RickMD
Member
It's not the oversize bullet that caused the damage but the excessive headspace caused by the shorter 8x57 cartridge in a 30-06 chamber. Swaging the .324 bullet down to .308 won't cause pressures to rise enough to do any damage.
Someone at Remington 100 years ago just saved me
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Lj1941
Member
All is well that ends well. I always heard that the 1917 Enfield was strong action.Thank GOD that the designers designed a good margin of strength into that rifle. A lot of us complain about over-engineering but in this case it saved you from serious injury or worse.I was always taught when dealing with guns-KYHOOYA.I think I first heard of those letters very early in my handloading career. It was a warning in the "ABCs of Rel
oading "
by Dean A Grennel
.I even had a sign on my loading bench with those letters on it.
oading "
by Dean A Grennel
.I even had a sign on my loading bench with those letters on it.
Hummer70
Member
Frankford Arsenal ammo manual 23-1 lists the proof load for the 30.06 as having 52 grains 4198 under a 173 grain bullet. This load was duped for a retest of a 1917 when I was with the Army Sm Cal Lab of a rifle that had been through a fire and the stock was burned off and the striker spring went soft.
The striker spring was replaced and the rifle secured in a test fixture and the above load was fired from behind protective barrier with a 30 ft lanyard and we fully expected a catastrophic failure of barrel and or action or both.
The after effects were basically identical to what the OP listed and the round was taken to the Ammo Engineering Directorate at Picatinny presented to the engineer in charge who came from Frankford Arsenal and he immediately wanted to know what the load was.
When he was told he immediately went and pulled the drawing for the proof round and determined the 4198 callout in 23-1 was a gross mistake as the callout on the drawing was for 4895. Basically the proof round was a 150 gr. load with a 173 grain bullet substituted. His opinion looking at the expanded primer pocket and imprinted image on the bolt face that the round had seen at least 90,000 lbs.
Thusly most 8MM bullets are in the 170+ grain weight range and as pointed out significantly larger in projectile diameter will spike pressures out the roof in a hurry.
When the loaded round was forced closed there is no doubt that the case head was very tight against the bolt face as evidenced by the imprinting on the bolt face and the classic excessive headspace (that results in case stretch at the web) did not occur but the pressures did indicate plastic deformation of the case head resulting in the oversized primer pocket which seems to indicate the area that failed to contain the pressure as the case bodies of the 8MM and 30.06 are very close.
The rifle we tested was subjected to mag particle inspection of the action/barrel and found to be free of failure indicators though the headspace was on the high end when subjected to Range Gage series but then again a headspace gage showing excessive headspace based on later production standards is not necessarily bad on a 1917 as engineering records indicated there were lots of 1917s that would fail inspection when subjected to the later standards.
Note : The term RANGE GAGE are not to be confused with GO, NO GO and Field Service Gages. A Range Gage set consists of about 25 gages that increase .001" per gage and start significantly shorter than a GO GAGE and end significantly longer than FIELD SERVICE thusly we were able to determine exactly the dimension our rifle closed on.
The rifle thusly had dedicated brass for that rifle meaning rounds were fired and they fireformed to the longer lengths and were never resized back to "new" unfired length. It probably had a thousand rounds fired on it with no problem at all.
Yes there are some 1917 actions that are quite tough but in those days there were no proper methods of judging temperature of the billets in the ovens prior to removal and shaping via trip hammers. Many of these actions were heated too hot prior to forging. At Eddystone we know the guys on the third shift had a bad habit of heating the billets to white hot and introducing them to the 3rd hammer and the result was the shape "looked right" but the steel had been burned and the grain structure had not been correctly formed. That information is not contained in the engineering files but was learned only because the guy that trained me used to rent a room from the third shift supervisor of Eddystone plant. He had moved to Springfield, Mass after WW1 and worked at Springfield Armory till he retired and had a big house and rented rooms and my trainer went to SA in 1951. He and my trainer got along well and that was one of the things he passed on to Roscoe that he continually had to go down on third shift and turn down the temps.
One of Roscoe's hobbies was reading engineering files and every part in every rifle and from 1951 till they closed in 67 (I think it was). Background: Every part of every rifle has a separate file in a file cabinet dedicated to that weapon system. Roscoe would check out 3 to 5 files every night (depending upon the thickness) and take them home and read the complete history of every part. Even more amazing he had the ability to remember what he read and he was known for an incredible ability to surface the most incredible minutia of why a part was changed and what caused the change. Thusly Roscoe got the engineering files on the 1917 and that incident of improper heat treats was not covered.
As we all know Eddystone made P14s and 1917s and obviously the same guys were in the forge room at the transition from the two models was more a less an overnight phenomenon. So the bottom line is before one assumes every 1917 ever made is as strong as a 500 lb anvil should be aware they might just happen to have a bomb waiting to go and should approach all these actions with a prejudical mind set on the side of caution.
Case in point in the forge room in the daylight receivers would tend to show up differently when observed by the human eye than they would at night when they showed red thusly there was a wide variation of temperatures the billets received before being introduced to the hammers which did not make for the strongest / safest conditions.
By WW2 the oven temps were regulated by proper instrumentation and as such did not sustain the wide ranges. I am not aware of any integrity issues with any of the WW2 vintage 03s and Roscoe would have known for sure.
Couple the above with a work force that was only there for the money and did not love the work they were doing and were only concerned about how much money they were going to be paid as they were paid on incentive, i.e. the more parts you make the more money you take home.
One of the biggest fallacies on the planet is to assume the workers in arms plants love their jobs, are concerned with getting the best for the troops they could possibly make and that they were gravely concerned about a bad piece going out the door is a complete misconception.
I well remember my first day on the job with Roscoe. He stuck his finger in my face and said:
"The head is at the end of the building."
"The coffee pot is in the bosse's office."
"We don't sign off on anything around here to make a vendor happy, we are here to get the absolute best for the troops we can get and nothing less........is that clear?"
That sounded like the right mindset to have and that is the way he trained me and I did everything I could to get the best for the guys that were going to be using such to kill our enemies. Basically our mindset was "to develop equipment that would kill the most amount of enemy in the most efficient manner possble for the least amount of money". Translation "MORE BANG FOR THE BUCK" which is the politically correct term for the first definition.
At Aberdeen our motto was, "You make'em, we break"em." and that we did.
Thusly to be safe I felt it prudent to point out the OP's round delivered excessive pressures and knowing the quality of barrel steel near on 100 years ago was "iffy", the only responsible course of action was to caution the orginal poster of the potential of a catastrophic barrel failure and having knowledge of a number of such failures and the potential for losing half a hand seemingly met the threshold.
The striker spring was replaced and the rifle secured in a test fixture and the above load was fired from behind protective barrier with a 30 ft lanyard and we fully expected a catastrophic failure of barrel and or action or both.
The after effects were basically identical to what the OP listed and the round was taken to the Ammo Engineering Directorate at Picatinny presented to the engineer in charge who came from Frankford Arsenal and he immediately wanted to know what the load was.
When he was told he immediately went and pulled the drawing for the proof round and determined the 4198 callout in 23-1 was a gross mistake as the callout on the drawing was for 4895. Basically the proof round was a 150 gr. load with a 173 grain bullet substituted. His opinion looking at the expanded primer pocket and imprinted image on the bolt face that the round had seen at least 90,000 lbs.
Thusly most 8MM bullets are in the 170+ grain weight range and as pointed out significantly larger in projectile diameter will spike pressures out the roof in a hurry.
When the loaded round was forced closed there is no doubt that the case head was very tight against the bolt face as evidenced by the imprinting on the bolt face and the classic excessive headspace (that results in case stretch at the web) did not occur but the pressures did indicate plastic deformation of the case head resulting in the oversized primer pocket which seems to indicate the area that failed to contain the pressure as the case bodies of the 8MM and 30.06 are very close.
The rifle we tested was subjected to mag particle inspection of the action/barrel and found to be free of failure indicators though the headspace was on the high end when subjected to Range Gage series but then again a headspace gage showing excessive headspace based on later production standards is not necessarily bad on a 1917 as engineering records indicated there were lots of 1917s that would fail inspection when subjected to the later standards.
Note : The term RANGE GAGE are not to be confused with GO, NO GO and Field Service Gages. A Range Gage set consists of about 25 gages that increase .001" per gage and start significantly shorter than a GO GAGE and end significantly longer than FIELD SERVICE thusly we were able to determine exactly the dimension our rifle closed on.
The rifle thusly had dedicated brass for that rifle meaning rounds were fired and they fireformed to the longer lengths and were never resized back to "new" unfired length. It probably had a thousand rounds fired on it with no problem at all.
Yes there are some 1917 actions that are quite tough but in those days there were no proper methods of judging temperature of the billets in the ovens prior to removal and shaping via trip hammers. Many of these actions were heated too hot prior to forging. At Eddystone we know the guys on the third shift had a bad habit of heating the billets to white hot and introducing them to the 3rd hammer and the result was the shape "looked right" but the steel had been burned and the grain structure had not been correctly formed. That information is not contained in the engineering files but was learned only because the guy that trained me used to rent a room from the third shift supervisor of Eddystone plant. He had moved to Springfield, Mass after WW1 and worked at Springfield Armory till he retired and had a big house and rented rooms and my trainer went to SA in 1951. He and my trainer got along well and that was one of the things he passed on to Roscoe that he continually had to go down on third shift and turn down the temps.
One of Roscoe's hobbies was reading engineering files and every part in every rifle and from 1951 till they closed in 67 (I think it was). Background: Every part of every rifle has a separate file in a file cabinet dedicated to that weapon system. Roscoe would check out 3 to 5 files every night (depending upon the thickness) and take them home and read the complete history of every part. Even more amazing he had the ability to remember what he read and he was known for an incredible ability to surface the most incredible minutia of why a part was changed and what caused the change. Thusly Roscoe got the engineering files on the 1917 and that incident of improper heat treats was not covered.
As we all know Eddystone made P14s and 1917s and obviously the same guys were in the forge room at the transition from the two models was more a less an overnight phenomenon. So the bottom line is before one assumes every 1917 ever made is as strong as a 500 lb anvil should be aware they might just happen to have a bomb waiting to go and should approach all these actions with a prejudical mind set on the side of caution.
Case in point in the forge room in the daylight receivers would tend to show up differently when observed by the human eye than they would at night when they showed red thusly there was a wide variation of temperatures the billets received before being introduced to the hammers which did not make for the strongest / safest conditions.
By WW2 the oven temps were regulated by proper instrumentation and as such did not sustain the wide ranges. I am not aware of any integrity issues with any of the WW2 vintage 03s and Roscoe would have known for sure.
Couple the above with a work force that was only there for the money and did not love the work they were doing and were only concerned about how much money they were going to be paid as they were paid on incentive, i.e. the more parts you make the more money you take home.
One of the biggest fallacies on the planet is to assume the workers in arms plants love their jobs, are concerned with getting the best for the troops they could possibly make and that they were gravely concerned about a bad piece going out the door is a complete misconception.
I well remember my first day on the job with Roscoe. He stuck his finger in my face and said:
"The head is at the end of the building."
"The coffee pot is in the bosse's office."
"We don't sign off on anything around here to make a vendor happy, we are here to get the absolute best for the troops we can get and nothing less........is that clear?"
That sounded like the right mindset to have and that is the way he trained me and I did everything I could to get the best for the guys that were going to be using such to kill our enemies. Basically our mindset was "to develop equipment that would kill the most amount of enemy in the most efficient manner possble for the least amount of money". Translation "MORE BANG FOR THE BUCK" which is the politically correct term for the first definition.
At Aberdeen our motto was, "You make'em, we break"em." and that we did.
Thusly to be safe I felt it prudent to point out the OP's round delivered excessive pressures and knowing the quality of barrel steel near on 100 years ago was "iffy", the only responsible course of action was to caution the orginal poster of the potential of a catastrophic barrel failure and having knowledge of a number of such failures and the potential for losing half a hand seemingly met the threshold.
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KansasSasquatch
Member
The Arisaka is a very strong action because of the way it's bolt locks up. It doesn't hurt that the Japanese also have a tendency to make good quality steel, even though the finish machining on many of the rifles was not the best. I believe there's been testing done showing that the Arisaka action can handle 90,000psi at least once without failing, although it most likely does cause some damage and I sure wouldn't want to find out the hard way if they can handle it.
Hummer70
Member
The guy that did it was Gy/Sgt Billie Meredith. He was a gunsmith at Quantico and he had a wore out 30.06 reamer so he ground down the pilot on the 30.06 but had to leave enough of it on so the 06 ogive would clear. This was done back in 60s time frame when Arisakas cost nothing and he wanted to see what would happen. If I remember his account correctly the barrel jumped forward about two rings but held.
Another thing that will give the same appearance of high presssure is using wet ammo. The case head can't get a grip on the bolt face and flows outward, opening up the primer pocket but generally not to the point that you have large gas escape. This was learned on rain testing at Aberdeen.
At Perry once I had to shoot a alibi rapid fire string in a driving rain and when I got through I just left my brass laying as I knew it was going to have larger primer pockets.
Just for nice to know purposes, the first round fired somehow transfers all the lubricant from the rifle to your shooting glasses and you can't see the sights after that.
Another thing that will give the same appearance of high presssure is using wet ammo. The case head can't get a grip on the bolt face and flows outward, opening up the primer pocket but generally not to the point that you have large gas escape. This was learned on rain testing at Aberdeen.
At Perry once I had to shoot a alibi rapid fire string in a driving rain and when I got through I just left my brass laying as I knew it was going to have larger primer pockets.
Just for nice to know purposes, the first round fired somehow transfers all the lubricant from the rifle to your shooting glasses and you can't see the sights after that.
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