Look what I had to clean today

Great post, explains how this beasty worked. Anyone hazard a guess to what it is worth?

RRCo. said:
Hope you took lots of good photos. We'd sure like to see some more. An excellent weapon for the time and a hell of a lot cheaper and handier than a Lewis gun (1/6th the price). There aren't any really good photos even in "The Ross Rifle Story".

That seems to be Huot No2, so you should be able to trace its history through the Blair Papers. Seems there were about six made, four were sent to England and France for extensive tests, which they passed 'with flying colours'.

Which of course goes to show that the problem with the Ross rifle was primarily the ammunition. Even so the Huot fired thousands of rounds of US and UK made ammo well known for being oversize, having soft cases etc.

Gen. Currie recommended in Oct. 1918 that the Huot be adopted for the Canadian Corps after seeing it demonstrated in France. Had the war not ended, probably it would have been.



Take care of it, that is one rare and unique piece of Canadian history.

How's the rifling? That would give some indication of the life of this example.

Is the magazine present?.

In any other country we'd get to see a documentary showing it being fired...
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Hmmm...one of the MCpls in the regiment told me that in our weapons lock-up we have an old milsurp of which only 4 or 5 were ever made. He said that 1 or 2 were in the hands of private collectors and 1 or 2 were in museums and 1 or 2 were missing, and that the one we had was one of the "missing" ones. At the time, I'd never heard of the rifle, so I never thought to write it down...but I think he may have said it was a Huot.
 
Thanks for the description, I knew it was something like that but again, looking at the pictures I have difficulty figuring out what does what. Didn't know the Ross was a straight-pull bolt-action mind you and always figured it was a conventional up-rear-forward-back bolt-action. The piston is one of the first things I noticed in the pictures, but since what it is hitting is hidden from view behind that box-shaped piece of sheet-metal which covers the rear of the bolt .... Also why 2 different bolt handles ? What I'm having trouble figuring out is how this thing's bolt locks and unlocks ... Recoil springs are pretty simple and common and modern firearms, so are pistons, but the bolt operation still puzzles me.

RRCo. said:
Hope you took lots of good photos. We'd sure like to see some more. An excellent weapon for the time and a hell of a lot cheaper and handier than a Lewis gun (1/6th the price). There aren't any really good photos even in "The Ross Rifle Story".
Click to expand...
 
RobSmith said:
The piston is one of the first things I noticed in the pictures, but since what it is hitting is hidden from view behind that box-shaped piece of sheet-metal which covers the rear of the bolt .... Also why 2 different bolt handles ? What I'm having trouble figuring out is how this thing's bolt locks and unlocks ... Recoil springs are pretty simple and common and modern firearms, so are pistons, but the bolt operation still puzzles me.
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What looks like a second smaller thinner bolt handle is probably a locking catch. I'd guess the Huot has a 'hold open device' and that may be the release for it.

The bolt head on this type of Ross (the last) has interrupted threads like the breech of a large naval gun. There are 'teeth' on the inside of the bolt sleeve and on the outside of the bolt body (shaft) that mesh with each other so that as the sleeve is moved backwards or forwards, the bolt head locks and unlocks by turning about 90 degrees. They are quite a piece of engineering.
 
Is springfield armoury deliberately keeping quiet to work us into a frenzy?

No fair!:p

Good on you though - you've single handedly achieved what it seems the last 100 years of photographers haven't, a clear and actually comprehendable picture of the huot. Now we just need more:D
 
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