Chambering: 1942 Enfield

TRX

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The Fred Colvin "US Rifles & Machine Guns" book is widely available online. It shows the chambering setup for the Springfield 1903, which used either four or six reamers; it's been a while since I last looked at it.

I was going through a copy of the British magazine "The Model Engineer", 03 September 1942. An article called "Simple Machine Tools for Production" was basically listing of specialty machines being made by Myford, for the production of (from the fuzzy pictures) the #4 Enfield. Each machine was a specialized version of the Myford hobby lathe, rigged to do a single operation.

An interesting one was the chambering machine. The headstock was in the middle, the tailstock was on the left, and the carriage on the right. The chambering reamer (no rougher was mentioned) was mounted in the toolpost. "Coolant" was fed through a fitting on the muzzle end of the barrel via a "suds pump."

In earlier times, "suds" meant soda water, which was mentioned by Colvin as the coolant for the Springfield. But soluble oils were in regular use by 1942, and some Brits still refer to soluble oil as "suds" even today.

That's the first printed reference I've found for through-the-barrel chip flushing for chambering. I'm sure there are earlier ones out there, but while it seems like the obvious thing to do, a lot of manufacturers didn't bother, and as far as I know still don't, judging by the swarf marks in some of their chambers...
 
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