Reading Tech stuff ... Making the 1903 in 1903 .

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  • Last Post 19 April 2023
Ken Campbell Iowa posted this 19 April 2023

while looking for 1903 Springfield stuff, I stumbled on this 300 pages of techie stuff ... mostly how to make a 1903 Springfield ....   in great detail ... with the original tooling of the time.  I was amazed.  

As usual, I might be the last person to find this jewel ...  you can smell the smoke ... and sweat ... of the people who turned all the wheels back then ...

download  at

http://www.archive.org/stream/cu31924012809897#page/n71/mode/1up

ken

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hporter posted this 19 April 2023

Thank you for sharing.  Looks to be a great read.

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cfp4570 posted this 19 April 2023

Great stuff!!! I machine for a living, mostly cnc equipment but the shop I work in still has a DeVlieg 4H-72 horizontal mill that we use all the time along with other assorted manual machines. To see how they produced complex parts back then still fascinates me. We take cnc technology for granted, and think we are smarter than they were back then. Not even close!! The first time I cut a thread by the thread milling process (cnc of course) amazed me, but here they were in 1917 doing it on machines that were driven by gear boxes. Thanks for sharing this!

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kootne posted this 19 April 2023

I have a paper copy (reprint) of that publication. It was done by Wolfe Publishing about 40 years ago. In the front it says the book was written as a supplement to go with Request For Quote or bids to subcontract rifles for the First World War.

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alphabrass posted this 19 April 2023

I also am fortunate to have a copy of the reprint.  I first saw the original in the Dewey Decimal section of the University of Arizona Science and Engineering Library decades ago.  It was a big influence on my becoming a manufacturing engineer.  I knew that I had to have my own copy and after years and years of looking I found one.  When I want to remind myself that ingenuity is not dependent on computers, I take a look.  I marvel at the dimensioned and perspective drawings of all of the tooling and gauging.

The Army realized that more rifles would be needed soon, and would have preferred the 1903.  When the 1917 became available, the 1903 project was shelved until WW II.  The sections in the book about the Benet-Mercie, Lewis, and Vickers machine guns are also interesting.  The politics around the Benet-Mercie (M1909 Machine Rifle) and Lewis guns show that some things never change.

One of the authors, Fred H. Colvin, was very prolific, writing many books on machining practice, and for the American Machinist periodical.  His autobiography, "60 Years With Men And Machines", is very interesting.

alphabrass

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