Yesterday's Weapons Forums

I've noted that on some forums there are collectors who appear to greatly over estimate the safety margins of the various bolt actions and seem to not truly understand that published chamber pressures of various loads don't always translate into the actual pressure levels these cartridges can produce other than in well controled conditions when the ammunition is freshly manufactured and stored under optimal conditions.
Also some, in fact most, don't recognze that the methods used by military armorers to judge bore condition were dependent on a full understanding of the construction of the bullets and qualities of the types of propellants used by the milspec ammunition intended for use while these rifles were in service.
More intensive inspection of bores using modern bore scopes can reveal problems that inspections from either end can't identify.

Construction and qualities of military brass casings were also a factor, few commercial casings being as thick as the military casings which were designed to compensate for relatively loose chambers and headspace compared to quality sporting rifles of the same general types.

Also apparently some long range match shooters have taken to using barrels with undersized bores and tight chamber necks, which can pose problems of increased pressures at the best of times, and these problems can be greatly exacerbated by factors such as the average military case having a thick neck wall, or as is often the situation, individual cases having necks thicker than the average or of unequal thickness.
When a slightly oversized bullet is used to improve accuracy in the often oversized bore of some rifles, the bullet may be a proper fit to the bore but an oversized bullet loaded into a case which has a thicker than normal neck wall can produce a fit to the chamber neck that constricts the neck at the initial bumping up stage before the bullet has fully left the neck.
To make matters whose old set up fouling from military propellants which are usually an agregate of Carbon, graphite ,ground glass from primer compounds, copper, and atomised lead from open base FMJ bullets can appear to the eye as slick polished steel, though its actually a fairly thick layer of hardened crud which few standard bore cleaners can touch.

A bore can look fine to the naked eye but actually be eroded more at the bottom of the grooves than worn at the tops of the lands, allowing blowby which superheats bullet jackets to cause core separation and blow through.
Military loads were kept well below the ultimate strength of the action for good reasons.

Other factors to be considered are maximum deviation of acceptable lots of ammo. These can be 10% higher with standard US M80 ball, but the max deviation of Long Range Special Ball with a standard operating pressure nearly equal to the Max deviation of M80 Ball, can add another aprox 10% to the figure. A surplused out lot of LRSB even if properly stored can contain an unknowable percentage of rounds that generate pressures 18-20% higher than the standardized NATO Ball which converted WW2 era bolt actions were intended to use.
Add to this the fact that once such ammo is out of military custody theres no way of knowning under what conditions it has been stored or shipped.

Whenever the subject of jackets becoming stuck in the bore comes up someone will point to tests on the effect of firing with a stuck blown through jacket run by the US and British military, tests which seldom indicated much danger other than a bulged barrel. They don't take into account that those tests were run on recently manufactured rifles firing ammo well within the design pressure limits and with chambers that had not been damaged by years of firing dirty ammo and decades of poor or hurried cleaning practices under the worst conditions in the field.
"Cord Wear" from the pull through for example, Cord Worn bores damage accuracy, but Cord Worn chambers result in the cartridge case not being properly supported during firing, multiplying the effect of already loose chambers and headspace. Any significant uptick in pressures on a poorly supported case wall can and often will result in a split or blown out case directing high pressure gas at cutting torch temperatures into the receiver or bolthead.

Lastly, there are besides the often increased pressures of specialised military loads, such as long range ball and some AP ammo, not all now surplus ammo was all that well made to begin with. Ammo is declared surplus for several reasons, failure of a lot to meet max deviation may be one such reason. Often ammo is sold to dealers with the express purpose of being broken down as scrap, but instead unscrupulous dealers repackage it and put it back in circulation. This has happened numerous times since the 80's, with some counterfeit ammo being assembled by black market dealers using casings bought up in bulk as scrap and propellants often unsuitable for rifle cartridges to begin with.

Surplus ammo might sit for months in some sunbaked cargo container at the docks of a third world pesthole, on the civilian market because the dealer couldn't even expect to sell it to the rebels and terrorists who've been ripped off with bad ammo so often before this.

So since we often spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on buying and restoring fine and difficult to replace collectors items, it only makes sense that we should avoid the false economy of using old ammo just because it costs less per round.

I've decided that for my own uses surplus ammo is best broken down for its components. Bullets aren't going to degrade much if any other than discoloration, and are easily inspected for flaws. Boxer primed cases are also resusable if of decent quality. Primers degrade, and degraded primers cause hangfires. Hangfires are seldom dangerous, though seroius injuries have resulted from opening the action just as the supposed dud let loose, but hesitation of ignition, even a few hundreths to a few tenths of a second, make accuracy problematic and a poor ignition source just wastes powder and bullets.
Old cases and bullets, if not corroded, are okay, but old propellants and old primers turn safe and serious target practice into expensive ,and possibly damaging to the rifle or even dangerous to the shooter, plinking at best.

Anyway thats how I see it.

interesting read that provokes thought , thanks for posting it ,

exactly why i thanked you the first time , i think way to many of these accidents occur because there are those who dont respect the past ,

first metallurgy back then was not as well understood as it is today , second the processes of those days were far less refined and controled ,

but - i think there are way too many novices in possession of the means today with little education or respect for the nuances of this art ,

with the limitations they had back then they realized you could easily overpower the capabilities of the technology , today we are so used to modern methods that we forget to be cautious ,

today the video syndrome makes the injury seem surreal , in the past the loss of a limb or even a digit spelled out a life of hardship , or at least difficult adjustments ,

Anyone considering a mil-surp bolt gun really should read "Bolt Action Rifles" by Frank de Haas. He gives some pretty clear information on the strengths, and weaknesses of several different commonly available mil-surp bolt guns. Neither the Lee-enfield #3 or 4 guns are suitable for conversion to a high intensity load. The pre-98 Mausers fall into the same category. A little common sense goes a long ways. The Chilean '95 in 7.62 N is marginal at best- and should be loaded to 7.62 N specs, or less- not the hotter commercially available W .308 offering...

Regards,

Doc Sharptail

What can and probably will sooner or later make the situation a concern to gun collectors is the tendency for some of the internet experts to recommend use of ammunition never intended for the older rifles even if chambered to accept it.

The Turk conversions of both Enfield and Gew88 rifles are a good example. These were expected to be used with pre WW1 era 8mmJ ball at most, and never really considered strong enough for the higher pressure WW1 era 154 grain ball as used in the Gew98.
The Gew88 rifle is 9aside from its narrow barrel under the jacket) a strong design, but both metalurgy and workmanship varied greatly and bore sizes are all over the map.
A Gew88 rebarreled by the Turks with a .323 bore barrel of the later heavier walled mauserlike profile may be a good deal safer than the same rifle would have been with .318-.321 bore size and slim barrel with little reinforce that hides under the barrel jacket. I have seen photos of a Gew88 with barrel jacket blown open and the shattered remnants of the barrel visible inside. That was a rifle salvaged from a arms cache so the most common claim of rifles damaged by reloads isn't likely to apply.
A poster on another forum long ago told of finding a SMLE converted to 8mm with breech blown out abandoned in an old building.
The 8mmJ was loaded to much lower pressures (not much if any higher than the .30-40 Krag) than the later 7.92mmS bore and both to a far lower pressures than some WW2 era special ball and AP cartridges.
Some of those special purpose loads would push the safety limits of the best K98 action, and I'm sure many 98 actions have been damaged by those hot loads, lug set back being the least of such damage.

The Krag and Winchester Model 1895 are classic examples of cartridge development out stripping the safety limits of a otherwise great design.
The Krag had no problems with the earlier standard .30-40 ball at circa 40,000 CUP but the later .30-40 loadings that gave around 200 FPS greater velocity with only a 3,000 CUP increase in AWP some resulted in reports of cracked bolts and cracking at the locking recesses. In some cases the only visible sign that something was wrong was when the air gap at the safety lug disappeared, the safety lug now bearing at least part of the load.
Springfield armory offered new replacement bolts to civilian Krag owners.

The 1895 Winchester handled a variety of powerful smokeless powder sporting and military cartridges without complaint, notably the WW1 era .30-06.
When the heavier bullet post WW1 M1 Ball was adopted for long range machinegun use and Win 95 owners tried it in their rifles damage began to pile up, with many a fine rifle developing excessive headspace after a few rounds.

The standard .303 M8z ammunition is supposed to generate pressures little higher than that of MkVII ammunition( 48,000 CUP vs 45,400 for the MkVII), but reports by a British officer in the Middle East indicated that ammunition his machinegun section had received generated pressures of around 60,000 CUP with primers so flattened out that they looked "painted on".
I've run across several complaints by new Enfield owners of European Mkbz equivalent ammunition causing difficult extraction or damaged extractors and stuck cases. Excessive muzzle blast has also been reported.

The Canadians have in recent years begun to issue old stocks of canadian manufacture Mk8z ammunition to their Rangers for use in No.4 rifles. Canadian manufacture ammunition was noted for being of higher than average quality and the mild to cold temperatures there make temperature controlled storage easier than in warmer climes. The lower temperatures also make excessive pressures due to heat affecting propellants less likely.
The same rifles if used with lower quality ammunition that had been stored in a tropical climate might not fare so well.
RAF testing of ammunition cases revealed that an Ammunition case left exposed to the sun on the Indian North West Frontier could reach a temperature of 160 degrees at mid day.

doc , i think you meant to say the no1 and no4 rifles , the no3 rifles were the basis of many a fine sporter and a multitude of wildcat cartrige conversions , the predecessor of the remington 700 action IIR?C ,

but your point is well taken and thats not to mention the early mausers - like the 1893 spanish rifles - not at all the later mausers , and even the factory conversions of spanish mausers to nato rounds ,