Ross Found Hanging in the rafters

C

caperaway

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Well it may not have been buried in the back yard but this old Ross was found hanging in the rafters of an old farm house my ex boss bought about twenty years ago.He bought the place from an estate of a family friend,complete farm,clothes still hanging in the closets.When they were cleaning out the attic they found this old girl hanging in the rafters.They talked to the brother of the deceased owner and he said it was his brothers deer rifle for many years.Said it had taken some big bucks over the years.He had no interest in it and the boss isn't a hunter so I ended up with it.It's been sitting in my safe for quite awhile now.I figured somebody here might be able to give me some more info on it.I know it's a m10 Ross that has been sporterized but was curious if the proof marks and stampings on the barrel had any specific meaning.

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That's a very nice find. Sorry I can't help with the markings but I'm sure other gunnutz will. Congrats. I wish I'd find things like that in rafters.
 
Very nice, find, friend!

She was built and proofed in Canada (DCP with crossed flags: DOMINION OF CANADA PROOF), taken to England and then to France by the Canadian Corps in the Great War, turned in for a Lee-Enfield and then turned over to the Royal Navy. You have the Navy "N" on the receiver ring at 8 o'clock to prove that. She was then issued to the Royal Marines Light Infantry out of PLYmouth, likely for shipboard use. After the Second War, she was sold off as surplus and sportered in Birmingham ("BM" marks) and re-proofed (this is all that: .303", which is the bore; 2.222", which is the case length; 18-1/2 TONS/IN square, which is the working pressure of military 303" ammo: 41440 psi). The chamber was reamed to the Enlarged standard at the Ross factory itself (the "E" on the chamber).

After that, it was sold here as a cheap sporter.

It is only in the last year that efforts by GALLEN 270 and BUFFDOG, with some small participation by myself, have been able to work this all out. We have confirmation from the Royal Marines Light Infantry Museum in PLYmouth that this was their marking.

I have the mate to this one and it shoots very nicely. Buffdog has a CRB (issued to the RMLI out of CRomBie) which is done exactly the same.

BTW, that is one BEAUTIFUL chunk of walnut on her. It NEEDS TLC in order to GLOW properly. You can't get a chunk of walnut like that today for under about half of my pension cheque...... and then you have to find somebody who can carve it.
You have a real treasure there: Canadian service in WW!, British service in WW1 and WW2..... and then cast off and starting a new career as a hunting rifle.... and even doing that well.

Look after the old girl. She WILL put the bullets where you want them to go, just so long as you feed her what she wants.

Nice to see another one saved, even if the barrel has been bobbed!
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Smellie,thanks for all the info.You've obviously spent a good portion of your life researching these old rifles for you to be able to post so much info so quickly.I appreciate the dedication and time it took you to become so knowledgeable.She has had a spot in my safe for the last 20yrs and it's pretty cool to have an idea of where it's been prior to that.I've often considered taking her to the range to see how she shoots.If it's fairly accurate one of these seasons I may give it another chance in the deer woods.
 
Wow smellie, what a piece of Canadian history in that old Ross. If only guns could talk - what a story they'd have to tell. Thanks for filling us in. I'm not even a Ross collector but that is truly amazing. What a journey.

Again thanks to you, Gallen 270 and Buffdog!
 
Ross

I concur with SMELLIE's post. By the way, they can talk, and this rifle talked to SMELLIE. He read it all from the stampings.

The bolt has been pinned by the looks of it. This was done to prevent improper assembly - and if you do not know what you are doing and take the bolt apart and reassemble it wrong, - then make sure your Wife has lots of life insurance on you. When assembled wrong, only about 1/6th. of the locking area of the bolt engages the receiver, and when fired, the bolt flies back, hitting you between the eyes, and rearranging your pretty face with sometimes fatal results.

A properly assembled Ross M-10 bolt has about ONE INCH of space showing between the rear of the lugs on the bolt and the bolt carrier when the bolt is open. If you have only about 1/4 inch, then you are in trouble, and whatever you do, make sure you do not fire it in this condition.
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Awesome Smellie!

You guys between you have found out more about these marked sporterized Rosses than anyone else had known...I had a couple of these rifles and had no idea what the markings were.

Royal Navy basically.

smellie said:
Very nice, find, friend!

She was built and proofed in Canada (DCP with crossed flags: DOMINION OF CANADA PROOF), taken to England and then to France by the Canadian Corps in the Great War, turned in for a Lee-Enfield and then turned over to the Royal Navy. You have the Navy "N" on the receiver ring at 8 o'clock to prove that. She was then issued to the Royal Marines Light Infantry out of PLYmouth, likely for shipboard use. After the Second War, she was sold off as surplus and sportered in Birmingham ("BM" marks) and re-proofed (this is all that: .303", which is the bore; 2.222", which is the case length; 18-1/2 TONS/IN square, which is the working pressure of military 303" ammo: 41440 psi). The chamber was reamed to the Enlarged standard at the Ross factory itself (the "E" on the chamber).

After that, it was sold here as a cheap sporter.

It is only in the last year that efforts by GALLEN 270 and BUFFDOG, with some small participation by myself, have been able to work this all out. We have confirmation from the Royal Marines Light Infantry Museum in PLYmouth that this was their marking.

I have the mate to this one and it shoots very nicely. Buffdog has a CRB (issued to the RMLI out of CRomBie) which is done exactly the same.

BTW, that is one BEAUTIFUL chunk of walnut on her. It NEEDS TLC in order to GLOW properly. You can't get a chunk of walnut like that today for under about half of my pension cheque...... and then you have to find somebody who can carve it.
You have a real treasure there: Canadian service in WW!, British service in WW1 and WW2..... and then cast off and starting a new career as a hunting rifle.... and even doing that well.

Look after the old girl. She WILL put the bullets where you want them to go, just so long as you feed her what she wants.

Nice to see another one saved, even if the barrel has been bobbed!
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Ross

Rifleman1911 said:
Man I have got to get m1e one of those.!
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If you do get one, you will find that you have a very accurate, fairly heavy barreled rifle, with a very strong action and one of the best trigger systems of any Military rifle built. The barrel contour was borrowed from the 1905 Ross Military Mark II**, a rifle that the Canadians ruled the Bisley Ranges with for five years.

The 1910 Ross (M-10) Mark III rifle was used as a basis for the .280 Ross cartridge, the Magnum of the day. It was tested to over 100,000 psi pressure.

You have to understand that these Ross rifles were MILITARY rifles, and chambers were generous so that dirty, soiled and crappy MILITARY ammunition could be shoved into them. Most have enlarged chambers, so NECK SIZING your brass only is the way to go. If you have more than one Ross, you keep your brass separated and use only the brass fired in that particular rifle for that rifle. Pick-up brass can be full length sized ONCE with little effects, but if you full length size your .303 brass all the time, you are going to end up with a seperated case in your chamber. Count on it!

Anyone shooting the .303 regularly should have a broken case extractor in their range kit. It costs less than $25 and will save a lot of grief, and possibly a ruined chamber. You see posts where someone has used a threading tap to extract a case, but there is an excellent chance that it could ruin the chamber by digging into the chamber walls. Don't do it!

Otherwise, observing the normal safety precautions, a Ross is a great rifle to shoot. With all the rumors, mythology, and B.S. information on the Internet about the dangers of the Ross, when you appear on the range with one, poorly informed people tend to retreat to a safe distance. They expect to see a smoking crater after you touch off the first round.

Bring extra ammunition to the range. After a while, some brave, foolhardy individual will clue in to the fact that this "bomb" you are shooting is making some pretty respectable groups downrange, and will ask to fire it. Then, you will see some smiles after he does.
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Nice rifle bud. I think the next rifle I am going to go for is a sporter M10 with a peep style sights. Getting a full length military build is going to be out of my price range
 
Wow. I should take pics of mine that was given to me in 1967 by a guy I delivered newspapers to. Not so nice though, the barrel was cut with a hacksaw and not crowned really.
 
Buffdog,thanks for the warning on the bolt.I did some research on the proper assembly years ago and seem to remember there being a simple test to make sure it's properly assembled.Something like sliding the bolt home about halfway to lock and pulling the trigger.When properly assembled the bolt should draw itself into lock,correct?Mine works that way at any rate.
 
Ross bolt assembly

caperaway said:
Buffdog,thanks for the warning on the bolt.I did some research on the proper assembly years ago and seem to remember there being a simple test to make sure it's properly assembled.Something like sliding the bolt home about halfway to lock and pulling the trigger.When properly assembled the bolt should draw itself into lock,correct?Mine works that way at any rate.
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Although it might work, I am not sure I would trust it too much.

However, if you take a fairly bright flashlight, point the muzzle downward at about a 45 degree angle, and shine the light into the back of the receiver ring where the bolt goes, you should be able to see the bolt turn and lock up as you slowly close the bolt. A bolt that is not properly assembled will only go about 1/6th of the amount required, and you can see the greater part of the locking lugs visible in the left raceway, or in the right raceway where the extractor is. You can see that the bolt head turns a full 90 degrees to the left when it is locked properly.

If you go to milsurps.com and then to the Ross Rifle section, you will find a sticky on bolt assembly. The best thing is not to disassemble the bolt in the first place, and if you think it needs cleaning, then use some spray aerosol brake or carburetor cleaner, followed by a light spray lubrication. Use the proper safety precautions such as goggles when cleaning using aerosol products.
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Yes, the bolt on this one is pinned. When the pin was installed, they also modded the rotating bolt-head, down near the bottom of its shaft. The installation of the pin made it positively miserable to disassemble/assemble the bolt at all. That was the bad part. The good part is that it also made it absolutely impossible to assemble the critter incorrectly.

Your bolt is acting the way one should act.

Good advice regarding getting a manual. The 1913 manual is available for free download from the Military Knowledge Library over at milsurps dot com. Membeship is free and it takes only a couple of minutes to fill out the application. There is a good forum on there just for Rosses. They have an utterly awe-inspiring collection of manuals and technical articles for download.

Another quick check on a Ross bolt: pull the bolt back about halfway and check the distance between the bolt-sleeve and the rear locking-lugs of the bolt-head. This distance should be about ONE INCH. You can lay your thumb across the gap, which is why I call this my "Rule of Thumb" for Rosses. The bolthead can only sit in two positions: an inch out, which is GOOD....... or a QUARTER of an inch (6mm for the Imperially-challenged unfortunates among us), which is REALLY BAD.

The nice thing is that the bolt CANNOT GET OUT OF ADJUSTMENT WITHOUT HUMAN MEDDLING. The RIFLES are SAFE; it's the operators who sometimes were not.

I find that a bit of Lubriplate 105 (get it from your GM dealer, comes in a 1-pound tube and doesn't freeze up even at 40 below) on the serrated locking-lugs of the bolt, and a bit more inside the bolt along the cam-ridges of the bolt-head shank, will really slick things up. Water does NOT penetrate Lubriplate; I have used it on oilfield tools which have been subjected to sal####er pressure at more than 1000 psi, and the stuff hasn't leaked. Nice thing is that it isn't expensive and one tube will last your entire arsenal most of your lifetime.

And Buffdog is completely right: that trigger IS a honey!

Nice rifle.
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after reading this i got my old 1910 ross out of the cabinet and started to check out the bolt operation.It was herd to open and looking in the reciver like buff dog sugested you could see that the locking lugs were just barely catching ,i kept shoving the bolt back and forth but the locking lugs would not rotate.So i knew there had to be a problem with the bolt.
So i proceded to disasembel the bolt and found that the cocking peice was stuck ,watched a utube video on m10 ross bolt disasmbleyand finally got the bolt apart.Cleaned everything up nicely as there was surfase rust on the cocking peice and the bolt body,completly to the bolt apart and reasembled it,the safety was also seized.Instaled the bolt in the rifle and now it workes fine.Got out the cleaning kit and gave the barel a good cleaning and it came out clean and shiney.So im quite comfortable now about fireing it,as i never fired the rifle befour a friend of mine just droped it off and asked if i wanted it.Workes great now cant wait to try the old girl out
 
Glad you caught that. :eek:

I recently bought a Mk II with Mk III backsight, and the bolt was assembled wrong. There is no way it could have been fired the way it was. That's probably why the bore was absolutely brand new mint. :)

(There are a ton of Rosses around with shot out, dark bores.)

I disassembled it, installed a new (early threaded) firing pin and spent the better part of a day getting it back together right...it was really hard. I was convinced I had an assemblage of non compatible parts.

There is a trick with the Mk II bolt...you put it down the wrong track, then back it out a bit and give it a little twist and...if you're lucky you can get it to go into the right track. At any rate, just when I was beyond fed up, it suddenly went together right, and worked perfectly for the first time in...how many years?

gordonlbyrne said:
after reading this i got my old 1910 ross out of the cabinet and started to check out the bolt operation.It was herd to open and looking in the reciver like buff dog sugested you could see that the locking lugs were just barely catching ,i kept shoving the bolt back and forth but the locking lugs would not rotate.So i knew there had to be a problem with the bolt.
So i proceded to disasembel the bolt and found that the cocking peice was stuck ,watched a utube video on m10 ross bolt disasmbleyand finally got the bolt apart.Cleaned everything up nicely as there was surfase rust on the cocking peice and the bolt body,completly to the bolt apart and reasembled it,the safety was also seized.Instaled the bolt in the rifle and now it workes fine.Got out the cleaning kit and gave the barel a good cleaning and it came out clean and shiney.So im quite comfortable now about fireing it,as i never fired the rifle befour a friend of mine just droped it off and asked if i wanted it.Workes great now cant wait to try the old girl out
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