treat. I have never dealt with a WW1 or WW2 Mauser that did not have a low carbon steel receiver.Period. I would venture to say, due to hardness depth, reaction to welding, reheating sections of them, that they are not above 1018 or 1020. I would say there is a hell of a lot more 30.06 Mausers in the deer woods than there is 30.06 Springfields. I am not the only guy to ask, go talk to the older Smiths in your area, they dealt with a lot more of this stuff 30-40 years ago. Put it on the wall where it belongs.
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