Timothy Soen I never take a mallet. I figure my boot heel will work well enough....

That's what trees and wood posts are for!

A mosin would be an awfully big mallet for opening an Enfield bolt.

@@CaeruleanWren a mallet that can also serve, in a pinch, as a rifle.

You got that right. One of my M-Ns is almost beyond hammer correcting.

Mauser and Springfield lover heads explode

@@masonhaggerty186 It is definitely weaker than a Mauser-style action. Still considerably stronger than it needs to be for the round it was designed for, though.

Mauser, Springfield, Lee-Enfield, Ross, Lebel: divine names from the dim mists of History with stories both famous and infamous. Stories both true, and bollocks, is where Bloke on the Range comes in.

@@jic1 it fails so much safer though.

I think you will find that is a fatigue failure, still a fine weapon.

The warning that Hatcher makes is about grease not allowing the case next to expand to release the bullet. The practice of "daubing" bullets was common in those days to reduce fouling the rifling but grease around the neck prevents the case neck from expanding and was the cause of a few failures of of the Springfield rifle during the early days. The bolt thrust increase is certainly an issue also but wasn't the main issue. A greased case will allow the pressure to follow Pascal's law of pressure in a pressure vessel that pressure is always equal in all directions.

@@thomasjefferson1457 glad to see someone who has read the book. You are correct but I think the chapter under emphasized the risk from lubing cartridges.

@@dbmail545 I think you may be right. I was wondering where in the UK you are. I'm not sure of the gun laws but thought that they had outlawed virtually everything over there. How are you able to own a gun like that. The SMLE was a popular rifle over here back in the 50's as it was sold as surplus after the war for next to nothing. I saw them for 10 dollars all the time back them and 15 dollars for virtually new condition. .303 Brit ammo was everywhere and super inexpensive. The "jungle carbine" was the most desirable of all the models and worth a fortune today if all original.

@@thomasjefferson1457 I'm in the increasingly unfree United States. Mostly I shoot 5.56 or 5.45 which are very easy on the shooter and the gun. A co-worker of mine many years ago had the NRA republication which I talked him out of. I believe that anyone who has read Julian Hatcher can write for any firearms magazine.

@@dbmail545 Putting a drop of lubricant on the top round of a loaded magazine is a common practice or perhaps mispractice with the smith and wesson model 41 .22 cal target pistol. It is designed most say including smith and wesson to use the CCI standard velocity 40 grain lead bullet load. Some will not function with that load and others want to to use cheaper aguila standard velocity. Lubing a loaded round with oil increases the velocity of recoiling slide. It will batter a gun. Some target shooter put vast numbers of round through a gun over the course 30 or more years of actively competing and it is better to use the proper ammunition on one's gun. MSRP - $1,369.00 During an ammo crisis I may use the federal automatch that while high velocity is less than the velocity of typical high velocity in my opinion. I have not actually chronographed any. I also use a buffer in my gun and I maybe should be replace it now.

Funny that

my god, are you saying the world's biggest empire (at the time) knew how to supply its armies??

@@slaughterround643 and or James Lee knew what he was on.

(didn't he only work on the magazine?)

@Lilac Tortoise um.... okay....... okay.

That is exactly why. If a bolt is below spec and fails in the field it puts at risk the investment the crown and government have put into training the soldier

Factor of safety its called.

There are ways of detecting flaws of that sort as you mention. I wonder just how common such flaws were. With the 303 service round and even 7.62x51 nato loads the flaw would have never been an issue.

It really does look like fatigue all the way. Cut off the other lug, should be a crack there as well.

@@mattiasostklint7764 should be able to do a non-destructive test to find a crack.

@@coreys2686 X-rays. They are used to detect fatigue and microfisures in metals. Apparently inspectors and engineers use portable x-ray units to scan steel members of bridges for faults. Should be applicable to firearms as well.

@@ckl9390 no kidding. That's one of the techniques they use in NDT. That and using electric arcing systems (I haven't thought about those things in about 20 years)

Anything south of Watford is France.

Ebi Wright skip a bit brother

And the LORD spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin, then shalt thou count to three, no more, no less. Three shall be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, neither count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it.

1959Edsel while ive always loved this scene, the line 'five is right out' has ne (😂😂) choking with laughter every time. Tears etc.

Someone had an r/wooosh moment didnt they

1, 2, 5

Since before then.

@@skepticalbadger I think you may be right - what sort of timeline are you thinking? For me its the Martinis and onward..

The only problem with a 300 WM Smellie...its a single shot only. Sigh...but that would be an awesome rifle!!

@@GunnerAsch1 Don't give up on the dream; we can find a longer magazine, we can make this work.

fluted chamber

Well, it was built during wartime with bombs dropping nearby on occasion, so you can likely excuse a few shortcuts being taken. However, this should have been caught during the conversion to 7.62. A simple magnafluc or dye penetrant would have caught it.

After "The Book of Small Arms" I expected to hear 'Here, endeth the lesson!'

After the 10 dry rounds, given that there was no change on the gauge I reckon it would have gone on forever if we'd kept that up.

@@BlokeontheRange considering the flaw it stood up to the lubricated ammo surprisingly well

@@BlokeontheRangeI imagine it would have. Learn something new every video.

Not sure how common it was but I remember the No4 being taken out of cadet service in the UK - I think in the 90s - after a lug sheared on couple of rifles. When I was in the cadets in the 70s our school had about 30 No4s and one year at camp in Sennybridge one of the rifles had one of the locking lugs shear. No one was hurt and it wasn't even noticed until the rifle was cleaned.

Artifact from the hammering

I had a four digit thru my hands - WW1 WW2 rebarreled after WW2 and CMP then to me and to my customer - he asked the question - and decided to fire light loads - I would not have bothered other than for the value of the rifle !

That's pretty much my view on the utility of proofing. And having been to one of the UK proof houses, nothing filled me with confidence with what they're doing there... But that's another story entirely...

But the issue is that a proof test is a semidestrictive test, and could open up a small flaw that wouldn't have occurred without proofing. With old-school casting/forging of barrels, a material flaw should be big enough to cause catastrophic failure. There's always limit cases of course though (the interesting stuff happens at the margins :) )

I think y’all are on to something. Just about any centerfire firearm is going to eventually fail it seems. If you read the posts from Henderson defense on ar15.com where they discuss failures of their mostly machine guns at their rental range in Las Vegas. Almost everything breaks. Glocks. AKs. ARs. Some stuff breaks after Shockingly few rounds. Some after 100,000+. And all of this is with proper ammo and gunsmiths to watch over. The failures are of nearly all description. It’s important to remember that the types of steels used in these things plus the heat treatment. They in no way behave like say steel on bridges and buildings (ductile). Never mind the loading is entirely different (static vs shock). Plus it’s not like they had finite element software back in the day to engineer these things. I suspect a lot of it was testing and experience. I’d love to know how they calculated (if at all) “oh the bolt lugs should be this big. Or how thick the barrel at the chamber. Or how thick the receiver wall. Seems to me firing proofs just counts as basically prematurely aging the rifle. Figure if it’s going to last 10,000 normal rounds. It might last 8000 plus a proof.

I have to disagree with the thought that cast iron is not susceptible to fatigue failures. As it inherently has a lot of flaws because it was not compacted like forged parts or plate material, the graphite will add a LOT of stress concentrations (eg lamellar graphite) and like composite materials, it has delamination issues between graphite and the rest of the iron. Cracks can and will grow in cast irons, with stresses well below yield, just like in most metals. Proof testing is not a fatigue test, that is clear. I see it as an lowered ultimate stress test, basically to prevent the gun from blowing up right away and it is done with loads over the yield and operating stresses. And it probably will nock down the fatigue life a bit. But it is the next best thing and a balance between economic factors and safety of the gun. There is at least a chance that you can detect cracks before the gun blows up from fatigue issues, but there is no chance if the gun blows up on its first round fired. Until the 50's or so, most aircraft were only tested to ultimate loads, so for example you just bent a wing once to see if it could hold the calculated ultimate load a single time without braking. As the aircraft was only expected to see loads up to yield stress, you basically accounted for fatigue by applying a load factor (ultimate divided by yield) and you got to test the aircraft above its expected envelope for singular events like very hard landings and the like. If course, nowadays fatigue is better understood and there are whole departments in aircraft companies focusing only on fatigue and it dictates a lot of the design of aircrafts.

@kev french If I may ask, how do you case harden it? Just out of engineers curiosity ;-) I am not excatly convinced that forging offers that many advantages in material properties compared to milling from a plate with proper specs . The Metallic Materials Properties Development and Standardization (MMPDS) which is basically THE material standard in aerospace, does not give different strength or fatigue curves for forged and milled parts.

My understanding is that the rimmed 7.62x54r was kept for MG's because it fed well from a belt and extracted very positively.

Rolling block and falling block are annoyingly strong

@@MyLonewolf25 On the rolling block, it depends on the steel and specific model. the later models consider strong enough for the 7x57. The earlier models are said to be restricted to black powder loads.

@@loquat4440 Correct. There are many rolling blocks chambered in modern cartridges such as 3006, x54R and so on. The 1901 and later Remingtons were 50kspi actions.

The Mosin is a ridiculously strong action. If you look at what needs to fail for an injury to happen, it would take a massive amount of pressure. I have a Mosin chambered in 375 H&H that has given years of excellent hunting, it's on my channel here. Clark Magnusen (a well known destroyer of rifles) built one in 7mm Rem Mag successfully. The mosin will handle anything up through 500 Jeffery, which I have built. That rifle's failure was the extractor (had to knock every round out of the chamber with a cleaning rod), but there was never a question of action strength.

You wouldn’t have a stuck firing pin in the Lee action. The pin is cammed well out of the bolthead as soon as the handle is lifted.

We just don't know unless they actually blow up and show the flaw in the break like this one did.

@@BlokeontheRange would it show up if you x-rayed the bolt?

@@norwegianwiking It might, if angled right. Magnaflux testing would certainly show it.

norwegianwiking Yes it would show up a progressive fatigue fracture which was the dark discoloured bit. There's many scary things beneath the pretty surfaces as I found out with my ex wife....(ah wine talking - she wasn't that pretty)

@@BlokeontheRange I think that I heard you say "Small" lug. So if this mechanism fails does it mean that there is still a stronger one which would protect the shooter?

You'll never guess what we're planning :)

If they put another bolt in it would work just fine.

I wondered about modern analytical methods too. But they would take quite a while on each gun and be rather expensive unless you were dealing with something irreplaceable.

Which is why there's no arbitrage trade in them :)

@@BlokeontheRange if I send you my .303 No4 magazine and a few pounds, could you send it back but with a funny Enfield stamp on it, an ejector and a feed ramp that may help it feed .308 a bit better please? ;)

I will soon have 3 unicorn 7.62 mags + extractors. Acquired by buying 3 rifles with them already fitted!

One heck of a job you have, Bloke! (Job? Hobby? ...Jobby?)

Not worth much here really.So many of them around for couple hundred bucks if you know where to look,original 303's are climbing in price but still way cheaper than overseas.My Lithgow no1mk3* cost me about 600usd(im the first registered owner!) and my no4mk1 about 500usd, both 9/10 rifles all matched.The SMLE still has armoury paint on barrel under timber.I purchased them a few years ago, prices have risen a bit but not hugely,you really have to know where to purchase,local used gun websites are NOT the place to find them either, those are all way over priced.

I've seen those in 458 win mag!

What a horrific notion

Dont think its in the bloke on the range ammo budget.. nore do i think they got that long..

@@BigATB The .458 win mag is no higher pressure than the .30-06. The bore size of a cartridge has nothing to do with the pressure it generates. There are plenty of large bore low pressure cartridges. The .45-70 in light loads runs around 25000psi. There are also small bore cartridges that run up to 65000psi. The P14 is just a modified Mauser 98, and the Mauser 98 is an amazingly strong action.

@@kylemichaels3373 it’s definitely not a modified Mauser 98. It was its own distinct design. It has similarities but it’s definitely not a Gew….

No, didn't re-do it. Haven't had the opportunity.

Probably indefinitely if it didn't have the flaw.

20 years ago you buy one for $50

@@johnstacy7902 And then the shop owner would throw in another complete Enfield and a couple boxes of .303, just to clear up some space.

you can get privi for $`12 a box on line.

True, ive seen some guys on youtube showing of SMLE's they have purchased over there for crazy money,6,7 or even 800 USD.Now im not saying a GOOD SMLE is not worth that, these were mismatched rough as guts,only a couple hundred Aussie dollerdoos here.One of the very fee advantages of being an Aussie firearm enthusiast.

@@TheRealColBosch Thats why I have more than a dozen...lol

You'd need to find a bunch of them at auctions, buy them, get them shipped to a tame dealer in the UK, get HGSS Shipping Services to send them to Polaris Worldwide Logistics in the US and throw a lot of money and time at it...

The nitrocellulose propellant in the MkVIII ammunition tended to burn the leade (Throat) of the LE barrel, and the boat tailed projectile had less engagement area in the rifling than the flat based MkVII. During WWII it was only fired from LEs and Brens as an emergency measure, because it permanently reduced accuracy. I suspect that recruits were told that it was dangerous to use because self preservation is a powerful motivator.

@@webtoedmanyou got that wrong, it was cordite that burned the barrels over time. The nitrocellulose propellant burned cooler, that’s why it was introduced for machine gun use. The boat tail bullet was the reason for not using it in rifles, as they didn’t seal well in the bore, so caused rapid wear.

1. There is no specific proofing test for any particular action - proofing tests are a specified overpressure for a given cartridge. 2. Neither SAAMI nor CIP has a different standard for 7.62x51 and .308 WIN. CIP even explicitly states them as synonyms. Don't believe things you read on the Internet from people who've collected various figures from various sources (including military specs) and put them together - the authorities who define these things don't distinguish them. 3. Canada does not have a civilian firearms proof law so you won't see a proof house 19T mark, that's a British thing. 4. The .303 Mk.VII service load was indeed about 19T. Done with an axial copper crusher, not the US-style lateral one. 5. You seem to be confusing the proof pressure with the "rating of the action". The proof pressure is simply defined by the cartridge and has no bearing on what the action will actually take. 6. Yes, any No.4 action can easily handle 7.62x51/308 Win. The UK NRA had been reading Fuddlore and recommended resubmitting No.4 7.62's to a proof for a higher 20T service load instead of the earlier 19T (actual proof pressure being of course above this in both cases). I have not heard of any failures.

@@BlokeontheRange Thanks for your prompt response much appreciated; my reloads with this particular rifle have all been with no higher than 155 gr bullets and keeping fps on the mild side below 2700 fps, will eventually work-up some 168 reloads to see how it groups. It can consistently shoot under 1 MOA with a plain 150 grn round nose Hornady’s at 2500 fps 125 yards ( avg .6 to .7 MOA groups ). Again thanks

Bolt is matching numbered to the receiver IIRC.

Yes. In fact I had to borrow the sights off another rifle to put on this for the tests, just so we could align it safely. Without the target sights and in a ropey set of furniture with a 7.62mm barrel and 303 magazine there isn't much call for these. A complete original TR covnersion is a similar price to a good standard No.4

Indeed, we were kinda amazed. A new bolt, correctly fitted, and that receiver is still good to go cos there was no damage to it.

Might be worth doing if you have an Enfield.

Wow, that's the first time I've ever seen anyone say they read that the receivers needed to be re-heat-treated - where did you read that nonsense? 10's of thousands of conversions both civilian and military prove otherwise... And ".308 Win is higher pressure than the military loading" is a classic case of writers comparing a max pressure spec to a service pressure spec... Neither CIP nor SAAMI differentiate: 7.62 NATO is simply a particular subset of .308 Win loadings.

@@BlokeontheRange I think this was either on Milsurps or Gunboards. Either way, it sounded like BS, and I'm happy to have seen it confirmed!

There's rust in the defect. "massive rust defect" is not a phrase we used.

Call it rust if you want. I'll refrain from commenting.

When you see the thing in real life there's black bits, which are not rust, and brown bits, which are clearly rust.