Thread: 96 Years of Progress

Originally Posted by John Duxbury

I suppose Newton McConnachie knew how to put the bolt in properly. Not sure I entirely believe the internet lore about the bolt assembly issue. The internet claims that people were killed by assembling it wrong, but they never actually name any names or dates. It is very difficult to put the bolt together wrong. You know you're doing it wrong.

As Grandpamac says, I think the weak extraction was the reason the army didnt like it, and worse, it was expensive to make.

It was a thing, there was a notice and an entry in the Canadian armourer's thing about not being permitted to disassemble bolts at anything other than depot-level service areas. I agree that it should appear obvious if you haven't timed the bolt right, but hey... As noted a mod was made with later rifles to prevent the bolt from being assembled and going into battery at all if it wasn't right which fixed the issue, but by then the damage was done.

I'll note the mud and fouling up thing wasn't just confined to the Ross, the early Lee Enfield had a dust cover on the bolt and this was removed in muddy areas for similar reasons and later deleted entirely at about the time the rifle was set up for stripper clips.

Ian McCallum did a video on that with an incorrectly assembled bolt and a block of ballistic gel. The bolt flew open but was stopped by the back of the receiver. From memory all that hit the gel were a few pieces of brass case.
But getting back to the original point of this given 96 years have passed since the likes of Ross, Newton, Ackley, Neidener and others started tinkering progress to improve on their creations has really been at a snail's pace.