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Maggie’s Motivational Pic Thread v2.0 - - New Rules - See Post #1

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@mgrs, ok, I will ask. Can you safely fire the rifle and if so do you have to be extra careful because of the age / composition of the metal?

Maxwell

I also have quite an old version as well. It is within the "this gun will blow up and take half of missouri with it" serial numbers. While I don't shoot it all the time I do shoot it.

IMHO this while it is true I think is greatly over blown.....get it. Really at this age I think it is no more likely to go kaboom over any other like age rifle provided you do not do something stupid.

And yes I have read it.
 
If they were delicious AND worth the trouble to harvest, gut, skin, butcher, clean, and cook, they would be as hard to find as legal sized walleyes in Wisconsin.
They are worth the trouble when you get a 50-150 pounder. The trouble is when you have lack of freezer space and the stench of rotting carcasses from the ones you left in the field. We started gut shooting them so that they don't fuck up Everybody's hunting areas. The buzzards are even getting picky now. I had 2 hog carcasses and a doe carcass in the bone pit opening day of bow season. Went to discard another hunters doe gut pile and my doe carcass was nothing but bones, nothing touched the hogs.
 
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@mgrs, ok, I will ask. Can you safely fire the rifle and if so do you have to be extra careful because of the age / composition of the metal?

Maxwell

@Maxwell

Generally, I have no problem firing 100+ year old firearms within their limitations.

This particular one is more complicated. As a 1906 production Rock Island, it falls well into the "Low Serial Number" batch of M1903 rifles. These rifles were/are famous for receivers bursting and bolts shattering lugs at a high rate (dozens of documented instances). This tendency is attributed to the 'old school' way they were heat-treated prior to ~1918, which involved expert craftsmen eyeballing the process and relying on their judgement.

No one really had any problems with it, or noticed into circa 1917-1918 when a couple intersecting problems magnified it- wartime production increased throughput with less attention applied to each gun, and more sub contractors were making ammunition, resulting in a lower average ammunition quality.

When the Ordnance Dept went back and applied pyrometers and 'science', they figured out the old eyeballing process resulted in heat treat temps of +/- 300F. Some receivers were just too hard, and brittle, as a result.

These receivers will generally hold if used properly, but will often shatter if: subjected to chamber pressures in excess of 70 000 PSI, a case head fails, or the receiver is stuck laterally with something hard. I suppose they could also crack when being rebarreled, although this seems to be more of a problem with M1917 rifles.

Back to the pictured gun, I'd probably be OK shooting it, but certainly would not push anything harder than M2 ball spec. That receiver has survived two rebarrels without cracking- first when the barrel was pulled and re-chambered to -06 spec, then again when it was re-barreled prior to WW1. Additionally, it has a later (1919) bolt that would have the proper treat and therefore not shear lugs.
 
Little fundraiser for an injured officer who is friends with one of our members.

 
I also have quite an old version as well. It is within the "this gun will blow up and take half of missouri with it" serial numbers. While I don't shoot it all the time I do shoot it.

IMHO this while it is true I think is greatly over blown.....get it. Really at this age I think it is no more likely to go kaboom over any other like age rifle provided you do not do something stupid.

And yes I have read it.

Thank you. I am always full of questions.

Maxwell