Low Number '03 catastrophic failure- recent.

[firstflabn]

Slam, I appreciate your research, but you ought to pick up a copy of Brophy's Arsenal of Freedom, containing SA's Annual Reports. It might cause you to rethink some of your conspiracy theories while providing support for your technical points. Here's a couple of clues, some pretty clear; others suggesting more research is needed.

1) In FY1900: "The temperature at which barrels were heated for rolling and for annealing has, by means of the pyrometer recently purchased, been somewhat reduced..." Thus, even before the '03 was adopted, the technology was there and it was being used in the forging temp range.

2) In FY1906 another pyrometer purchase is mentioned, this one for "hardening springs and other components of the rifle." Again, the technology was there.

3) FY1919 mentions a new pyrometer system. This may be the source of assumptions that prior to the controversy there was no system present. The tale of the old hands rejecting the "new fangled" devices is just BS. This description does say the new system provided "more dependable temperature control than was formerly in use." No surprise there, as progress marches on.

This leads to an aside. Carbon content also affects the temp at which burning begins to happen. Thus, I think there's plenty of room for a combination of varying chemistry and somewhat inaccurate pyrometers allowing receiver blanks to be burnt - even with the best of intentions. I would suggest that the early pyrometer problem was not in the device's accuracy but rather a lack of understanding of the temp variability in different parts of the furnace. Also, the wartime annual reports repeatedly mention drop forgers as one of the trades in short supply.

One speculative point based on science: the core temp of a blank could not be measured back then. Burning can take place in the center and the outside can be fine - so the eyeball method could be dead on, but the chewy chocolate center could still be burnt. Further, the temp at the center can be raised by more rapid cycles of the drop hammer (from friction). Again, an opportunity for inexperienced or hurried drop forgers to burn steel on the inside.

4) One last one from FY1924: they were etching their massive pile of left over barrel blanks to check for burning - which sounds like the modern way to check for burnt steel (but I can't be sure they had a complete understanding). It says they found 2-3% of barrel blanks in inventory were burnt. OOPS! As you'll see below, this is AFTER they started checking every lot for chemistry, so the burnt barrels came from overheating during forging.

5) One more, one last thing: FY1918 report says in describing their brand new metallurgical lab (which, of course, was part of the post-Feb 1918 fixes), "Chemical analyses are now made for all the steel entering components or tools." DOUBLE OOPS!! I guess this means they had no such procedure previously and just accepted suppliers' attestations.

I don't understand the possible interplay between overhardening from burnt steel and overhardening from improper heat treatment. The SA reports describe efforts in the '20s to rehabilitate pre-1918 receivers by using the double heat treatment methods. It is now known that the physical properties of near burnt steel (which also suffers from brittleness) can be improved with careful heat treating (heat treating is done 500 deg cooler than forging). Maybe the spotty improvement they saw was of the near burnt receivers. Too bad they didn't save their failures for examination using today's knowledge.

[slamfire]

Slam, I appreciate your research, but you ought to pick up a copy of Brophy's Arsenal of Freedom, containing SA's Annual Reports. It might cause you to rethink some of your conspiracy theories while providing support for your technical points. Here's a couple of clues, some pretty clear; others suggesting more research is needed.

Thanks for the lead, I will have to find the Brophy's book and read it. With more information, my conspiracy theories will of course change to fit the new content.

Very interesting summary of events from your book. It was of course, very embarrassing for the Army to have produced 1,000,000 rifles that were so defective as a group, that in 1927 an Army board recommended scrapping the lot. I would like anyone to point out just when the Army made this known to the world. We know that in the middle of a shooting war they shut down SA and probably RIA, and yet, I cannot find that in the popular press of the period or even decades later. We find about that in 1947 when Hatcher writes about it. We also know that Hatcher was in on the ground floor of this, and if Hatcher knows in 1917, then Captain Crossman knows, Major Townsend Whelen knows, and I would like to know, just when did these gentlemen start telling the world about the suspect nature of these rifles? What where they saying between 1917 and 1927? What where they saying afterward?

Something I have not discussed to date is the ethics of the thing. We know, from Hatcher's Notebook that the 1927 board found that 1/3 of these single heat treat receivers would blow in an overpressure situation. Hatcher does not put a lot of time into this, but it would be interesting if the board determined just how many receivers would blow with standard loads. But anyway, the board was looking at a potential 333,000 rifles blowing up in service, with overpressure ammunition, if all the black holes in the universe happened to align. That is possibly 333,000 service men injured with these things, max. Of course the minimum number is a little harder to determine. The board probably thought that was unethical to expose their men to such risk by issuing known defective equipment. Army leadership thought otherwise.

So, does an employer owe the workforce a safe workplace? Is it ethical for an employer to require an employee to work in an environment where the probability of injury is high? Just how many injured Soldiers, Sailors, Marines is the ethical limit? Let say only 100,000 Soldiers, Sailors, Marines are injured compared with a possible maximum of 330,000, does that make it ethical to issue these rifles to the workforce? How many injured people must there be before it starts to trouble you?

Mind you, at the time the Services did not carry the cost of rehabilitation. If you were injured back then, they stabilized you, once you could walk out of the infirmary on your own power, you either resumed your duties, or you were discharged and were on your own. Free to find whatever employment you could missing that one eye, one hand, or a jawbone that was taken off when your rifle exploded in front of your face. Today, the Services are obsessively safety conscious because now, the money to fix Soldiers, Sailors, Marines comes out of their budget, and they have to budget for the lifetime care. But back in the early decades of the 20th century, it was simply cheaper to injure your workforce than to provide them with proper working conditions, safe tools, etc.

When people use the Army decision to hurt their force work as a justification to use these things, I would like them to justify that decision in terms of potential people hurt. Just how many people is it OK to hurt because their lives and health are worth less than a $40.00 rifle?

[bruce]

When people use the Army decision to hurt their force work as a justification to use these things, I would like them to justify that decision in terms of potential people hurt. Just how many people is it OK to hurt because their lives and health are worth less than a $40.00 rifle? Please remember, this was the tail end of the gilded age, that era when the rights of individual employees in industry... of military service, were simply not a big deal. This was the era when girls painted watch faces licking the brush they used to get good results. They then contracted cancer... of the jaw, etc. They were vilified as bad girls... loose, etc. suffering the consequences of their own immorality. Later it came out that the paint used was to blame. Guess there's no good way to to expose workers to radioactive junk... in the name of production. The girls still sickened and died. As to the soldiers... they'd been coming home shot up, broken, burned for years and years. WWI was nothing new and the aftermath for wounded veterans was nothing new. In my first pastoral appointment, I had a member whose husband came home injured by poison gas. He survived ... until finally just before WWII, he died due to complications from the gas. Like I said, people were looked upon as consumables. Puts the wage and hour laws, fair labor practices laws, etc. in a different light. JMHO. sincerely. bruce.

[slamfire]

It is now known that the physical properties of near burnt steel (which also suffers from brittleness) can be improved with careful heat treating (heat treating is done 500 deg cooler than forging).

I would like more information on this. I consulted several references on "burnt" steel. The ASM Materials handbook, several other handbooks, and a metallurgist. One technical book showed the results of reheating a burnt forging, showed the microstructure after numerous heat treatment cycles and concluded that the part could not be restored to new, or even acceptable condition. The ASM Materials handbook had a long section on forge temperatures and overheating steels, as a warning, but I found nothing indicating that burnt steel could be restored to new or acceptable conditions. The metallurgist told me that over heated steel is unusable because elements are burnt out. He said carbon, but that was off the top of this head. I would think that if you burnt the carbon out you would be making the steel closer to wrought iron and thus it would be softer.

So, where have you found information that burnt steel can be restored to either new, or an acceptable condition by reheat treats?

As for the SA reports that indicate pyrometers were around, if they were using pyrometers in the forge room, then why where steel forgings being overheated? Could it be that the pyrometers did not work, or that there were not enough of them around, or that they were not used in that application. The Watertown Report also shows that receivers got out of the Arsenal without being heat treated, which shows to me, a chaotic process flow where things get tossed into the production line and no one knows if the part is good or is bad. If you recall, Hatcher states that they knew they producing bad rifles so the Arsenal increased the proof pressures. This is something worth exploring because many readers of Hatcher's Notebook have this opinion that the purpose of a proof test is to blow the rifle up. I see this expressed all the time and it must come from Hatcher's Notebook and what the Army was doing prior to WW1. A proof test should not be a destructive test, it is usually a 30% over test. This percentage overstress is customary, but not unreasonable. Anyway it is usual practice, has been usual practice for centuries to subject firearms to an overpressure test, one that stresses the system, but not destructively. No rifle should come unglued with 30% over pressures, no firearm should blow up after being subjected to 30% over pressures. In fact, if any firearm blows up due to a 30% overpressure test than something is seriously wrong with the production line. I believe the idea that a proof test is a destructive test is a fallacious idea based around the confused and inept manufacturing behaviors practiced by the Army. If the holders of this idea thought about it, it sure does not make sense to operate a factory, buy all the materials and machines, pay the workers to produce perfectly acceptable rifles, only to blow each and every rifle into pieces at proof test.

However, at Springfield Armory they were blowing up rifles at the end of the production with the standard proof test. Now this is the important part, instead of asking themselves why they were producing bad rifles, investigate where they were producing bad rifles, and then fix the production processes so they would stop making bad rifles, according to Hatcher all they did was to increase the proof pressures at the end of the production, to, in effect, blow up more rifles. So you can see why people might be confused that the proof test is a destructive test, because that is exactly what the Army was doing: blowing up more rifles.

Now I can tell you that back then the acceptance procedures assumed a certain amount of bad product was going out the door. You can look at Mil Std 105 and the Acceptable Quality Limits (AQL's). Mil Std 105 is a very old military sampling plan and it assuming that there are a certain number of bad products in every lot. There are sampling procedures where, let's say, you take five widgets out of a lot of 200 widgets, and if 3 of the five are bad, then you pull out another five widgets out of the lot, and if 2 are bad, not 3, then the lot is accepted. But as the Quality Inspector, you know you just randomly pulled five bad widgets out of the lot and that there are probably a lot more left, but you accepted the lot for the Government. This sort of insane Quality Control acceptance tests would bankrupt a manufacturer in today's world. Today, if you are a supplier, you provide perfect parts. You provide them on time and each are perfect or you will find that the financial penalties levied by your customer, because you shipped them bad parts, will absolutely bankrupt your company. It is very important to read the details of your contract because Corporate entities who fork over perfectly good money expect perfectly good parts and supplies and the contract details the penalties to your company if you fail to meet expectations. Today, you either produce good parts or you go out of business. But it was not that long ago that it was perfectly acceptable to ship bad parts and you expected the Prime to sort through your garbage and figure which were good and which were bad. But for the Army not to go through their production processes and figure out why they were producing bad rifles, when they knew they were producing bad rifles, does not cast the organization into a forward leaning, progressive viewpoint. Rather it shows that they are in denial and really are not interested in putting forth the extra effort that it takes to fix their problems and make a good rifle. And the fact of the matter, from my research it shows, Springfield Armory was able to muffle and misdirect the problems with their rifles as long as the rifles blew up in the hands of Service Men and Civilians associated with military rifle shooting. It was not until two of their rifles blew up at a civilian cartridge manufacturer, an organization outside their sphere of control, and one that was also technically competent enough to call a spade a spade, and prove it to higher authority, that they were forced to address the problems with their production line.

If it had not been for National Brass and Copper Tube Company, Springfield Armory might have made 1,500,000 defective rifles instead of 1,000,000.

[clintonhater]

...if Hatcher knows in 1917, then Captain Crossman knows...

Hard to believe he did not, being THE small-arms technical authority in '17 I think even Hatcher would have acknowledged, and until his untimely death in '39; Whelen, much as I revere him, was by comparison but a talented amateur. Within the space of only two or three pages in Book of the Springfield, he dismisses failures of low-numbered receivers as irrelevant anomalies too rare to be of serious concern. (However, the '51 revision by armorer Roy Dunlap condemns them all, with 20 years' hindsight, as "unsafe.") Cover-up? No more brutally frank and absolutely un-cowable gunwriter ever lived, Elmer K. not excepted. So I'm inclined to believe that, in addition to being preoccupied with a multitude of other interests, he honestly did not regard these failures as anything but freakish aberrations unworthy of further handwringing. (His sincerity demonstrated by the low-numbers he continued to shoot.) One can be seriously mistaken without being party to a conspiracy.

[PhillipM]

Time has dimmed the memory but in 1987 I was in a welding, forging, and foundry class at Mississippi State University.

For the forging part, we had to make a chisel from hexagonal bar stock. We had to heat it up, chop it to length, form the chisel edge and temper it in such a way the point was hart as a whore's heart and it progressed to a relatively soft spot that the hammer struck.

The old professor said he selected the steel after reviewing the 400 most common steels. He picked the one we used because the tempering temperature could be determined by visual means. When the bar stock appeared to look like the mirage on a blacktop highway, shimmering, it was at the right temperature to remove it from the furnace, place on an anvil, and beat the crap out of it. When it went from red to black, we quit hitting it, in accordance with the axiom, only strike when the iron is hot, which means red, which means over 1000 deg F.

Once the chisel was roughly hammered out, and still red hot, it went to a bench grinder to fashion the chisel. Once the chisel point was formed we put it back in the forge till we saw "running water" visually and then hit it with the grinder to take the oxidation off so we could see the colors, purple and straw. I forget the specifics, but when the purple came, we dipped the point in the water quench, in and out. Then the straw color came and we quenched that area. Eventually we dunked the whole thing and prayed we did it right. The vast majority of us made a tool that passed the Rockwell tester on the C scale and we just had ONE time to get it right. No do overs.

The 1903 receiver is a complexly machined part with thick and thin areas I didn't have to deal with with my chisel. However, my chisel had to be hard on one end and soft on the other. At least a 1903 receiver only has to be uniform in hardness.

The forge we used was fueled by natural gas, it was as old as the hills, it was basically the size and shape of a 5 gallon bucket laying on it's side. The room had a lot of glass windows and fluorescent lighting. Looking in the forge for the "water" dancing on the steel, I can't imagine how a sunny or cloudy or thunderstorm day would have mattered one whit to me looking inside the 5 gallon bucket blazing with orange fire. From what I know, I'd call what we did a single heat treatment.

That's the sum of my forging experience, and I still have the chisel someplace.

[firstflabn]

Instead of buying pyrometers, workers were required to judge steel temperature based on their eyeballs.

In response to this, I provided facts to the contrary. Not finding those facts convenient, you dismissed them with a series of what-ifs. Further, you misread what I said about the near burnt temp range, then proceeded to argue against the misread statement. That's called a strawman.

In light of that track record, there's really no reason for me to take the time to present anything additional. Enjoy weaving your conspiracy theory/morality play.

[slamfire]

Further, you misread what I said about the near burnt temp range, then proceeded to argue against the misread statement. That's called a strawman.

Is this your problem?:, that I asked you question about this statement:

It is now known that the physical properties of near burnt steel (which also suffers from brittleness) can be improved with careful heat treating (heat treating is done 500 deg cooler than forging).

Well if I misunderstood what you meant, you might as well as addressed that instead of acting in a huff and retreating to your own angry fantasy universe about me and my intentions. I was wanting to know more about this and all I get from you is cant.

It is not even worth asking about how Springfield Armory or RIA or anyone in that period could determine whether a steel part is near burnt steel versus burnt steel. Or how the owner of a single heat treat receiver or bolt could with today's technology determine if their receiver or bolt is burnt or near burnt. Or how a near burnt steel part could be restored to new. Which is where I was going with my question. None of which was meant as an attack, it was a question.

Maybe someone else can ask you that, and get a reasoned response. This is something I have been asked, whether a single heat treat receiver could be determined to be good or bad and whether it could be restored to a good condition, and I provided what I have read and the sources I asked, and it is possible that they are wrong and maybe you found something new, something novel, something useful.

[kragluver]

In the first chapter of Mallory's Krag book there is an 1898 (I think) article from Scientific American that relates how Springfield had just installed their first pyrometers. I don't recall if these were being used in the forge shop or not. Also, in Ordnance reports dating from 1893, Springfield states that they had difficulties obtaining steel of sufficient quality for barrel and receiver manufacture for the Krags. Burst barrels were a common problem during proof testing. If I recall, these problems were resolved by 1898. I'm going by memory as I don't have my resources right here at work.

[Texraid]

Is this your problem?:, that I asked you question about this statement:


Well if I misunderstood what you meant, you might as well as addressed that instead of acting in a huff and retreating to your own angry fantasy universe about me and my intentions. I was wanting to know more about this and all I get from you is cant.

It is not even worth asking about how Springfield Armory or RIA or anyone in that period could determine whether a steel part is near burnt steel versus burnt steel. Or how the owner of a single heat treat receiver or bolt could with today's technology determine if their receiver or bolt is burnt or near burnt. Or how a near burnt steel part could be restored to new. Which is where I was going with my question. None of which was meant as an attack, it was a question.

Maybe someone else can ask you that, and get a reasoned response. This is something I have been asked, whether a single heat treat receiver could be determined to be good or bad and whether it could be restored to a good condition, and I provided what I have read and the sources I asked, and it is possible that they are wrong and maybe you found something new, something novel, something useful.

Umm, I don't think the original OP's intention was to ignite the perennial LN debate.

That said I will inject a a bit of levity

http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-06-07