1903 Unfinished Receiver?

S

shank0668

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I bought an Unfinished 1903 receiver. I know little about it and am looking for more info.....

Here is the sellers description:

Rare piece for the Springfield 1903 collector. An unfinished receiver.
Largely complete except for a few areas. Right side not milled to correct dimensions, floor is not milled out for passing cartridges thru the magazine, no serial number, Springfield or Model 1903 markings on the receiver ring. The only markings on the receiver are on the underside in the area where the bottom of the receiver would have been milled away for cartridge loading. That area is marked NS 3. Likely relating to an early batch of Nickel Steel. Nickel Steel went into use in 1928. The front ring of the barrel is threaded and cut for an extractor to move into the receiver ring when the bolt would close. The large flat area on the right side may just have been not finished, or perhaps for some design change Springfield was attempting.
Click to expand...
Now I have found this that has sold at auction for a fair amount, but have not found anything else (No, I am not getting my hopes up that it is worth a ton, just curious if my piece is of any significance or a paper weight). The thing I see that differs from this M1901 receiver is that it has the raised section on the bridge and it has the NS 3 marked on the bottom.
https://jamesdjulia.com/item/lot-15...springfield-armory-unfinished-receiver-58539/


Attached are the photos. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you
 

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More photos. I will update with better photos when I receive the receiver tomorrow.
 

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That's only the second one of those that I've ever seen. Other than that, I unfortunately know nothing about that part of the manufacturing process.
 
Interesting, I've gotten a range of responses from its a worthless junk casting to it's an unusual somewhat rare piece. I'm not sure what to believe.
 
It doesn't look like a casting to me. It looks like a 70% finished forging before they went to the finishing milling steps.
 
I tend to agree. The curious thing is it almost seems to have had numbers/letters on the flat side that would later be machined down... They were however scratched out. I cannot be certain, but it definitely looks like that was the case.
 
From the pictures, I will agree that it does not look like a casting. Too much detail in certain areas that would preclude casting, plus no other evidence, aka witness lines, plugs, etc.. Can't say anything else towards the piece.
 
I purchased a "unfinished bolt" from a major gun parts supplier back in the 1980's. I don't remember from whom, could have been Numrich, could have been someone else. Unfinished parts were floating around and I think it reasonable that your receiver could have been from that lot.

I think it is reasonable to assume that NS stands for nickel steel.

The origin of these is total speculation, could have been in process parts scrapped by the factory, but never made it to recycling at a steel mill.

As to value, who knows? This part is a curiosity. If if was a NOS double heat treat or nickle steel 03 receiver, then someone wanting to build a rifle would pay a reasonable price, but not more than the value of a rifle. To make this into a usable receiver is cost prohibitive, therefore, value is in the eye of the beholder.

Value is not always rational, take for example Bit Coin values. People are irrational and will buy if they think something is scarce or rare, regardless of the utility of the item. This is why advertisers are always telling us "supplies are limited", or "rare".
 
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Not my area of expertise...
According to this, the 01 lacked the raised step on the rear bridge- which would put it at odds with the auctioneer. Unfinished means not heat treated...

http://m1903.com/odd1903/

I'd ask over at the CMP forums- gotta be a wealth of expertise there.
 
I am not sure of the nomenclature but the earliest receivers were open at the top rear, like the Krag. Then it was found that the receivers warped during heat treatment and the rear receiver bridge was added. That rifle was a design mistake all the way through from the beginning. They first recognized the need for a safety lug, but instead of adding it where Mauser did, they added it to the right side of the bolt. But in that position it had to be very high to extend outside the right locking lug raceway and engage the receiver. But that meant the safety lug had to be high, which meant the rear bridge had to be either made high or split. They first used a split bridge, but when that resulted in the receivers warping in heat treatment, they closed the top, which solved one problem but created another as the sights now had to be high enough so the sight line would clear the rear receiver bridge. That should have meant raising the stock comb to give the proper feel, but that would have precluded normal bolt removal, so the stock had to be left as was, and the rifleman's cheek was floating in the air when aiming. That also mean that the rear sight had to be high, and the front sight had to be mounted higher than it needed to be, making it more fragile and exposed to damage.

All in all, a lesson in how not to design a rifle, plus a good study in why sometimes "back to the drawing board" is better than trying to go ahead with a poor design and just hoping that one more fix will solve the problems. And that once sucked into a trap like that, it is very hard, and very costly, to back out.

Jim
 
Jim, very interesting! Thank you for the history, I enjoy learning about this kind of stuff.

Hawg, this could be a possibility. It certainly would be cool to know the story.
 
Somehow, Sergei Mosin's split-bridge receiver design was able to be heat-treated without warping...to the tune of some 35,000,000 of them.

Why couldn't Springfield Armory figure it out?
 
"Somehow, Sergei Mosin's split-bridge receiver design was able to be heat-treated without warping...to the tune of some 35,000,000 of them."

Not sure, but I don't think that Moisin Nagants were ever made with nickel steel, and I think, but am not sure, that the issue of receiver warping became more of an issue with the nickel steel.

Also, it's very likely that the heat treating processes were considerably different, which may have made a difference, as well.

It would be interesting to know how the heat treating process for Krag receivers was done, and whether they ran into any problems with receiver warping there.
 
Heat treatment for 1903 and later rifles are described in Hatcher.
I would think the Krag to have been processed like the "low number" 1903s, its "ordnance steel" being of similar composition to "Class C."

While I think the Krag was a dead end in rifle development, it is a neat design. Its single locking lug balanced by a lower chamber pressure, and even that better contained by the rimmed case seated all the way into the chamber.
 
We'll probably never know the truth, but my money would be on it being a reject or test article.
Some machining has already been done to that receiver, but it was removed from production, for whatever reason, before moving on.
 
The "NS" is raised, or stamped?
It appears raised, so at what point would you machine away material to leave those raised figures in an area of the receiver that is then going to be machined away, anyway?
 
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