Now, whenever someone says "the Lee-Enfield action is weak, blah blah blah.." And since that rifle has served for such a long time, the material fatigue argument goes out of the window too.
@@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.
I read Hatcher's Notebook where he warns against greasing or oiling cartridges. This is the first demonstration of that I have seen. Pretty wild that the flawed bolt served so well.
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.
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
Those go for considerably more in the states, even in that "ugly" stste. They were mostly done professionally and the Parker-Hale models are very nice. To build a rifle like that today would cost several thousand dollars if done by any decent gunsmith. I would much have an Enfield or Mauser action than any new Rem 700 or the like. He is correct about the sights. They were usually all steel and very tightly fitted. Try finding some of the Parker-Hale target sights for the P14/P17 or the Mauser cocking piece aperture sight. They are English old world craftsmanship at it's finest. I still watch the entire hour long Bisley documentary from years ago so I'm a bit biased to those old rifles.
I wonder if the crack would have shown up if the action was converted and proofed here in Australia? When they were tested over here, a proof round was fired then the action was magnetically flux tested for cracks. Not sure if the same crack testing was done in UK when proofed for 7.62mm.
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.
Hey Bloke, that wasn't a material flaw, that is a fatigue crack. That lug would've eventually failed under normal firing conditions, the higher stresses produced from the .300 Win Mag just accelerated the failure.
@@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)
"What has been done to this is it has been reamed... it has been given a..." "A (???) ream," "... good reaming" "-thoroughly reamed," "Thoroughly reamed." cheeky!
Im quite impressed. I have a small collection of #4s..a dozen or so, one of which is chambered in 45-70. Ive had no unusual problems with any of them. The large wartime chambers tend to leave the web of the brass badly stretched in repeated reloadings, even with neck sizing only, but even with the odd case head seperation over the years...no issues noted.
Consult the Book of Armaments! Armaments, chapter two, verses nine to twenty-one. And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, "O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade that, with it, Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits in Thy mercy." And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals and fruit bats and large chu--
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.
I trust that my 3 Mark 4 #2s will never fail. I am building a custom Enfield action from scratch. My custom will be fitted specifically for the 30-30 Win. It will be my all purpose rifle shooting bullets from 100gr. to 170gr. Because I will use pointed bullets tge ballistics will certainly be improved. I can hardly wait to have a "Mini-Lee Enfield" battle carbine. I suspect a custom magazine will give me a 12 round capacity.
Makes you approach the engineering required to make delayed blowback rifles work properly, given that in those the case has to start moving (albeit slowly) right at the moment of firing.
I saw the exact same failure on a No4 7.62 conversion while I was shooting the Canadian Target Rifle Championships. A light rain had started and a shooter didn’t keep his ammo and or action dry. The bolt dad a spiral crack jus around the locking lug area and was immediately out of action. I don’t know if the rear lug failed or not nor do I know if there was another flaw in the bolt. But it failed in exactly the same way. I believe the rifle had been converted at Long Branch arsenal, so it was properly done.
Hi, great video! I'm 99.99% sure the failure was not due to a material defect at the time of manufacture. I feel it might help if you look up the topic of material fatigue, and especially "stress concentration factor" with regards to steel fatigue, and how a steel component might fail after a number of loading cycles, despite there being no material defect at the time of manufacture. Humbly I would suggest the failure is likely a combination of the following; Design - did not consider fatigue mitigating features such as minimum radii in sharp corners or whether the method of manufacture might unintentionally introduce stress concentration due to rough/pitted/scratched surface, post-machining. Quality issue - almost too much to expand on, but factors such as correct heat treatment, correct material specification, etc etc.. The key point to understand with fatigue is; every load cycle damages the component, the larger the load, the more damage this introduces, almost exponentially with load. The utterly perverse thing about this is, sending the rifle to a proof house might suddenly accelerate the damage to a point where it passes proof, but at the same time the very next shot will break it.
How many other guns are out there sporting minor flaws undetected due to overengineering? Is it a rarity that you just so happened to get to see, or a common pattern all around?
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?
If you can see the individual grain size of the fractured steel, you have a very poor heat treat. With steel you should normalize the work piece. I.e. bring the piece up to critical temperature (non magnetic) then let it cool naturally, preferably out of the wind. After doing this at least two times you should harden the piece then draw the temper. This piece has been heated far more than is good for the steel. It was heated almost to burning. Burnt steel had no use besides bouncing off the head of the idiot who burned it in the first place.It's only luck that this didn't fail while being shot in combat or some other such use.
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.
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.
Interesting proof test. I have a WWII No. 4 Mk 1 in original military configuration and another sporterized version. Considering the mfg fault in the bolt, No 4 did rather well.
@@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? ;)
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 greatly appreciated the discussion of the rimmed versus rimless cartridges with the extraction groove relative to strength. Maybe the Russians were right in keeping their Rimmed 7.62x54 round. Be interesting to try out your testing with the mosin nagant with various loads including magnum chamberings. Might be a problem getting the stock extractor to work with the smaller rim size of the most modern magnum rounds. I know many of the of older black power guns are quite capable of containing massive over loads. Trap door spring rifle based on the allen conversion is considered to be much weaker than the Martini-Henry and yet will hold together for at least once for massive overload with smokeless power. Greatly enjoyed your video.
@@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.
An interesting test. That does seem "ambitious" rebarreling a No.4 in .300 Win Mag, but as you pointed out: it would have most likely passed proof with dry ammunition and probably could have been used without issue for many years afterwards (just like it did in .303 and in 7.62/.308) with that flawed bolt.
I'm wondering if the length of bolt between the lugs and the case is actually helping soften the blow from the cartridge? Everything compresses to some extent under load, so that length in front of the lugs is acting like a very stiff spring. And as anyone who's tried drifting something in/out of a tight interference fit will attest, even the slightest give in the load path will soak up all your effort and make it much harder to get things moving. I guess the same applies to lugs and over loads.
I don't believe that was a manufacturing fault in the bolt, it is a fatigue crack and the 300winmag only accelerated the failure. I am not suggesting the enfield wasn't a fine weapon.
And yet some armies spec oiled cartridges for their weapon systems, i.e. Swede AG-42, Japanese 6.5x50 in the Type-11... The AG-42 manual even states "During longer firing pauses the chamber should be cleaned with the tool and lubed with # 042 lubricant". I have an AG-42 that I handload for, and leave just a touch of resizing lube remaining on the rounds. have fired "dry' rounds too, with no ill effects. Also if I am remembering correctly, I read in a British arms manual concerning military proofing, that using an oiled cartridge of whatever type was part of the official process. As for practical strength concerning rear-locking bolt rifles, I owned a French MAS-36 of wartime manufacture, and I'd hate to think what it would take to destroy that massive action... Makes my No4 MkII look like downright sickly.
The flawed lug made me think of the concern over 'low-number' Springfield '03s and the questionable heat treat. Though there are many warnings about weak receivers, actual failures have been few and far between. In fact, low-number rifles continued in service (including combat) up into early WWII.
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 !
Sorry I've just reviewed the footage at 22:42, I don't see a "massive rust defect" - the discoloured area creeps out from the lug, the area has striations on on it. I'd say that this had weakened to to fatigue. Fatigue failure to completion may take Perhaps in the order of several thousand cycles. The fatigue failure mechanism may well have been initiated as you say by a latent defect such as a non radiused ninty degree section or a sharp cut left by a machine tool. The dark are is not rust its fatigue. This rifle was destined to fail eventually after a ridiculous amount of time (don't they all?). It has suffered fatigue to to a initial crack initiation. This is not the fatigue of bending a paper clip to destruction but cyclic fatigue under the yield stress of the metal. What you have done is taken a rifle bolt (suffering from metallurgical fatigue (say man with slow terminal cancer) and quickened the demise by catastrophic failure due to the last lubricated cartridges (hitting poor cancer man over head with sledge hammer or multiple blows from your fellow conspirators rubber mallet) I expect this rifle would have performed flawlessly for decades into the future with moderate use. This is my theory and I'm open to critic metallurgists.
Wonder if fluted chambers would have the same effect as the oil. Thus requiering a stronger action. I assume the same for pre waxed cartridges. Interesting note is that the Swedish armed forces did, what I think was utrasonic tests, on all of their m96 actioned rifles and discovered micro cracks on a good persentage of the bolt lugs. Non of wich was visable to the naked eye. Thanks for an awsome wideo
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.
there are about 3 thumb nail beach marks that are caused by constant loading and unloading over a long period much like the material testing we carried out at the university over 30 years
BOTR , Nice Video , one of My concerns was that you never checked at any point if you had a stuck or proud Firing pin , as that could be a potential disaster racking that bolt forward hard , without it being locked , When I bought both My No 4 mk 1 and my 7mm Chilean Mauser , I pulled the bullet out of A round and emptied the powder and racked that case just to make sure , then fired them both held out at arms length , As I didn't know either guns history
That is a rather substantial and impressive failure. Never really occurred to me that the bolt body itself would break, more so that pieces just shear off.
@@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.
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.
I have been target shooting and hunting with a Lee-Enfield CN #4 Mk 1* Long Branch 1955 as a 308 since the early eighties ( not NATO 7.62x51 ), barrel change, bedding etc … were all carried out professionally. Headspace is perfect and I just keep a close eye on brass because it stretches more due to the Enfield having a rear bolt locking lug. I’ve started reloading about 3 years ago and was unable to source info on the pressure proofing test of this specific model action when it was chambered in 303, don't see any 19T stamp on bolt head nor rifle. Back in the day, wasn’t the 19T (42560 psi) for the 303 cartridge and the 24T (53760 psi) for the proof cartridge all done via copper plug crushing technique (CUP) vs the piezo strain gauge of today’s psi data ? Reason I am asking is because 308 commercial at 62 000 psi and NATO round at 60 000 psi both exceed the psi ratings of the standard #4 Enfield action yet the L42A1 sniper was utilized successfully with the NATO 7.62 round within those old Lee Enfield No. 4 Mk1*(T) actions! All this to say, is there any technical data that states that a CN #4 Mk 1* Long Branch action can safely handle the pressures delivered by today’s modern 308 ammo?
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
As a machinist I find this very interesting and it also makes me wonder what the testing method was at production. What methods were even available at that time? I know I dye penatrent test would have found that. Also are the bolts stress relieved?
Well... that was unexpected. While the oiled cartridges looked like they would have been really unpleasant to shoot, I didn't expect the action to give way. It didn't look much worse than firing a rifle grenade and the FAL locking system is significantly less substantial than that of the No.4. Assuming all recruits did the same drills since the rifle was new, 535 rifle grenades (both training and live ones) would have been fired with it by the time I got my grubby mits on it and it still worked fine. I therefore was quite surprised to see the No.4 fail. Introduce an old crystalline fault to the equation and such assumptions go right out of the window, of course. The fact it proofed and functioned for as long as it did, is a testament to having engineering margins.
The grain structure on that bolt looks like sugar or salt and pepper which is very indicative of large grain sizes which means it has not been hardened properly. The grain should look like a dark grey colour not like sugar. I’d like to know which factory produced that bolt because I’m not surprised they was a defect with grain structure like that. It’s hard to tell if it had it from new or from wear and tear but because it’s at a pressure point I’d say it’s from wear and tear. You can see that the crack stopped working it’s way down for some time which is probably when it’s been racked after WW2 and stood unused for a long time and then began again as the lighter colour is obviously indicates newer cracking after it’s been sold surplus and started cracking again with use. Makes you wonder doesn’t it ??? WOW ! THATS SCARY MAN. I’m gonna get my bolt dye indicator tested now for cracks. I’ve got a friend who is a NDT specialist.
It will be fitted precisely by having the locking surfaces lapped to each other. No point in doing the test with the risk of only 1 lug being in contact.
It's more that the specs are loose cos you've got 4 things that have to line up properly. If they don't, you've only got 1 lug bearing. If it's the small one, you'll probably be done in a few shots of 300WM.
@@BlokeontheRange ya I'm pretty sure midwayusa had a video on how to do it. But that was for accuracy. It's good that you cut the chamber tight tho because now you shouldn't have any headspace problems after fitting the lugs. Was that intentional?
Two Englishmen go out in the midday sun with a bizarre plan to destroy a nice No.4 rifle to find out what pressure it could handle. They succeed in the destruction using a cartridge it was never designed for with about 20% more pressure pre oiling than 303. Over pressure will find the weakest point, it must eventually. In the end we did not get the answer to how strong is a No.4 (pressure wise)BUT they did have fun and they weren't out shooting road signs.
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
The effect of 'oiling' the case is not as great as a lot of people think/assume, as the case in front of the case head (where it expands to 'grip' the chamber) relatively thin (in most cases about 15 thou) and calculating for the cross sectional area of the case and the yield strength of the brass etc., the case only holds back about the equivalent to 5000psi on an average case/cartridge/pressure combination. Meaning that the difference between a dry case and an 'oiled' case will only be equivalent to that (approx.) 5000psi. Sorry to the European readers of this, but when I talk gun I talk UK imperial units, it's just the way I am. ;-)
correct calculation for recoil force from firing on bolt is (peak pressure*case bottom area)- (peak pressure* case cylinder outside surface area* friction coefficient). oil drastically reduce friction coefficient.
I don't know what was in your mind when you doing your calculation but from what you said you are calculating for case head separation without bolt support.
@@alexxu3004 yes the oil will reduce the friction coefficient, but the back thrust on the bolt is (peak pressure*case bottom area)-(case wall cross section area*brass yield strength) as the case wall strength is the limiting factor not the case wall friction, the back thrust reduction is actually less than the value calculated from tensile strength (where the case head comes off), as the case is not being stretched beyond it's tensile limit, the case is only being stretched by the amount of 'headspace' available in the chamber, and can only 'hold back' the amount of force required to stretch the brass to that point.
@@bok1080 Let's do it this way, the wall thickness on 303 brass where case head separation usually occur is about 1/32in, the outside diameter of said place is about .45in. this give us cross section of 0.05sqrin. yield strength of cartridge brass is about 50ksi, that times cross section area give you 2545lbf of thrust, that again divide by the case bottom area, which has od of 0.46in(tapered case) and same thickness, so 0.124 sqrin. 2545/0.124 give you 20524psi of inner pressure. the friction contribution might be way below what the case can withstand. you might have used wrong type of brass.
Good design is making a machine that safely does the job it was intended for with the least materiels, so you have proven the Lee Enfield was a very good design with a generous safely margin and even if abused will fail without badly injuring the shooter. To me this only adds to the LEs reputation.
Can the bolt and receiver stand up to military 7.62 NATO loads? I know .308 Win is higher-pressure than the military loading, but I've read even for 7.62 NATO the receivers need to be re-heat-treated. Seems like BS to me, but I wouldn't know...
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.
Now I've seen in Enfield a Mosin and an arisaka now I want to know what the supposedly week or small ring Mauser specifically a Spanish Mauser is capable of
Given that they seem to regularly give out with factory 7.62x51 and there's plenty of "pics or it didn't happen" on this one I don't think we need to test it :)
@@BlokeontheRange The 7mm Mauser cartridges were loaded around 45Kpsi, and the 7,62x51 is around 55-60Kpsi so its not surprising that the Mausers would ultimately fatigue and fail. Remember that the metalurgy from the late 1800s-early 1900s is quite different than that of the 1940s and later. Better steels, better heat treatments. The Remington Rolling block was also chambered in 7mm mauser, and Ive seen more than a few that have shot loose or deformed the hammer and lock pins using hotish factory hunting ammo made in the 1950-1980s. BUT! Only after several hundred modern rounds fired through them.
now if you break the 2nd rifle in the same spot....... THAT is crazy to think about love the lee action.... want to buy one to round out my ww2 "main rifles" collection id still buy one, even if all of them had that same flaw strong enough for average 303
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...
This shows it to be quite inferior to the mauser, mosin, and arisaka, in terms of strength. The Mauser and Mosin in particular are known for their use with magnum rounds. Cartridges like 375 H&H, and 500 Jeffery. I have a video of a mosin chambered for 375 H&H on my channel, and that rifle has proven wonderful for hunting. It's been fired with oiled cartridges (like yours, a proof test), and continues to function. It's also fired a box of 500 Jeffery, although that is not a useable cartridge in this action due to extraction and ejection issues. The mauser is very well known for cartridges like the 500 Jeffery and 425 Westley Richards also.
Back when I did my firearms safety training, (in Canada), my instructor drove home the point when shooting L.E. be sure not to use any of the MKVIII or Z head stamp "machine gun" surplus ammo, as they won't take the pressure. Guess this video discredits that rumor.
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.
I don't for a minute buy the idea that the .303 is less prone to blown out cases because it's rimmed, rimless cases have very thick webs around the base and a bolt would have to move a long way to expose the thin part of the case wall.
It is a testament to the design that a critically flawed specimen successfully served in multiple roles for about a century and still exceeded expectations before breaking. Also, did the receiver get damaged at all from the failure? Could another bolt be slapped in and the gun still work? And the bolt failing safely is another testament to the design.
If you would have had a brass failure once the case head was no longer supported, it would have propelled all Those loose steel bits in predictable directions. Virgin pp brass held up. Had it been fired 3 times would it have? I suppose being oiled, it just transferred the force into bolt thrust, rather than testing the brass. My takeaway? I don't have to use a string to fire my p14, and Its usually loaded 1/2 grain off pressure signs, not weak tea factory loads. What weak action are we going to destroy next? .300 win mag in a 96 Swede? A Krag? 😉
300 WinMag is a belted magnum. The case head is stupidly thick and deep. Case head failure was not a consideration. You think a P14 with a flaw like that in one lug would have held up any better to oiled 300 WM?
@@BlokeontheRange I dye penetrant tested mine before I rebarreled.......not that it's pertinent to this conversation. I'm still going to say a 98 mauser or p14/m1917 is *safe* in .300 win mag, and an Enfield action is not. Ruptured brass in a belted magnum is certainly possible if unsupported. It is just brass after all.
The point is that the bolt setback has to be HUGE before the case head can be unsupported. And we'll be trying oiled 300 WM in a Mauser 98 action too next time around, to see how many it takes before it gives out (and it will give out - these are stressing the action quite a bit more than a CIP proof load, which is a dry-case test).
@@BlokeontheRange awesome! My first experience with oiled cased was with my first high powered rifle when I was about 15. I was having trouble extracting empties from my H&R ultra rifle in .22-250. I was trying to drive a 52 grain smk to 4k. Not incredibly intelligent, looking back. Empties needed to be cleared with a cleaning rod. I polished the chamber, made little difference. Lightly oiled cases resulted in clean extraction........and flattened case heads and primers. Shot a he'll of a lot of groundhogs with spectacular effect with that rifle. Didn't realize the danger untill I saw a few kaboomed rifles. Now 3800 fps is plenty. Incidentally, .22-250 Is rated to operate 65k psi. 1k higher than 300 win mag. I put hundreds of oiled rounds through a $150 bargain store rifle. (albeit with a receiver cast by pine tree castings and a very heavy chrome moly barrel). Some cases lasted half a dozen firings. Could no longer read the head stamp. Was it safe? No.
Beautiful English countryside with singing birds. I wonder what failed in the manufacturing and QA process to csuse this defect. Ohh I can the German Mauser crowd all ready.
If that was a N°4 Mk1/2 (F) FTR then it may well have had a new bolt fitted, identified by a spherical 'knob' (without the flat ) so that was supposed to have been made of a higher grade of steel.
Colonel Hatcher in his Hatchers Notebook explains that he did tests in the USA armoury in the early 20th Century on .30-03 cartridges that had been greased. The metallic bullet coating was causing plating in the barrels. Target shooters solved that problem by dipping the cartridge end into grease, resulting in the chamber becoming coated in grease. Examples occured of receivers and bolts failing. Colonel Hatcher discovered that the case was no longer gripping the wall and allowing excess pressure onto the bolt face. So this is not a new discovery but over 100 years old and well researched. The moral is, don't use oiled or greased cartridges and clean the chamber before firing. Though the Enfield had a flawed lug it still had sufficient strength for normal use and was not a danger. It might also have had less than optimal heat treatment, etc. All proved still with normal use.
Seems more likely the neck would have trouble releasing the bullet therefore spiking pressure. In the vids case, I wonder if it's not necessarily lack of grip, but hydraulic pressure increasing bolt thrust.
The OP mangled what Hatcher was describing, and even got the calibre wrong... What Hatcher described as happening was that they discovered that tin plated bullets created less metallic fouling. But the tin pressure-welded to the inside of the neck of the case, giving higher start pressures and hence higher peak pressures. What competitive shooters had been doing was dipping bullets in grease to prevent metallic fouling, and instructions went out NOT to do this with the tin-plated bullets under any circumstances. But people did it anyway. Thereby creating massively increased bolt thrust due to the combination of higher chamber pressure from the pressure-welding of the bullet into the case mouth, and reduced case friction due to grease in the chamber. In our case, all we're doing is increasing bolt thrust. I will prove this one day when I have a piezo chamber pressure measurement system, probably using the Tikka T3x Arctic.
great video and something very refreshing about seeing Brits show case one of the greatest calibres firearms in history which they invented. Boggles my mind why the UK is so anti-gun. The brits invented so many sporting guns and calibres in history. Also led the world for a time in freedoms and the system of common law a lot of our countries emulate.
No, but your fun gun likely wouldn't be an obsolete single-shot target rifle cos there are much more fun rifles out there that can be used on far more ranges.
@@BlokeontheRange Interesting. I guess I don't live under the restrictions that those in the UK do but for me some of the most fun I have shooting is with cheap guns that aren't necessarily the best. I want the best for defensive use sure, but to speak plainly sometimes its fun to just shoot crap.
"We've forgotten the mallet" - someone who hasn't taken a Mosin Nagant to the firing range before.
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.
Now, whenever someone says "the Lee-Enfield action is weak, blah blah blah.."
And since that rifle has served for such a long time, the material fatigue argument goes out of the window too.
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.
I remember way back in the day iv8888 did an arisaka and mosin stress test. Glad you guys did an enfield.
I read Hatcher's Notebook where he warns against greasing or oiling cartridges. This is the first demonstration of that I have seen. Pretty wild that the flawed bolt served so well.
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.
This definitely deserves a revisit
The fact that a Enfield can extract and eject ⏏ a rimless cartridge with a bit of slick just shows how amazing the service rifle acually is!
Wow, it's almost as though the action was designed to fail safely
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.
I think this is a perfect example why things are made stronger than they need to be even if they're not made properly they're more than strong enough
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.
Those go for considerably more in the states, even in that "ugly" stste. They were mostly done professionally and the Parker-Hale models are very nice. To build a rifle like that today would cost several thousand dollars if done by any decent gunsmith. I would much have an Enfield or Mauser action than any new Rem 700 or the like. He is correct about the sights. They were usually all steel and very tightly fitted. Try finding some of the Parker-Hale target sights for the P14/P17 or the Mauser cocking piece aperture sight. They are English old world craftsmanship at it's finest. I still watch the entire hour long Bisley documentary from years ago so I'm a bit biased to those old rifles.
I wonder if the crack would have shown up if the action was converted and proofed here in Australia? When they were tested over here, a proof round was fired then the action was magnetically flux tested for cracks. Not sure if the same crack testing was done in UK when proofed for 7.62mm.
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.
Hey Bloke, that wasn't a material flaw, that is a fatigue crack. That lug would've eventually failed under normal firing conditions, the higher stresses produced from the .300 Win Mag just accelerated the failure.
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)
"What has been done to this is it has been reamed... it has been given a..."
"A (???) ream,"
"... good reaming"
"-thoroughly reamed,"
"Thoroughly reamed."
cheeky!
This is fantastic! It's amazing to see how strong the Enfield action is!
Im quite impressed. I have a small collection of #4s..a dozen or so, one of which is chambered in 45-70. Ive had no unusual problems with any of them. The large wartime chambers tend to leave the web of the brass badly stretched in repeated reloadings, even with neck sizing only, but even with the odd case head seperation over the years...no issues noted.
That was awesome! I really love the number 4. Such a good bolt gun!
Consult the Book of Armaments!
Armaments, chapter two, verses nine to twenty-one.
And Saint Attila raised the hand grenade up on high, saying, "O Lord, bless this Thy hand grenade that, with it, Thou mayest blow Thine enemies to tiny bits in Thy mercy."
And the Lord did grin, and the people did feast upon the lambs and sloths and carp and anchovies and orangutans and breakfast cereals and fruit bats and large chu--
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
I trust that my 3 Mark 4 #2s will never fail. I am building a custom Enfield action from scratch. My custom will be fitted specifically for the 30-30 Win. It will be my all purpose rifle shooting bullets from 100gr. to 170gr. Because I will use pointed bullets tge ballistics will certainly be improved. I can hardly wait to have a "Mini-Lee Enfield" battle carbine. I suspect a custom magazine will give me a 12 round capacity.
Jeebus! One hell of an experiment. Another tick for old school british overengineering - looking after Tommy Atkins since 1872😁
Since before then.
@@skepticalbadger I think you may be right - what sort of timeline are you thinking? For me its the Martinis and onward..
Makes you approach the engineering required to make delayed blowback rifles work properly, given that in those the case has to start moving (albeit slowly) right at the moment of firing.
fluted chamber
I saw the exact same failure on a No4 7.62 conversion while I was shooting the Canadian Target Rifle Championships. A light rain had started and a shooter didn’t keep his ammo and or action dry. The bolt dad a spiral crack jus around the locking lug area and was immediately out of action. I don’t know if the rear lug failed or not nor do I know if there was another flaw in the bolt. But it failed in exactly the same way. I believe the rifle had been converted at Long Branch arsenal, so it was properly done.
Hi, great video! I'm 99.99% sure the failure was not due to a material defect at the time of manufacture. I feel it might help if you look up the topic of material fatigue, and especially "stress concentration factor" with regards to steel fatigue, and how a steel component might fail after a number of loading cycles, despite there being no material defect at the time of manufacture.
Humbly I would suggest the failure is likely a combination of the following;
Design - did not consider fatigue mitigating features such as minimum radii in sharp corners or whether the method of manufacture might unintentionally introduce stress concentration due to rough/pitted/scratched surface, post-machining.
Quality issue - almost too much to expand on, but factors such as correct heat treatment, correct material specification, etc etc..
The key point to understand with fatigue is; every load cycle damages the component, the larger the load, the more damage this introduces, almost exponentially with load. The utterly perverse thing about this is, sending the rifle to a proof house might suddenly accelerate the damage to a point where it passes proof, but at the same time the very next shot will break it.
The three of you have won TH-cam, if not all of the Internet, today. Lee Enfield in .300 Win Mag? Yes please.
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.
How many other guns are out there sporting minor flaws undetected due to overengineering? Is it a rarity that you just so happened to get to see, or a common pattern all around?
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?
Thanks bloke, great to see what these actions can handle.
What if you put another bolt in it?
You'll never guess what we're planning :)
If they put another bolt in it would work just fine.
North of Watford? As a Kentish man told me, "Anything north of the Thames is 'The North'!"
Anything south of Watford is France.
If you can see the individual grain size of the fractured steel, you have a very poor heat treat. With steel you should normalize the work piece. I.e. bring the piece up to critical temperature (non magnetic) then let it cool naturally, preferably out of the wind. After doing this at least two times you should harden the piece then draw the temper. This piece has been heated far more than is good for the steel. It was heated almost to burning. Burnt steel had no use besides bouncing off the head of the idiot who burned it in the first place.It's only luck that this didn't fail while being shot in combat or some other such use.
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.
It failed but that would not have injured the shooter. A proud statement to the action.
So a factory flaw.. The question becomes how many other Number 4s from that same factory have the same not previously noticed flaw in the bolt lug?
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.
Interesting proof test. I have a WWII No. 4 Mk 1 in original military configuration and another sporterized version. Considering the mfg fault in the bolt, No 4 did rather well.
I am so damn tired of youtube unsubbing me from this and other channels.
Maybe that was a Friday close to the end of day bolt? Maybe it was a Monday morning I’m still hungover from last night bolt? 😂. Thanks!
These No4 conversions are worth decent money in Australia but try and send one over and see how many hoops you need to jump through along the way....
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 greatly appreciated the discussion of the rimmed versus rimless cartridges with the extraction groove relative to strength. Maybe the Russians were right in keeping their Rimmed 7.62x54 round. Be interesting to try out your testing with the mosin nagant with various loads including magnum chamberings. Might be a problem getting the stock extractor to work with the smaller rim size of the most modern magnum rounds. I know many of the of older black power guns are quite capable of containing massive over loads. Trap door spring rifle based on the allen conversion is considered to be much weaker than the Martini-Henry and yet will hold together for at least once for massive overload with smokeless power.
Greatly enjoyed your video.
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.
This was a real special! `Thank you guys!
Greatest bolt gun evah
in australia we also xrayed actions for faults before proof mark
An interesting test.
That does seem "ambitious" rebarreling a No.4 in .300 Win Mag, but as you pointed out: it would have most likely passed proof with dry ammunition and probably could have been used without issue for many years afterwards (just like it did in .303 and in 7.62/.308) with that flawed bolt.
I'm wondering if the length of bolt between the lugs and the case is actually helping soften the blow from the cartridge? Everything compresses to some extent under load, so that length in front of the lugs is acting like a very stiff spring. And as anyone who's tried drifting something in/out of a tight interference fit will attest, even the slightest give in the load path will soak up all your effort and make it much harder to get things moving. I guess the same applies to lugs and over loads.
I don't believe that was a manufacturing fault in the bolt, it is a fatigue crack and the 300winmag only accelerated the failure. I am not suggesting the enfield wasn't a fine weapon.
Meh, weld the lug back on and go again...
And yet some armies spec oiled cartridges for their weapon systems, i.e. Swede AG-42, Japanese 6.5x50 in the Type-11... The AG-42 manual even states "During longer firing pauses the chamber should be cleaned with the tool and lubed with # 042 lubricant". I have an AG-42 that I handload for, and leave just a touch of resizing lube remaining on the rounds. have fired "dry' rounds too, with no ill effects. Also if I am remembering correctly, I read in a British arms manual concerning military proofing, that using an oiled cartridge of whatever type was part of the official process.
As for practical strength concerning rear-locking bolt rifles, I owned a French MAS-36 of wartime manufacture, and I'd hate to think what it would take to destroy that massive action... Makes my No4 MkII look like downright sickly.
The flawed lug made me think of the concern over 'low-number' Springfield '03s and the questionable heat treat. Though there are many warnings about weak receivers, actual failures have been few and far between. In fact, low-number rifles continued in service (including combat) up into early WWII.
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 !
Good to know if I ever get a 45-70 conversion
Sorry I've just reviewed the footage at 22:42, I don't see a "massive rust defect" - the discoloured area creeps out from the lug, the area has striations on on it. I'd say that this had weakened to to fatigue. Fatigue failure to completion may take Perhaps in the order of several thousand cycles. The fatigue failure mechanism may well have been initiated as you say by a latent defect such as a non radiused ninty degree section or a sharp cut left by a machine tool. The dark are is not rust its fatigue. This rifle was destined to fail eventually after a ridiculous amount of time (don't they all?). It has suffered fatigue to to a initial crack initiation. This is not the fatigue of bending a paper clip to destruction but cyclic fatigue under the yield stress of the metal. What you have done is taken a rifle bolt (suffering from metallurgical fatigue (say man with slow terminal cancer) and quickened the demise by catastrophic failure due to the last lubricated cartridges (hitting poor cancer man over head with sledge hammer or multiple blows from your fellow conspirators rubber mallet)
I expect this rifle would have performed flawlessly for decades into the future with moderate use. This is my theory and I'm open to critic metallurgists.
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.
Certainly reassuring for us shooting those old .303s...... One wonders how long that action would have stood up with a good bolt...
suppose you could rebarrle that to 6mm Musgrave
Wonder if fluted chambers would have the same effect as the oil. Thus requiering a stronger action. I assume the same for pre waxed cartridges.
Interesting note is that the Swedish armed forces did, what I think was utrasonic tests, on all of their m96 actioned rifles and discovered micro cracks on a good persentage of the bolt lugs. Non of wich was visable to the naked eye.
Thanks for an awsome wideo
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.
there are about 3 thumb nail beach marks that are caused by constant loading and unloading over a long period much like the material testing we carried out at the university over 30 years
BOTR , Nice Video , one of My concerns was that you never checked at any point if you had a stuck or proud Firing pin , as that could be a potential disaster racking that bolt forward hard , without it being locked , When I bought both My No 4 mk 1 and my 7mm Chilean Mauser , I pulled the bullet out of A round and emptied the powder and racked that case just to make sure , then fired them both held out at arms length , As I didn't know either guns history
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.
Thank you for sharing that information and demonstration. Good show.
That is a rather substantial and impressive failure. Never really occurred to me that the bolt body itself would break, more so that pieces just shear off.
Artifact from the hammering
Try the same test with a P14 ;)
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.
@@outspokengenius it’s definitely not a modified Mauser 98. It was its own distinct design. It has similarities but it’s definitely not a Gew….
20:54 what says that bolt wasn’t replaced, say, right before the last time the rifle changed hands?
Bolt is matching numbered to the receiver IIRC.
All Enfield's here in the United States are very expensive. They have tripled in price over the last few years same with the ammunition.
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
I have been target shooting and hunting with a Lee-Enfield CN #4 Mk 1* Long Branch 1955 as a 308 since the early eighties ( not NATO 7.62x51 ), barrel change, bedding etc … were all carried out professionally. Headspace is perfect and I just keep a close eye on brass because it stretches more due to the Enfield having a rear bolt locking lug. I’ve started reloading about 3 years ago and was unable to source info on the pressure proofing test of this specific model action when it was chambered in 303, don't see any 19T stamp on bolt head nor rifle. Back in the day, wasn’t the 19T (42560 psi) for the 303 cartridge and the 24T (53760 psi) for the proof cartridge all done via copper plug crushing technique (CUP) vs the piezo strain gauge of today’s psi data ? Reason I am asking is because 308 commercial at 62 000 psi and NATO round at 60 000 psi both exceed the psi ratings of the standard #4 Enfield action yet the L42A1 sniper was utilized successfully with the NATO 7.62 round within those old Lee Enfield No. 4 Mk1*(T) actions! All this to say, is there any technical data that states that a CN #4 Mk 1* Long Branch action can safely handle the pressures delivered by today’s modern 308 ammo?
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
It would be interesting to see how long a Number 1 mk III would last
Did you do a follow-up video on this topic, as I am extremely interested in a "flawless" result?
No, didn't re-do it. Haven't had the opportunity.
Well done. A fascinating demo.
I want your hat, Bloke. Also, awesome vid. I really didn't think the Enfield would have lasted that long with the 300.
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.
As a machinist I find this very interesting and it also makes me wonder what the testing method was at production. What methods were even available at that time? I know I dye penatrent test would have found that. Also are the bolts stress relieved?
would love to see no go gauge. I have both go & no go and have always wondered about this.
Well... that was unexpected.
While the oiled cartridges looked like they would have been really unpleasant to shoot, I didn't expect the action to give way.
It didn't look much worse than firing a rifle grenade and the FAL locking system is significantly less substantial than that of the No.4. Assuming all recruits did the same drills since the rifle was new, 535 rifle grenades (both training and live ones) would have been fired with it by the time I got my grubby mits on it and it still worked fine. I therefore was quite surprised to see the No.4 fail.
Introduce an old crystalline fault to the equation and such assumptions go right out of the window, of course. The fact it proofed and functioned for as long as it did, is a testament to having engineering margins.
What.... the receiver ring didn’t explode???!!!! But, the internetz said so!
I wonder how long it could have taken the dry 300 win mag. It almost makes me want to put one of these together to find out.
Probably indefinitely if it didn't have the flaw.
The grain structure on that bolt looks like sugar or salt and pepper which is very indicative of large grain sizes which means it has not been hardened properly. The grain should look like a dark grey colour not like sugar. I’d like to know which factory produced that bolt because I’m not surprised they was a defect with grain structure like that. It’s hard to tell if it had it from new or from wear and tear but because it’s at a pressure point I’d say it’s from wear and tear. You can see that the crack stopped working it’s way down for some time which is probably when it’s been racked after WW2 and stood unused for a long time and then began again as the lighter colour is obviously indicates newer cracking after it’s been sold surplus and started cracking again with use. Makes you wonder doesn’t it ??? WOW ! THATS SCARY MAN. I’m gonna get my bolt dye indicator tested now for cracks. I’ve got a friend who is a NDT specialist.
My sporter came with no mag, a broken rear stock and a missing front sight post.
Excellent presentation. Thank you.
Just get another bolt and fit it up roughly. It would be good practice and you dont need to take another barrel off.
jeff christman T’is in fact the plan for round 2 at some point in the future.
It will be fitted precisely by having the locking surfaces lapped to each other. No point in doing the test with the risk of only 1 lug being in contact.
@@BlokeontheRange sorry, spamming you, but are specs that tight you cant just drag and drop?
It's more that the specs are loose cos you've got 4 things that have to line up properly. If they don't, you've only got 1 lug bearing. If it's the small one, you'll probably be done in a few shots of 300WM.
@@BlokeontheRange ya I'm pretty sure midwayusa had a video on how to do it. But that was for accuracy. It's good that you cut the chamber tight tho because now you shouldn't have any headspace problems after fitting the lugs. Was that intentional?
Two Englishmen go out in the midday sun with a bizarre plan to destroy a nice No.4 rifle to find out what pressure it could handle. They succeed in the destruction using a cartridge it was never designed for with about 20% more pressure pre oiling than 303. Over pressure will find the weakest point, it must eventually. In the end we did not get the answer to how strong is a No.4 (pressure wise)BUT they did have fun and they weren't out shooting road signs.
Isn't the Parker-Hale sight alone worth more than the rifle then?
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
The effect of 'oiling' the case is not as great as a lot of people think/assume, as the case in front of the case head (where it expands to 'grip' the chamber) relatively thin (in most cases about 15 thou) and calculating for the cross sectional area of the case and the yield strength of the brass etc., the case only holds back about the equivalent to 5000psi on an average case/cartridge/pressure combination. Meaning that the difference between a dry case and an 'oiled' case will only be equivalent to that (approx.) 5000psi. Sorry to the European readers of this, but when I talk gun I talk UK imperial units, it's just the way I am. ;-)
correct calculation for recoil force from firing on bolt is (peak pressure*case bottom area)- (peak pressure* case cylinder outside surface area* friction coefficient). oil drastically reduce friction coefficient.
I don't know what was in your mind when you doing your calculation but from what you said you are calculating for case head separation without bolt support.
@@alexxu3004 yes the oil will reduce the friction coefficient, but the back thrust on the bolt is (peak pressure*case bottom area)-(case wall cross section area*brass yield strength) as the case wall strength is the limiting factor not the case wall friction, the back thrust reduction is actually less than the value calculated from tensile strength (where the case head comes off), as the case is not being stretched beyond it's tensile limit, the case is only being stretched by the amount of 'headspace' available in the chamber, and can only 'hold back' the amount of force required to stretch the brass to that point.
@@bok1080 Let's do it this way, the wall thickness on 303 brass where case head separation usually occur is about 1/32in, the outside diameter of said place is about .45in. this give us cross section of 0.05sqrin. yield strength of cartridge brass is about 50ksi, that times cross section area give you 2545lbf of thrust, that again divide by the case bottom area, which has od of 0.46in(tapered case) and same thickness, so 0.124 sqrin. 2545/0.124 give you 20524psi of inner pressure. the friction contribution might be way below what the case can withstand. you might have used wrong type of brass.
@@bok1080 would love to see how you calculated to get 5ksi
All you need is a new bolt wouldn’t be a hard repair at all.
Good design is making a machine that safely does the job it was intended for with the least materiels, so you have proven the Lee Enfield was a very good design with a generous safely margin and even if abused will fail without badly injuring the shooter. To me this only adds to the LEs reputation.
Can the bolt and receiver stand up to military 7.62 NATO loads? I know .308 Win is higher-pressure than the military loading, but I've read even for 7.62 NATO the receivers need to be re-heat-treated. Seems like BS to me, but I wouldn't know...
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!
Oi! You got a permit loicense for those oiled cartridges??
Now I've seen in Enfield a Mosin and an arisaka now I want to know what the supposedly week or small ring Mauser specifically a Spanish Mauser is capable of
Given that they seem to regularly give out with factory 7.62x51 and there's plenty of "pics or it didn't happen" on this one I don't think we need to test it :)
@@BlokeontheRange The 7mm Mauser cartridges were loaded around 45Kpsi, and the 7,62x51 is around 55-60Kpsi so its not surprising that the Mausers would ultimately fatigue and fail. Remember that the metalurgy from the late 1800s-early 1900s is quite different than that of the 1940s and later. Better steels, better heat treatments. The Remington Rolling block was also chambered in 7mm mauser, and Ive seen more than a few that have shot loose or deformed the hammer and lock pins using hotish factory hunting ammo made in the 1950-1980s. BUT! Only after several hundred modern rounds fired through them.
now if you break the 2nd rifle in the same spot.......
THAT is crazy to think about
love the lee action.... want to buy one to round out my ww2 "main rifles" collection
id still buy one, even if all of them had that same flaw
strong enough for average 303
Well now you have to do it again.
Bit surprised that Non Destructive Testing isn't used in addition to the proof testing.
How would I go about finding, purchasing & Importing to the US a 20 lot of 40 Pound Sterling Sportized #4 Enfields? These look like a great value.
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...
That is not a manufacturing flaw. You can that is typical a fatigue failure. The probable initiation was during its life as a Win-Mag.
Wut? Its entire life as a winmag is captured on video here and consists of 10 dry and 5 wet shots.
Not going to repeat my engineering material course here. Yes it does look like fatigue, however it was there long before the Winmag fired.
Sorry, must have missed that part where you did the conversion. But, that FTR job was really, really sloppy, if that fatigue crack slipped past them.
This shows it to be quite inferior to the mauser, mosin, and arisaka, in terms of strength.
The Mauser and Mosin in particular are known for their use with magnum rounds.
Cartridges like 375 H&H, and 500 Jeffery.
I have a video of a mosin chambered for 375 H&H on my channel, and that rifle has proven wonderful for hunting. It's been fired with oiled cartridges (like yours, a proof test), and continues to function.
It's also fired a box of 500 Jeffery, although that is not a useable cartridge in this action due to extraction and ejection issues.
The mauser is very well known for cartridges like the 500 Jeffery and 425 Westley Richards also.
Totally irrelevant. The Lee action was intended for the .303 cartridge, period. It was more than strong enough for its intended use.
Back when I did my firearms safety training, (in Canada), my instructor drove home the point when shooting L.E. be sure not to use any of the MKVIII or Z head stamp "machine gun" surplus ammo, as they won't take the pressure. Guess this video discredits that rumor.
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.
I don't for a minute buy the idea that the .303 is less prone to blown out cases because it's rimmed, rimless cases have very thick webs around the base and a bolt would have to move a long way to expose the thin part of the case wall.
So what you're saying is that it's okay to run steel case .308 through my Ishapore 2A1?
I see someone had their phone switched on while recording this!
(interference around 9-10 minute mark)
It is a testament to the design that a critically flawed specimen successfully served in multiple roles for about a century and still exceeded expectations before breaking. Also, did the receiver get damaged at all from the failure? Could another bolt be slapped in and the gun still work? And the bolt failing safely is another testament to the design.
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.
If you would have had a brass failure once the case head was no longer supported, it would have propelled all Those loose steel bits in predictable directions.
Virgin pp brass held up. Had it been fired 3 times would it have? I suppose being oiled, it just transferred the force into bolt thrust, rather than testing the brass.
My takeaway? I don't have to use a string to fire my p14, and Its usually loaded 1/2 grain off pressure signs, not weak tea factory loads. What weak action are we going to destroy next? .300 win mag in a 96 Swede? A Krag? 😉
300 WinMag is a belted magnum. The case head is stupidly thick and deep. Case head failure was not a consideration. You think a P14 with a flaw like that in one lug would have held up any better to oiled 300 WM?
@@BlokeontheRange I dye penetrant tested mine before I rebarreled.......not that it's pertinent to this conversation.
I'm still going to say a 98 mauser or p14/m1917 is *safe* in .300 win mag, and an Enfield action is not.
Ruptured brass in a belted magnum is certainly possible if unsupported. It is just brass after all.
The point is that the bolt setback has to be HUGE before the case head can be unsupported.
And we'll be trying oiled 300 WM in a Mauser 98 action too next time around, to see how many it takes before it gives out (and it will give out - these are stressing the action quite a bit more than a CIP proof load, which is a dry-case test).
@@BlokeontheRange awesome!
My first experience with oiled cased was with my first high powered rifle when I was about 15. I was having trouble extracting empties from my H&R ultra rifle in .22-250. I was trying to drive a 52 grain smk to 4k. Not incredibly intelligent, looking back. Empties needed to be cleared with a cleaning rod. I polished the chamber, made little difference. Lightly oiled cases resulted in clean extraction........and flattened case heads and primers. Shot a he'll of a lot of groundhogs with spectacular effect with that rifle. Didn't realize the danger untill I saw a few kaboomed rifles. Now 3800 fps is plenty. Incidentally, .22-250 Is rated to operate 65k psi. 1k higher than 300 win mag. I put hundreds of oiled rounds through a $150 bargain store rifle. (albeit with a receiver cast by pine tree castings and a very heavy chrome moly barrel). Some cases lasted half a dozen firings. Could no longer read the head stamp. Was it safe? No.
I would replace the bolt, re-headspace it, and go again!
That was awesome.
Beautiful English countryside with singing birds. I wonder what failed in the manufacturing and QA process to csuse this defect. Ohh I can the German Mauser crowd all ready.
That range looks really familiar ? is it the same one that Neil from Rack 'n' load uses ?
The sight is more valuable than the rifle itself.
If that was a N°4 Mk1/2 (F) FTR then it may well have had a new bolt fitted, identified by a spherical 'knob' (without the flat ) so that was supposed to have been made of a higher grade of steel.
Colonel Hatcher in his Hatchers Notebook explains that he did tests in the USA armoury in the early 20th Century on .30-03 cartridges that had been greased. The metallic bullet coating was causing plating in the barrels. Target shooters solved that problem by dipping the cartridge end into grease, resulting in the chamber becoming coated in grease. Examples occured of receivers and bolts failing. Colonel Hatcher discovered that the case was no longer gripping the wall and allowing excess pressure onto the bolt face. So this is not a new discovery but over 100 years old and well researched. The moral is, don't use oiled or greased cartridges and clean the chamber before firing. Though the Enfield had a flawed lug it still had sufficient strength for normal use and was not a danger. It might also have had less than optimal heat treatment, etc. All proved still with normal use.
petergosden1 Nowhere did we claim to have discovered the consequences of greased cases...
Seems more likely the neck would have trouble releasing the bullet therefore spiking pressure.
In the vids case, I wonder if it's not necessarily lack of grip, but hydraulic pressure increasing bolt thrust.
The OP mangled what Hatcher was describing, and even got the calibre wrong... What Hatcher described as happening was that they discovered that tin plated bullets created less metallic fouling. But the tin pressure-welded to the inside of the neck of the case, giving higher start pressures and hence higher peak pressures. What competitive shooters had been doing was dipping bullets in grease to prevent metallic fouling, and instructions went out NOT to do this with the tin-plated bullets under any circumstances. But people did it anyway. Thereby creating massively increased bolt thrust due to the combination of higher chamber pressure from the pressure-welding of the bullet into the case mouth, and reduced case friction due to grease in the chamber.
In our case, all we're doing is increasing bolt thrust. I will prove this one day when I have a piezo chamber pressure measurement system, probably using the Tikka T3x Arctic.
great video and something very refreshing about seeing Brits show case one of the greatest calibres firearms in history which they invented. Boggles my mind why the UK is so anti-gun. The brits invented so many sporting guns and calibres in history. Also led the world for a time in freedoms and the system of common law a lot of our countries emulate.
Sporterization is a horrendous practice...that said if they're so cheap in the uk why not just buy them and use them?
Why waste a valuable slot on your license for something that's no longer competitive?
@@BlokeontheRange Is it unusual in British shooting circles to just have a gun for funsies and not serious competition?
No, but your fun gun likely wouldn't be an obsolete single-shot target rifle cos there are much more fun rifles out there that can be used on far more ranges.
@@BlokeontheRange Interesting. I guess I don't live under the restrictions that those in the UK do but for me some of the most fun I have shooting is with cheap guns that aren't necessarily the best. I want the best for defensive use sure, but to speak plainly sometimes its fun to just shoot crap.
I wonder if magnafluxing would have revealed that flaw.
Might be worth doing if you have an Enfield.
We have gathered at the Church of Cordite! Let us all rejoice!