springfield 1903 serial 539,000 range

R

rc04kauai

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i just got a springfield 1903 in the 539,000 serial range.
i was wondering if it is safe to fire. nowhere on the rifle says what caliber it is. on the tip of the barrel it says RIA 1-19 (what does this mean?) middle of the barrel says C125 (what does this mean?) is stamp us springfield armory. any information on this would be helpful. thanks
 
It was made in 1913 and is a "low number" Springfield.
There is a lot of debate about whether these are safe to fire. The NRA and CMP say they should not be shot. They are definitely not as strong as Springfields made after serial number 800000 in 1918 or newer designs.

RIA 1-19 stands for Rock Island Arsenal, January 1919.
It probably fought through World War I and was overhauled after the war with a new barrel.

I don't know what the C125 means.
 
please post a pic. you might have a Rare 1903. take a picture of were it says RIA, there should be a serial number undernieth that. take a picture of that.
 
They make a good wall hanger, or if you really want a 03' then find another high # reciever and have a smithy change out the parts and blast away. But by the time you get this done, the cost may not be worth it as you can get real nice like new restored 03's, there's plenty of them around as they made at least a million of them IIRC. Shoot safe.
 
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should i fire a 30-06 or should i just not fire it. from my understanding this weapon was never registered i got it from someone who had handed down to him. whats the process of me getting the gun registered not knowing if its stolen ?
 
#s

they made at least a million of them IIRC.
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Oh, yes. SA alone made over a million. Add to that the production numbers for Rock Island Armory and the WWII numbers for the 1903 and the 1903A variants by Remington and Smith Corona and you have double that, I'll bet.
Pete
 
rc04kauai said:
should i fire a 30-06 or should i just not fire it. from my understanding this weapon was never registered i got it from someone who had handed down to him. whats the process of me getting the gun registered not knowing if its stolen ?
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I would not fire it. It has been sporterized, no longer in military trim. No requirement to register the fire arm. You can call your local state police and they could run it for theft. Be prepared to surrender the rifle if it comes back stolen.
 
What state are you in?
My home state does not register firearms at all.
Some do but most do not... unless you watch too much CSI where they can look up the owner of any gun anytime anywhere.
 
"It probably fought through World War I and was overhauled after the war with a new barrel."

Definitely this rifle did not see action in WW I, as that war ended on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918. Armistice Day.... I have a M 17 Enfield dated 10-18 which was manufactured (barely) in time to be WW I vintage but I highly doubt that it ever saw action in "The Great War". That rifle is an Eddystone and I do fire it from time to time.
 
The "C125" marking is the steel lot code. It registers the particular lot of steel used in making the barrel
 
I have one in the 14s.I shoot anything I can out of it. If you want to know if a rifle is safe go to a gunsmith and have them check it out.
 
If you can find someone with a hardness tester, and the checked hardness is between HRC30-40 it's safe to fire. That's the hardness all rifles are now made to and back then also. The problem with the dangerous ones was they were poorly heat treated and you'd catch it with the hardness check. Any gunsmith should have a tester. Test the barrel AND receiver. Bolt also. Test in a place where there is no contact as it puts a little indentation in the metal.

This is from wikipedia.

By the time of U.S. entry into World War I, 843,239 of these rifles had been produced at Springfield Armory and Rock Island Arsenal. Pre-war production utilized questionable metallurgy. Some receivers were improperly subjected to excessive temperatures during the forging process. The carbon could be "burnt" out of the steel producing a brittle receiver.[3] Despite documented evidence indicating some early rifles were improperly forged, actual cases of failure were very rare. Although several cases of serious injury from receiver failure were documented, the U.S. Army never reported any fatalities. Evidence also seems to suggest that improperly forged brass shell casings could have exacerbated receiver failure.[4]
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Well, carbon being "burnt out" is a poor description but I'll elaborate... When metal is heated above 1600º F it must be done in a "protective atmosphere" with carbon "potential" equal to the carbon in the steel. If it is not the carbon leaves the steel and the parts scale up. If there is too much carbon in the atmosphere the parts will be carburized (case hardened). Later, after the parts are forged and heat treated (heated to 1600º F and oil quenched and then tempered at 1000º F) the hardness will be in the HRC30-40 range. If the forging caused loss of carbon there will be no carbon to give the receiver hardness during this heat treatment operation and the receivers will be soft. So the above statement (brittle) is incorrect. The receivers were soft which lowers (drastically) tensile strength. 1185 Mpa at correct hardness vs. 780 Mpa at lower hardness.
 
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RIA 1-19 means the rifle was rebuilt (rebarreled) on Jan 1919.

Any Springfield 1903 under 800,000 ARE NOT SAFE TO SHOOT

Information on Low Number Springfields.

http://www.odcmp.com/Sales/rifles.htm

I run CMP GSM Clinics and HP Clinics and matches. I WILL NOT ALLOW A LOW NUMBER SERIAL NUMBER RIFLE TO BE FIRED ON ANY RANGE I RUN.

Nor do I know any range officer that will. I rather doubt you'll be able to fire one at Perry or any other CMP GSM Matches-Clinics.
 
point

Any Springfield 1903 under 800,000 ARE NOT SAFE TO SHOOT
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That has become the accepted generalization. Like all generaliztions, however, it is not exactly accurate.
It implies that every single one of those rifles is unsafe. That is not so. It is true that an unknown percentage of the rifles have improperly heat treated receivers. Based on the numbers of known failures, the percentage is small.
The difficulty - and the basis for the generalization - is that it is impossible to tell which rifles have the bad receivers.
IIRC, It is "recommended" that rifles with low numbered receivers be withdrawn from service and any such low numbered receiver be considered as unsafe to shoot.
That is a step away from saying that they are unsafe.
That difference is the source of much old and continuing discussion.
Pete
 
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Not all land mines scattered around third world countries go off, but the one that does ruins some bodies day.

You never know when, where and which one. Just not worth it.
 
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