Not taking issue with your conclusions regarding the need to stay within SAAMI pressures for the Swede, but the Swedish Mausers were in fact made with very high quality, high Nickel steel. Swedish ore, particularly those in the northern basins, contains quantities of V, Mn, Cu, Zn, Rb, Sr, Mo, Ag, Cd, Sb, Ba, Ce, Tl, Pb, B, Th, Ni and U in the right combination to make a very consistent steel. And the Swedes were making quite good steel by the latter half of the 19th Century.
Good quality steel by 19th century standards. Not by late 20th century standards. Process controls have improved from the pre vacuum tube era to the semi conductor era.
I am going to state while your reference is very interesting and I have downloaded a copy, all those trace quantities of elements you reference, are infact, to be considered containments. The unpredictable amounts will create unpredictable effects on the properties of the steel. There are very good reasons modern steel makers try to reduce the number of residual elements and tramp elements in steel making.
Residual Elements in Steel
https://www.totalmateria.com/page.aspx?ID=CheckArticle&site=kts&NM=205
Abstract:
Residual elements (Cu, Ni, As, Pb, Sn, Sb, Mo, Cr, etc.) are defined as elements which are not added on purpose to steel and which cannot be removed by simple metallurgical processes. The presence of residual elements in steel can have strong effects on mechanical properties. There is therefore clearly the need to identify and to quantify the effects of residual elements in order to keep these effects within acceptable limits.
Since so much scrap is recycled in the making of steel, “tramp elements” are a major concern.
https://www.tms.org/pubs/journals/jom/0110/manning-0110.html
One alternative to removing metallic tramp elements is to reduce their deleterious effects on steel properties. Most metallic residuals reduce steel hot strength and hot and cold ductility by segregating to and weakening grain boundaries. Tolerance to such chemical impurities could be improved through the design of alloys in which these elements were tied up in heterogeneously nucleating second-phase particles, which might not have the same negative effect on steel properties. Also, new near net shape casting processes, which will be described in following sections, may dramatically reduce the overall effect of residual elements for two reasons. As its name implies, near net shape casting describes solidification processes by which steel is cast in dimensions near to the specifications of the final product.
Might also look at the problem of micro inclusions and how they weaken steels.
I will bet that someone on some food forum is claiming that the high quantity of hairs, mold, insects, fly eggs, maggot eggs, rat scat, found in Aunty Em’s biscuit flour is the secret for their great flavor! Dear Old Aunty Em is of course a factious character, but before the food and drug act, “Defect Levels” were not controlled in foods. To find how many maggot and fly eggs are allowed in today’s processed foods, just read these references:
Defect levels handbook
https://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRe...mation/SanitationTransportation/ucm056174.htm
The Food Defect Action Levels
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Food_Defect_Action_Levels
Does the thought of chowing down on maggot eggs improve or take away from your dining experience?
Designers today, use data supplied by steel manufacturers, who test and provide the mechanical properties of their steels. Some questions I have, and would like to know, just what standards were being used in the 1890’s? especially in Sweden. In today’s world, we have more or less agreed on yield, ultimate, elongation, compressive strength, and fatigue lifetime. But I don’t know when that was standardized, maybe you do. Today, we are aware of the effect of low temperature on steel properties. From my reading, fatigue lifetime was unknown around World War 1, and so was knowledge about brittleness and cold temperature. I read that the first phase diagrams were coming out in the 1890’s. And, in that time period, what were steel manufacturer’s agreeing to as measures of mechanical properties? I would like to know that, I do have a first edition of Machinery’s Handbook, (1916) I can tell you, there are serious gaps in the metallurgical knowledge of the period. Anyone who spends any time looking at 19th century metallurgy should figure out they just did not have the knowledge or technology we have today.
Though likely more for domestic economic and political reasons than metallurgical, the Swedes mandated use of Swedish steel in the manufacture of the first run of Swedish Mausers at Obendorf. Essentially, very high Iron content within Swedish Iron ore makes removal of impurities less costly and time consuming, especially the removal phosphates which are highly effective oxidizers and greatly contribute to brittleness in steel. So, the Swedish Mauser receiver is essentially a very high quality steel, not soft, but malleable to the degree desired in high quality steel. However, the less effective than more modern processes that provide heat treatment to deliver a hardened outer layer is where the need to adhere to prescribed operating pressures comes from. As you very correctly describe, repeated exposure to pressures above SAAMI Max Pressure (51,000 psi), will overwhelm the surface heat treatment and lead to excessive headspace via lug recess lengthening and surface cracking.
You know, the Bessemer darn near went broke from lawsuits. Bessemer created a blast furnace technology that vastly increased the rate of steel production over any previous process, but he used Swedish iron. Swedish iron, by an accident of geology, is low in phosphors. Apparently Bessemer did not know that, but his licensee’s were using cheaper iron ores which were high in phosphorus and their steels were brittle. And they were suing. Bessemer found a chemist who created spiegeleisen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiegeleisen which removed the phosphorus. But you know, the Bessemer process, and all those early processes, could not remove non oxidizing elements. Most of the elements you listed are non oxidizing elements. And the question I have, because I don’t know this, is how are non oxidizing elements removed from the steels of today? I have conducted a web research, and would like to know how modern blast furnaces start with iron ore (or steel scrap) and remove all the rat scat to produce an ingot of pure Fe. I do believe that modern processes are removing the tramp, residual, and micro inclusions, because based on one SAE report I read, the lifetime of wheel bearings has increased. And the report directly related the increased fatigue lifetime to reduced micro inclusions. And, I have lived long enough to experience the wonderful stainless knife steels of today. The steels in good quality knives are just incredible, they take fantastic edges and hold them. And they are hard.
I lost this, it was made of D2. Took a great edge. I am still kicking myself over the loss:
Titanium handles and S35VN. These materials were beyond imagination as knife materials when I was a Boy Scout. And yet, here they are, and the edge is amazingly sharp.
It used to be, a knife was at best, 440B, and then, you would occasionally run into a hard, or soft spot. The majority of knives were plain carbon steels back them, they worked well, but they rusted and they were still inferior to the same steel composition in a modern knife. Knife steels today much more consistent than they have ever been, so, just from a user aspect, I can tell steel making technology has vastly improved since the 1950’s. And anyone claiming that steel from 1900 is as good as steel from mid century, is a romantic.
An interesting data point, in Rifle Magazine did a review of the first Ruger M77’s in their Jan-Feb 1969 issue. In that article there is this quote:
Ruger technicians claim that during strength tests, a static load of at least 40,000 pounds was required to damage the locking lugs (there are two), and that, even then, the lugs did not shear away. Similar tests with Springfield and Mauser type mechanisms are said to show that the locking lugs of these action shear completely under loads 19,000 to 29,000 pounds.
The author of course is writing an informercial on Ruger M77 rifles, and educating you on what you need to know to buy Ruger rifles. The article is not about Mauser rifles or Springfield rifles, the article is selling Rugers, so we get this “taste” of data, but hey, it is data. The Springfield and Mauser bolts were certainly strong enough for the loads of the period, but the low yield at shear, compared to the 4140 steels used in the Ruger M77, show the much greater safety factor of later steels, and, a promise of a much higher fatigue life.
I have a story. A bud of mine taught Metallurgy at West Point. They were lucky to receive a whole bunch of Russian tank axles from the Israeli’s. Just after the 1968 or 1972 war, the Israeli’s ended up with a big pile of Russian tanks with broken axles. The parts were the axle ends to the Christie wheels. The wheels had snapped off just at the end of the axle shaft. Bud got his class to polish the shaft ends and determine what was in the steel. I did not get a detailed analysis, what I was told, was that the Soviets had “thrown everything into the kettle”. I will bet Soviet steel had every trace element found in raw Swedish iron ore, and maybe some Vodka bottles too!
Usually these debates end up with a “prove it unsafe” comment from the antique fan boys. You know, that sort of attitude is long gone, actually about mid 20th century with product liability. The “prove it unsafe” philosophy got a lot of people injured and killed. I have also found that injury is not enough for the skeptics. For them to take a danger seriously, someone has to die. But not them of course, it has to be someone else. I have found two reports of deaths from old Swedish actions. One, the lugs sheared and the bolt blew out. The M96 action does not have a third lug, you shear the bolt lugs, and your head is in line with the action. Given those two events, the probability of death is high.
What I want from the skeptics, is the data necessary to prove these actions are safe. Prove it safe happens to be the safety standard today, the designer and manufacturer have to make a case, usually in court, that they anticipated every misfortune, and designed away the risk. It is called "Strict Liability". I have copied some URL’s from some real cool metallurgical analyses of Damascus steel as examples of the data I want, to prove these actions are safe. What I would like to know, is the metallurgical composition of these old Swedish actions. Not some book value, not some design specification, which would have been iron, carbon, limits on silicon and phosphorus, but the actual composition of the steels in the final product. And, I would like a discussion of the crystal structure (an indication of the heat treat process control) and the yield, ultimate and charpy impact values of the steel. Hardness at the surface would be interesting. But pretty much, if any skeptic funds this effort and puts this data out there, on actions from around WW1, and pre WW1, it would be something I would appreciate, and it would quantity the material uncertainties about these things. Then, claims of whether these actions are “safe”, would go from philosophical farce to factual data. If God granted me lifetime till such a study was published, I am certain I would be immortal. It will never happen.
IMPACT STRENGTH AND FAILURE ANALYSIS OF WELDED DAMASCUS STEEL
https://www.researchgate.net/public...FAILURE_ANALYSIS_OF_WELDED_DAMASCUS_STEEL.pdf
The Key Role of Impurities in Ancient Damascus Steel Blades https://www.tf.uni-kiel.de/matwis/amat/def_en/articles/key_role_impurities/key_role.html
The Mystery of the Damascus Sword by John Verhoeven and Alfred Pendray
http://www.hefajstos.agh.edu.pl/files/[1998] The Mystery of the Damascus Sword - J. Verhoeven A. Pendray.pdf[/quote]
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