Anything below those numbers are considered to be “low number” guns that are dangerous to fire.īy the end of 1927, it was recommended that the US Army withdraw the approximately 1,000,000 “low number” guns currently in service and discard them because it was not feasible to re-heat treat them. The double heat treatment for receivers from Springfield Armory was in place by serial number 800,000 and by serial number 286,507 for those made at Rock Island Arsenal.

To remedy the situation, the receivers (and the bolts) made from now on would undergo a double heat treatment with their temperatures being measured by pyrometers instead of a visual determination. Three men each lost an eye, six more received “serious” injuries, and the remaining 34 injuries were deemed “minor.” Still, even a minor injury is a major problem for the person receiving it. The 12-year period between 19 recorded a total of 43 injuries due to the brittle metal. That 300-degree difference on a sunny day was enough to overheat the metal, thereby making it brittle and susceptible to failure. On cloudy days when the sun did not interfere with the ability to see the metal’s true color in the fire, the “right temperature” was deemed to be 300 degrees cooler than on a sunny day when colors were harder to see. General Julian Hatcher was in charge of the investigation and what he discovered was shocking. The latter issue is what was being examined. Too little and the metal won’t be hardened too much and it will become brittle.

Heat treating is exceptionally important to the rifle’s success. Specifically, armory employees in charge of the process were using the “eyeballing” method to measure temperatures. The issue was found to be with the heat treating process. Even though production had shifted into overtime since the US involvement in World War I in April of that year, production was halted until the problem could be identified and resolved. In the last six months of 1917, eleven M1903 rifles were reported to have shattered – yes, shattered – and caused one severe and ten minor injuries. Concerns about the guns began at the peak of their production when their reliability truly was a matter of life or death for the soldiers fielding these arms. Truthfully, people have been discussing the safety of M1903 rifles for more than 100 years. Now, not all of those are going to be specific to the problem, but even if just 10% are, well then, man, that’s a lot of bandwidth on this topic! When I say “a lot,” I mean a whole lot: a Google search of the phrase “1903 safe to shoot” brings back 20.2 million hits, including 148,000 videos. There is a lot of internet chatter about whether or not it is safe to shoot a “low number” Springfield M1903 bolt-action rifle.

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