Low #s
Y'know.....many people treat the "low numbered" rifle story like "playing Russian Roulette". It is not. If one wants to shoot one, the odds are that the gun will not blow up. This is especially true with modern ammo...ammo not produced under the stresses and necessities of war. Even the faulty receivers don't just blow up...something has to happen to cause them to fail - of course, they shouldn't fail at all, at least not the way that they do. Many (Most? All?) of the documented failures were related to faulty ammo/wrong ammo. Will the receiver fail if the ammo doesn't? Does better quality control make a difference? I don't know.
Do you?
That business about the receivers shattering when hit with a hammer; they are brittle......OK...are all of them brittle and what does that prove about shooting a cartridge in one of them? (not an argumentative question. I really don't know what it proves....maybe one of you does. "When I hit this receiver with a hammer, it breaks." Well, what happens when you shoot a cartridge in one? Has any one done a torture test with a low numbered receiver? Sat down and mounted the rifle safely and fired it remotely using factory ammo until destruction? )
In point of fact, being a contributor to this and other fora gives us all a more intimate knowledge of subjects like this one. Most shooters who own and use low numbered 1903s, I am willing to bet, do not frequent these discussion boards, have not read Brophy, or Hatcher, or McInerney's 1928 article in Army Ordnance Magazine.
They buy the guns and shoot them. I have a low numbered gun. It was sold to me years ago at a large gunstore (American Outdoor Sports, Farmingdale, NY). At the time, I knew nothing about this subject; it was my first centerfire rifle. I shot it for years before I was told that it was "unsafe". Probably, it is better said that it "might be unsafe". The receiver was made in 1905. That means that it had been available for use for 23 years (and a World War) before it became unsafe. Of course, there is no way to know how often it was used. One could reasonably expect that given the length of service, though, that it was fired more than a few times.
It comes from a production lot that, available records show, had no reported failures...at least through the publication of Hatcher's Notebook. I haven't shot it in years. Pity. It is a tack driver.
Pete
Y'know.....many people treat the "low numbered" rifle story like "playing Russian Roulette". It is not. If one wants to shoot one, the odds are that the gun will not blow up. This is especially true with modern ammo...ammo not produced under the stresses and necessities of war. Even the faulty receivers don't just blow up...something has to happen to cause them to fail - of course, they shouldn't fail at all, at least not the way that they do. Many (Most? All?) of the documented failures were related to faulty ammo/wrong ammo. Will the receiver fail if the ammo doesn't? Does better quality control make a difference? I don't know.
Do you?
That business about the receivers shattering when hit with a hammer; they are brittle......OK...are all of them brittle and what does that prove about shooting a cartridge in one of them? (not an argumentative question. I really don't know what it proves....maybe one of you does. "When I hit this receiver with a hammer, it breaks." Well, what happens when you shoot a cartridge in one? Has any one done a torture test with a low numbered receiver? Sat down and mounted the rifle safely and fired it remotely using factory ammo until destruction? )
In point of fact, being a contributor to this and other fora gives us all a more intimate knowledge of subjects like this one. Most shooters who own and use low numbered 1903s, I am willing to bet, do not frequent these discussion boards, have not read Brophy, or Hatcher, or McInerney's 1928 article in Army Ordnance Magazine.
They buy the guns and shoot them. I have a low numbered gun. It was sold to me years ago at a large gunstore (American Outdoor Sports, Farmingdale, NY). At the time, I knew nothing about this subject; it was my first centerfire rifle. I shot it for years before I was told that it was "unsafe". Probably, it is better said that it "might be unsafe". The receiver was made in 1905. That means that it had been available for use for 23 years (and a World War) before it became unsafe. Of course, there is no way to know how often it was used. One could reasonably expect that given the length of service, though, that it was fired more than a few times.
It comes from a production lot that, available records show, had no reported failures...at least through the publication of Hatcher's Notebook. I haven't shot it in years. Pity. It is a tack driver.
Pete
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