Safe firing of a Rock Island Springfield 1903

[menotseeu]

While I am aware there were barrel temper problems with serial numbers lesss than 286,506 for the Rock Island 1903's. I'm looking at one that has a serial number of 227,105, BUT, it also has Barrel Marked SA Over a Flaming Bomb 2 - 42. Does this mean in your opinion that it was rebarreleld and is safe to shoot?
Thanks
John

 

[1KPerDay]

It's not the barrel that's the issue... but the receiver (and some early bolts).

 

[menotseeu]

Thanks for the heads up. I'm not sure why I thought it was just the barrel.
My understanding is that the Springfield's #800,000 and up were safe and the Rock Island # 286,506 were safe. Can you or anyone confirm this?
Again
Thanks
John

 

[dprice3844444]

Low number Springfield 1903 rifles





The Purpouse of this is assist those who are considering aquiring a 1903 service rifle, to aid in identifying the so called "low numbered recievers" which are considered unsafe to fire.

The Magic numbers here are any rifle below 800,000 for Springfield Armory and 286,506 for Rock Island Armory. The reason these rifles are considered unsafe to fire is due to improper heat treatment when they were manufactured.The ammunition of the time was thought to be a contributing factor as well. The method of determining the proper heat treatment was less than scientific in that the men who were doing the heat treatment used the color of the steel to judge whether the correct temprature had been reached, When these rifles failed they shattered often causing injury to the shooter. Rifles manufactured after 800,000 and 286,506 recieved a double heat treatment and tempratures were measured with insturments rather than "by eye". Many of these original rifles were not withdrawn from service and are still on the market today.

1903/A3/A4 rifles manufactured by Remington and 1903A3 rifles manufactured by Smith Corona are not affected and are considered safe to fire as long as they are inspected by a competent gunsmith as they should still be checked for proper headspace, bolt setback etc.

If an individual is considering buying a low numbered Springfield or Rock Island 1903 do so knowing that it is not a shooter and IT SHOULD NOT BE FIRED! but rather as a piece of military history.The actual change in heat treatment occured somewhere between 750,000 and 800,000 for Springfield, but the exact serial number is not known so it is possible to have a Springfield below 800,000 that is safe to fire but there is still no way of knowing if a given rifle with a serial number between that range recieved the proper heat treatment, so you are taking a chance on firing one. The actual rate of failure is very low compared to the number of rifles produced but it ain't worth losing an eye over! I know of people who own and fire low numbered rifles, but in my opinion it's just not worth the risk.

Those considering an 03 purchase should also be aware of Sante Fe and National Ordnance rifles. These companies manufactured rifles with surplus GI parts and new cast recievers. The safety of these rifles is suspect and they hold almost no collector value except the sum of the GI parts they were put together with. Some dealers, whether decietfully or honestly unaware, will sell them as Remingtons (many of the surplus parts are R marked) and the unknowing buyer will not get what he thinks he is getting.

A4 Fakes: Be aware that there some people who are trying to pawn off drilled and tapped A3s as A4 snipers. Real A4s bring prices of over 4K so the temptation to fake them is high. A4s were not marked A4 but rather A3. The only way to verify that it is a real A4 is to look at the location of the reciever markings. The right side bears the serial number which will be completely legible with the mount attached, and the left side will bear a U.S. marking by the gas escape hole that looks like it's upside down. A4s were only manufactured by Remington.

The following link is to an excellent site with a very detailed article on the 1903 reciever failures. http://m1903.com/03rcvrfail/

Another web site with great info. http://www.jouster.com/cgi-bin/03/03config.pl?

I would also add that if you think you are going to get serious in collecting the 03, you may want to consider aquiring some basic guages. At minimum a no-go and field guage for 30.06, beyond that a field test bolt, throat erosion guage and muzzle wear guage. All these guages are still available. Whenever I buy one I bring all these things with me and check the rifle whether it be at a shop or a show. If the person behind the counter says no, or gives me a hard time I just walk away. Prices on these rifles have gone through the roof over the past few years, and before you plunk down $800-$1000 for one you want to make sure it is still serviceable.

03C.....

 

[madcratebuilder]

While there is always a chance that this rifle was re-barreled by a gunsmith, odds are it went through a re-arsenal in 1942. Look for the arsenal marks on the stock, they well indicate the arsenal and inspector. If it is marked, post a photo, I should be able to tell you were and who did the work.

 

[USSR]

The reason these rifles are considered unsafe to fire is due to improper heat treatment when they were manufactured.

This implies that all early receivers were improperly heat treated, and that is not the case. They were heat treated in the manner that was common in that day and age, and the problem only came about when they ramped up rifle production during WW 1, and brought on some new employees who were not skilled in heat treating. So, the problem was only with some of the receivers done by the unskilled heat treaters. Then they changed the method of heat treating to eliminate the variability of receiver hardness due to operator error, and simply used the Serial # at which the new procedure was used and declared that all lower numbered receivers were unsafe, which made more sense than combing thru 1,000,000 rifles looking for those few brittle receivers. And, evidently, the U.S. Armed Forces never got the memo, as they happily rebarreled low numbered Springfield and Rock Island receivers during WW 2.

Don

 

[highpower]

There are a number of threads on the internet regarding the low number Springfields. One must remember that the Marine Corps never took their low numbered rifles out of service and in fact they were used until they were replaced by the M1 Garand.

Even when the possibility of a problem became apparent, the army didn't recall the rifles already in use. What they did, after WW1, was to start a program of refurbishing the low number guns and putting them in war reserve. This is the reason that there are so many low number rifles with much later barrels.

There was a post on another forum (I can't remember which one), where the poster did a statistical analysis of the probability of a low number rifle blowing up. Out of the roughly one million rifles that fall into the serial number range there were something like 63 documented cases of receiver failure.

Statistically, you stand a much better chance of getting hurt if you drive a car 1500 miles a year. Most of us can put that many miles on a vehicle in a month, yet we don't fill page after page of angst over whether we will get hurt doing it.

When the failures were investigated by Julian Hatcher, he found that there was a correlation between the accidents and the lot(s) of ammo that was being used. Also there was said to be a couple of instances of possible bore obstructions.

What this all boils down to is whether you feel safe shooting your rifle. Many people shoot their low number rifles using reduced power handloads and cast bullets with no problems.

 

[Slamfire]

Federal Ordnance brought in thousands of receivers from the Philippines. They also had WWII replacement barrels. I saw low number receivers and low number rebuilds on their racks.

You might have one of those.

For all the reasons given above, I don’t recommend shooting low number Springfields. The basic problem is you cannot visually tell the quality of the steel or if it is burnt.

There was a post on another forum (I can't remember which one), where the poster did a statistical analysis of the probability of a low number rifle blowing up. Out of the roughly one million rifles that fall into the serial number range there were something like 63 documented cases of receiver failure.

Maybe you are referring to Daffy Doc’s flawed analysis:
http://m1903.com/03rcvrfail/

Daffy Doc’s statistics are based on Hatcher’s Notebook which is not an all inclusive list of all 03 failures. Hatcher’s list starts 1917 and ends 1929. There are known failures after. Likely there were failures before, but they just were not reported or in the documentation which Hatcher had access.

I also disagree with Daffy Doc’s risk percentages. His percentages are based on the total number of rifles built, not the rifles in use. There were about one million of these rifles built, but post WW1, there were never one million at service at any time. By the time you get to 1922 Congress authorized only 136,000 Officer’s and enlisted in the Regular Army. I could guess how many rifles were in service with an Army that small, and it sure would not be one million. Lets say, as a ridiculous example, that their were four rifles in use and the remaining one million in storage. Let also say that one of the four blew up. Daffy Doc’s analysis would give you the risk as one in a million. But for those rifles in use, it would be 25%.

Daffy Doc’s analysis also does not take into account the destruction of single heat treat receivers. As rifle came into depot, the Army scrapped these receivers. The population of these things liable to hurt someone just got smaller and smaller over time. Any risk calculation based on the total production is misleading because that is not the actual risk to the user. The user’s risk of harm is much higher. By what amount, I don’t know.
I am certain there are no databases extent which would allow the calculation of risk based on active duty rifles, but the Army had seen enough accidents and decided to take a course of action which would remove single heat treat receivers from the inventory.

Daffy Doc also says:

No receiver failures were reported in the training period before the battles, and during the four major battles that occurred in the seven month period in 1942-43. While it's not possible to estimate the exact number of rifles involved, up to 7,000 would have been in use by the three rifle regiments of the 1st Marine Division, Based on the failure rates of 1917-1918 between one and two rifle receivers would have been expected to fail.

Daffy Doc could not find any failure reports and is making the conclusion that absence proves no receivers failed. I disagree with this. The absence of records indicate the absence of records. That does not mean that there were never were records; there could have been. There are buildings full of records that the US Army and Marine Corp have right now which Daffy Doc will never see. These records will be disposed of by the lowest cost method which will guarantee the least embarrassment later. Might as well ask Daffy Doc how long he maintains paper records of his patients. I will bet it won’t be decades. All organizations have to undergo reoccurring data dumps, or there will not be space for the workers. The lack of records might also be due to there was a shooting war going on. Even the military prioritizes efforts as the culture changes from peacetime bureaucracy to a life and death struggle. How high a priority would there be to create rifle failure reports in a war time expansion? I think the correct answer is zero. If a rifle broke, someone threw it in a scrap bin and got busy filling out paper work for the real important things. Like the Guadalcanal invasion.


When these old guns go, they fragement. There are some nice frag pictures, including a National Ordnance receiver, in this thread:
http://www.thehighroad.org/showpost.php?p=7524241&postcount=6

 

[fpgt72]

There are a number of threads on the internet regarding the low number Springfields. One must remember that the Marine Corps never took their low numbered rifles out of service and in fact they were used until they were replaced by the M1 Garand.

Even when the possibility of a problem became apparent, the army didn't recall the rifles already in use. What they did, after WW1, was to start a program of refurbishing the low number guns and putting them in war reserve. This is the reason that there are so many low number rifles with much later barrels.

There was a post on another forum (I can't remember which one), where the poster did a statistical analysis of the probability of a low number rifle blowing up. Out of the roughly one million rifles that fall into the serial number range there were something like 63 documented cases of receiver failure.

Statistically, you stand a much better chance of getting hurt if you drive a car 1500 miles a year. Most of us can put that many miles on a vehicle in a month, yet we don't fill page after page of angst over whether we will get hurt doing it.

When the failures were investigated by Julian Hatcher, he found that there was a correlation between the accidents and the lot(s) of ammo that was being used. Also there was said to be a couple of instances of possible bore obstructions.

What this all boils down to is whether you feel safe shooting your rifle. Many people shoot their low number rifles using reduced power handloads and cast bullets with no problems.

This is the same info that I read.

I own one, and I do shoot it....but with my own loads and they are loaded light.

I enjoy shooting the rifle and am not going to hang it up based on this story. I stand a better chance of getting hurt riding my motorcycle home from work tonight.

 

[dprice3844444]

http://m1903.com/03rcvrfail/

http://m1903.com/proofmarks.htm

Proof Testing and Proof Marking

Before leaving the manufacturer, M1903's and M1903A3's were proof tested for safety. Proof testing was done by firing several cartridges loaded to produce a pressure substantially greater than that produced by the standard issue military cartridges that would be used in the rifle. If the rifle survived this test of its strength the letter P enclosed in a circle was stamped on the stock just behind the triggerguard, and the rifle was ready for acceptance by the military.

The earliest proof marks used on Model 1903's were a script letter P which was later changed to a block letter P.

U.S. Model 1903's and 1903A3's will sometimes be found with two letter P's stamped behind the triggerguard. The second letter P is believed to have been used when a rifle when through a complete rebuild. Because of the extent of the work it was likely proofed a second time. If a stock is stamped with two letter P's there is a good possibility that it will also have other marks indicating an arsenal rebuild. (See the section on arsenal markings)

Government Arsenal Stock Rebuilding Marks




Marking on Stock Arsenal Performing Overhaul
AA Augusta Arsenal
AN Anniston Arsenal
BA Benicia Arsenal
HOD Hawaiian Ordnance Depot.
MR Mt. Ranier Arsenal
OG Ogden Arsenal
PaOD Panama Ordnance Depot.
POD Philippine Ordnance Depot.
RA Raritan Arsenal
RIA Rock Island Arsenal
RRA Red River Arsenal
SA Springfield Armory
SAA San Antonio Arsenal

Note: Except for Springfield Armory and Rock Island Arsenal, most of the above ordnance facilities did not overhaul weapons until World War II and later. After the rifles were rebuilt, the initials of the facility and, occasionally, the initials of the individual inspector as well were stamped on the left side of the stock.