No hard numbers on the tensile strength on this 5% nickel-steel, but a chart from an INCO publication shows a 5% nickel- 0.17% carbon steel, normalized and temper, gives a yield of about 55,000 psi. They also messed around with a 1-2% low nickel 'extra' steel for easier machining, but it couldn't stand up to erosion from shots so it was abandoned. Winchester in 1895 looked for something to smokeless-proof their Model 1894s, they came up with a nickel-steel alloy, 5% nickel content, and it proved strong and tough enough for the 30-30 and 32 Special rounds. Which meant everything shooting in the trenches of WW1 was using something else as well. It couldn't had been a chrome-moly alloy like those used today, these weren't developed until the early 1930s. I'm basing most of my assumptions around this number, but I guess whatever used back then might had been somewhat lower. It has a yield strength around 90,000 psi after heat treating, giving a huge margin of safety for whatever ammunition used today. Correct me on this if I'm wrong.Ĥ140 would be the typical steel grade used for modern firearms. But after looking at charts, I started to doubt that a plain carbon steel can handle that sort of pressure without either being too brittle after a heat-treat or too soft if used normalized/annealed. Question is, what grade of steels did they exactly find to use? At first, I thought it might had just been a medium-grade carbon steel, like 1045, that was heat treated to increase its tensile strength. The Lee-Enfield was the direct result of the British military's need to 'bulk up' the previous BP-loaded Lee-Metfords for smokeless ammunition. Combined with longer 'high' in duration of pressures, the old wrought-iron barrels and mild steel barrels just couldn't handle these pressures safely. Cartridges on the other military rifles of the time would had been similar, or possibly even higher, from what I gather.

This would be at around the 1880-1900~? period, with rifles such as the Norwegian/Danish/American Krag-Jørgen, French Model 1886 Rifle, and the German Gewehr 98, and British Lee-Enfield coming into play.įrom what I can dig up, the original smokeless cartridge for the Krag-Jørgen reached 40,000 psi of max pressure when fired. So, I'm trying to find out what sort of steel the gunsmiths were using for their barrels when smokeless powders first came out, barrels that were actually meant to take the pressure of the new propellants without blowing up in your face. Hi, this is just another obscure question that I can't get out of my head and need help answering, Google ain't what it use to be, not sure if this is the right place, but I know guys here know a thing or two about steel.

Gun barrel steel grades