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The only way to tell for sure is to have it magnafluxed. But I think you are correct in your first thought. Sorry. I thought they only cracked there when the barrel was replaced?

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This is common in 1941 Johnsons too?

Where do they crack?

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No , this rifle was re-barelled with a JA barrel.

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You can "hillbilly" magnaflux it by putting some lacquer thinner or carb cleaner on it. Then wipe away the thinner/carb cleaner and see if more thinner/cleaner weeps out of the crack. If it weeps, it's a crack. If it does not weep, then it is just a scratch.

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i never knew there was a problem. with the m1917 i'll have to check mine when i get home. Although i have shot already on quite a few occasions.

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The only way to tell for sure is to have it magnafluxed. But I think you are correct in your first thought. Sorry. I thought they only cracked there when the barrel was replaced?

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Only the Eddystone rifles have this problem, and not all of them. Remington and Winchester rifles are fine.

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Actually from what I read in a book on bolt action rifles, they inferred that it was common with all P17 and P14 pattern rifles. Whether they are correct or not I cannot say.

 

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I've only heard of the problem arising with rebarreled Eddystone rifles. It would stand to reason that ERA-made P'14s would also experience this problem, but as P'14 rifles aren't particularly common here in the US, and the .303 rifles seem to be far less commonly rebarrelled, it could simply be that the sample size for them is far lower. It's possible (likely) that members in the UK might have more experience with this. I know that several British trade gunsmiths did make magnum-caliber hunting rifles using P'14 actions, but I don't know enough about them to say whether they avoided using ERA-made actions or not. It's also possible that they were smart enough to use the relief cuts and as such did not experience any issues with cracking.

I'm the first to admit that I know nothing about re-barrelling M.17's, but I do recollect back in the late 1960's when I had some 40 M.17's converted to .308W by taking out the original 30/06 barrel, shortening the threaded end, then running a .308W reamer in to cut a new chamber, and then re-fitting the original barrel.

Two things were observed; firstly the barrels were extremely hard to remove, so much so that the barrels in most instances had to be "relieved" by hack-sawing around the barrel where it abutted the receiver. Once that was done, the barrels came out easily. The cutting did not affect the barrels, as the re-chambering meant that the barrels' external face was moved forward anyway.

Now for the interesting part. On relieving the face of the barrel, three of the actions developed cracks.

It was thought that the cracks occurred following the "relieving" and removal of the barrels.

With the Britishicon .303" rifle,(No. 1 Mk III SMLE), the barrel is screwed up onto the face of the inside of the receiver. With the P.14, M.17 and the No.4 .303" rifle however, the barrel is screwed up to the outside face of the receiver.

In the mid 1960's we were advised by our Small Arms Factory Lithgowicon that because the No.4 rifle barrel screwed up to the outside of the receiver, a torsion wrench should be used on fitting replacement barrels, set at 125 foot pounds maximum, to ensure that the ends of the No.4 receivers were not placed under undue tension, as we were told that THERE WAS A STRONG POSSIBILITY THAT THE RECEIVERS MAY CRACK WHEN REMOVING THE BARRELS LATER.

Although there was no reference to either the P.14 .303" rifle, or the M.17 30/06 rifle having this problem, we came to the conclusion that as the M.17 barrel breeched up on the face of the receiver, like the .303" No.4 rifle, and if both the receiver, and barrel shoulder were at maximum dimensions, undue pressure would be put on the receiver face, and when relieved, that's when the receiver cracked.

Fitting a replacement barrel would make this crack more apparent, I assume. Our cracked receivers were all Eddystone-made.

An observation made from first-hand experience back in the 1960's, but I would be interested to know, just for the record, what was the torque applied to those barrels at the factory all those years ago when fitting the original barrels.

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A British guy chimed in after I posted on milsurps.com

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He's Aussie. .

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Only the Eddystone rifles have this problem, and not all of them. Remington and Winchester rifles are fine.

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I have a M1917 receiver I bought from the CMP a few years ago.  It has a terrible barrel.  Should I buy the rifle with the cracked receiver from you or should you buy the receiver from me?

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You *could* shoot this thing with a subcaliber .32 acp insert.  .32 acp wouldn't cause any problems (too wimpy), and it's very quiet out of a long barreled rifle.  Tinkering around with powder and bullet selection you could probably get something that sounded silenced without actually having a silencer.  As long as the powder burns completely out inside the barrel, and the bullet is subsonic you'd be good to go.

You'd have a very quiet weapon for whacking squirrels and other pests and it would look like a classic battle rifle.

The downside is that it would probably be a single shot weapon, I don't think the subcaliber adapeters will relibly feed from the mag.  I've got a .32 insert for my SMLE and Mk4 enfields and it's the bees knees for quiet plinking.

That's what I'd do.

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I just looked at my Eddystone and it has a JA barrel too.  I didn't see any cracks in the receiver, but I need to take it out of the stock and look at the bottom side.  Yikes!
So, is the JA barrel the original or arsenal re-barrel?

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arsenal re-barrel     (ever notice it doesn't have a date under the flaming bomb and JA on the barrel ?)

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Considering how late we got involved in WWI, I wonder if these rifles had really been shot enough to wear out the original barrel.  Did the Army simply have barrels, men and the budget so it was done?  How many thousands of rounds would have to be shot to wear out a barrel?

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My guess would be most of the barrels being replaced were ruined by corrosive ammo and poor maintenace.

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The receiver weeps and so do I . . .

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Hold on dude.  Just because some fluid weeps out of the 'indication' it doesn't necessarily mean you have a crack.  There is no developer to actually pull the fluid out via capillary action.  Are you near a large city in MO?  Are there any plants or refineries relatively close?  If any of these are true, then there will be NDT companies around.  

Call an NDT company and have them do a proper dye penetrant inspection or possibly pop a few shots with a tube or camera.  You might also be able to find a machine shop that would be able to do a head shot on the barreled action or wrap some coils around the action to see if that is really a crack or just a tool mark.  

Odds are you probably have a crack, but, without a proper evaluation you don't really know for sure.

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I was just looking at an Eddystone with a JA barrel.  If there are no cracks now, will they develop?  Should I wait to find something else, or if there aren't cracks now are they GTG?  .

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I was just looking at an Eddystone with a JA barrel.  If there are no cracks now, will they develop?  Should I wait to find something else, or if there aren't cracks now are they GTG?  





Sorry to hear about this Bladeswitcher - It's always cool to get a new toy, but completely blows when something like this happens.