Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Custom Rifles & Wildcats The Springfield 1903 as a custom action

Whats the consensus?
does it make a good rifle? granting the same gunsmith working on the rifle would the action be on par with mausers or even modern bolt actions?

I would think it'd be on par w/ Mausers and light years ahead of the Remington 700s guys use around here all the time... I happen to love Springfields, personally.

Just ask Griffin & Howe!

I'm sure Idared'll be along shortly to show you some of his stuff... he has a definate opinion on the subject!

In my opinion (which is worth the money paid for it) the Springfield is inferior to the 98 Mauser and the pre-'64 Model 70 Winchester. It's got many of the faults of the Model 70, and few of the virtues of the 98. The two-piece firing pin is one of the worst ideas ever. The big reason it used to be so highly regarded in America was that until the 1903A3 came along, it was always finely finished.

That said, one of my favorite custom rifles is a pre-WWII .35 Whelen made by Pachmayr, with a Pachmayr-typical great piece of American walnut, with fleur-de-lis checkering and ivory white-line spacers between the ebony forend tip and grip cap. (Pachmayr invented the white-line spacer, not Roy Weatherby, and it was considered very tasteful back then, especially when done in ivory.) It has both a Lyman Alaskan in a G&H detachable side-mount and a Lyman 48 receiver sight. Any rifle loony's life is incomplete without at least one nice 1903 sporter!

Wouldnt mind having a Sedgley sporter if I could afford one.

Had one for a while. They aren't usually too bad in price. I saw one at the Helena, Montana gun show last weekend that was in good shape for $850.

As a piece of engineering the 1903 was designed to mimic the Mauser 98 while altering enough features to avoid paying patent royalties - in this it failed. The US wound up paying Mauser for patent infringement for what was IMO an inferior design, because most of the alterations were in fact backward steps.

For example the cone breech of the '03 was designed for better feeding, but at the cost of seriously inferior gas handling. The two piece firing pin was designed to make it easier to replace the tip if it broke, but resulted in a spongier firing pin strike and slower lock time - and when was the last time you heard of a Mauser firing pin tip breaking, anyway? The safety lug was a big lump on metal on the right side that needed a high rear receiver bridge to clear it, rather than the neat little Mauser lug. The safety worked similarly to the Mauser but was made of 4 pieces instead of one. The magazine cutoff was an idiotic concession to senior military men who wanted soldiers to use the Springfield as a single shot except in emergencies??!!?! (I don't know about you but I would consider being shot at an emergency!). The angled rear receiver screw pulls the receiver forward as it is tightened, thus moving the recoil lug forward and away from contacting the stock. Oh, and the early ones up to serial number 800,000 (Springfield Armory) or 285,507 (Rock Island Arsenal) would sometimes blow up for no apparent reason when fired with standard ammunition.

On the other hand, as Mule Deer says, they were all well finished prior to WW II (but so was a pre-WW II Mauser) and a pre-war Griffin and Howe custom 1903 is one of the handsomest rifles ever made. IMHO of course.

So when building a custom on a military reciever isnt it standard practice to replace many of the parts you are mentioning as faults anyways?

I mean isnt that the point of making a custom rifle?I am not speaking of a sporter...
To me a sporter is an enfield with only 4 pounds of wood. But really, sporter to me has always mean taking a military rifle and attempting to make it usable as a sporting rilfe by altering the parts already there.
what i am talking about is custom. replacing the parts which wouldnt suit a fine rifle.
The trigger is military so out with that and in with a timney trigger and timney safety.
The angled rear receiver screw i dont think is something you can change. but have to work around, yes.
but didnt Brownell design the Ruger action and stock with an angled front reciever screw? isnt that in fact doing as much to hinder even contact with the recoil lug?

So i guess what i would like to know is what parts of a springfield 1903, say a remington built A3, would you replace that you normally wouldnt replace if using a mauser or another action as a build?
the pic below is a A1 with a replaced speedlock/ safety that i have been trying to ID the make of.

My 30-338 Springfield in a Brown is my meat gun, If I HAVE to kill something it leaves the house with me. It has traveld with me from Alaska, Africa and all over the western states and never let me down.

I like them a lot!

To go down the line.

The angled front screw on the Ruger points backwards from the receiver down, so tightening it pulls the recoil lug FORWARD and tighter against the stock. The angled rear screw on the Springfield points forwards from the receiver down, so tightening it pulls the recoil lug BACKWARDS and AWAY from the stock.

You are correct that there are some parts that can be upgraded on the Springfield, like the two piece firing pin and the trigger mechanism.

I don't know if anyone makes a replacement bolt shroud for the '03, whereas there are several replacement bolt shrouds for the Mauser '98, including ones that have an M70 type safety. That substitution is frequently done on custom Mausers nowadays. I prefer a bolt shroud safety because it blocks the cocking piece, compared to replacement triggers with built in safeties that block the sear, but to each his own.

Incidentally, a lot of people think that Mauser designed a 3 position safety so that, in the middle position, you could safely unload the rifle by cycling the bolt back and forth with the safety on, but in fact you can do this with the safety in the fire position because the controlled feed design allows you to cycle the bolt back and forth without ever lowering the bolt handle. The real benefit of the middle safety position is it allows easy disassembly and reassembly of the bolt because you can unscrew the bolt shroud and remove the firing pin for cleaning without needing any tools.

For the A3 with the stamped trigger guard, obviously that would be replaced with custom metal as well.

However there is no replacement for the clunky safety lug and no part that will improve the comparatively poor gas handling compared to the Mauser design. Those are engineering design choices that are inferior to the Mauser design IMHO, and are not fixable by replacing/upgrading parts.

This is not to say that the Springfield doesn't make a fine, reliable, handsome custom rifle - as I said, Griffin and Howe made some of the best, and best looking custom rifles ever built on Springfield actions. I just happen to believe that the Mauser 98 is a better engineered design. And I'm not alone in this, for example Jack O'Connor and Jack Lott, among others, both stated as much in print. And that was the original question, whether the Springfield is as good a basis for a custom sporter as, say, a Mauser 98.

Not to belabor the point, but there are a number of places like Granite Mountain, Satterlee, and Gottfried Prechtl, that are building and seling new Mauser actions for custom guns, often with Win 70 type triggers and safeties for $3000 and up. The number of makers of new Springfield 1903 actions - none.

Last one I had, a high number, was ruined when the original barrel was removed - the receiver ring cracked and split apart. Something I never had happen on any Mauser, including the Siamese Mauser I have built rifles on. I would rather buy something else to spend money on.

efw

Yes, I do have a definite opinion on the subject but I think I will pass rather than get into a war of words.

As Mule Deer says, "Any rifle loony's life is incomplete without at least one nice 1903 sporter!"

At last count I have eight of nine Springfields compared with three Mauser 98s so my opinion should be well known. I might add one the best ways to improve a 98 is to put a 1903 triggerguard on it.

Looky there, a three position safety.

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The 03's do make a classic rifle and a major part of what made them so nice was that the makers during the early 20th century understood how to build slim, well balanced hunting rifles.
Jack O'Conner spoke glowingly of his Adolph Minar sporter and after using mine I understand why

Beautiful rifle Phil. Thanks for sharing. Does Petrov have pictures of that one?

Yes he does, I left it with him for a few days as his photos are alot better than mine.

i'd love to have the spec sheet on that rifle.

You are not alone there. His pictures are better than most any of us.

Would you mind him sharing them?

One of the things I like about those 1930's custom Springfields is the LOOK with that Springfield cocking piece. Without it, it kind of looks nekkid.

Here is a link to SDH's fine custom gunmakeing web showing more of the rifle

http://www.finegunmaking.com/page32/page46/page46.html

You can also see more of Michael Petrov's fantastic collection