As far as Hatcher being wrong for criticizing greasing 30-06 cartridges, I have learned to degrease the firing chambers of my .357 after cleaning before firing; if increased cartridge thrust from a lubricated .357 can jam a revolver, increased cartridge thrust from a greasy .30-06 casing cannot be a good thing for a bolt action rifle.)
If lubricated cases in your 357 magnum jam your revolver cylinder, then the cause is very simple: your loads are too hot. As shown in this Army presentation, lubed cases do not increase chamber pressure, and, I will assume, neither do grease bullets.
What lubricated cases do is break the friction between case and chamber and allow the full thrust of the cartridge on the bolt face/breech face. This happens to be critical for blowback actions. What has been happening with your dry cases in dry chambers is that the friction between case chamber has been disguising your over pressure loads. The fact that the case is carrying load, which it was not designed to do, does not mean the load has gone away. The cylinder always carried most of the load: the total load is the surface area of the cartridge case time pressure. The cylindrical part of the case is putting a radial load on the cylinder and the fact that your cases are hard to extract when wet is evidence of too high of pressures.
I have to ask. Since we copied the 98 Mauser why didn't we use venting holes and why did we use a coned breach? I have seen Japanese rifles that had more venting holes than my truck has tires as I recall.
Is it possible/feasable to add a venting hole to my high number Springfield?
There is nothing in the literature available to the public describing the deliberations of the Army design committee which came up with the M1903. We know the Army had M98 Mausers as the American Rifleman pictured two which the US Army had from 1898. No one knows whether the design group had access to them. Within the Government, the right hand never knows what the left had is doing. It is most likely the designers had M1896 Mausers on hand. Of course they had the Krag.
What is apparent by looking at an 03 is that the action has virtually no shooter protection features incorporated into the design. Later writers “found” some, for example, claiming the flared cocking piece knob was a safety feature from gas release. If any features do work, then it is by serendipity not original intent.
Gunwriters have been shilling for the cone breech for decades, because there were commercial actions with cone breeches. I do not consider the cone breech any more reliable in feed than the Mauser M98 breech and it is far inferior in cartridge support and preventing gas release. It is also harder to fit a barrel to a cone breech action as you have to time the barrel so the extractor cut is in line with the extractor. That extractor cut is actually a source of feed unreliability. I have a M70 which was messed up when it left the factory and cartridge release is late. The bullet nose dives into the extractor cut and causes a jam. The bad receiver is in the top picture. Notice the right receiver rail is slightly scalloped, the factory did this and that is what causes late cartridge release from the magazine. The cartridge does not have the space or time to straighten out and the bullet tip nose dives into the extractor cut.
This is a good receiver. Both receiver rails are parallel.
When I called up Winchester Customer Service in New Haven, told them that my target rifle would not reliably feed from the magazine, they laughed at me after I told them all the work that had been preformed on the action. The lugs were trued, bolt face trued, the receiver front trued, action clip slotted, and a custom Krieger barrel installed. I had bought a new rifle because that was the only way to get an action and I assumed, incorrectly, that a new Winchester rifle would be properly built and would be an excellent basis for a target rifle. I was wrong, all that work voided the Winchester Warranty, and Customer service laughed at me.
Winchester New Haven later went bust and I hope all you clowns from Customer Service had a backslapping good time in the unemployment line.
Reliable feed from the magazine is something that has to be carefully engineered and the action has to be made properly made for it to work. These early rifles had feed lips machined into the receivers based on the geometry of the cartridge they were designed to use. Cartridges of different shapes, lengths, contours, can have feed issues. A well built Mauser or 03 will feed the cartridges they were designed for very reliably, and it is my opinion, that the simplistic gunwriter comment that cone breech is more reliable than any other is not based on technical merits of the cone breech, but is based on what they were told to print. I have a very low opinion of gunwriters, I think the primary consideration for a gunwriter is to have a very flexible large colon, so the advertiser can reach up and flap its jaws easily. These guys don’t have the independent ability, nor are they supposed to, filter out the fantastic claims that the product manufacturer’s tell them to print.
Gas vent holes are not as effective as increased case head support and gas blocking features. I highly recommend the book
"The Bolt Action" by Stuart Otteson for an outstanding discussion of the shooter protection features that Mauser put into the M98 action. You can also see the tradeoffs in the Rem 700 action, which make it one of the strongest and safetest actions, and yet, the extractor is marginal.
A further comment, in every point of departure from the M98 action, the 03 designers created a worse action. The 03 is less strong, less safe, and less reliable. I have broken a number of cocking pieces, firing pins, collars, replaced a number of chewed up bolt stops and bolts with ruined left lugs, battered because of the inadequate size of the bolt stop. The bedding on all 03's eventually goes bad and this is not helped by the forward angled rear tang screw, combined with a tiny tang bedding pad. Actions screws should have been parallel and straight down. With screw tension being on an curve, instead of a line, it is easy to bow the action.
The 03 is a rifle that should have been replaced by the M1917, if an adult had been in charge of the Ordnance Department in July 1917, when the single heat treat receiver problem was acknowledged, the production of 03's would have stopped. The US Army was actually taking away 03's from units deploying abroad, because everyone else was using the M1917. I think only the Marines had 03's. More M1917's were produced a year and a half than all of the 03's in four decades of production, and it was a better battle rifle.
I would be curious to find just how many 03's were in Army units in France.
hahaha
