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March 31, 2009
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The Winchester Lee Navy bolt will hit you in the face if assembled incorrectly. It will also do it, even when assembled correctly, if you over power the charge.
You need to test the bolt after assembly and not shoot hot loads.
November 19, 2006
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Chuck said
The Winchester Lee Navy bolt will hit you in the face if assembled incorrectly. It will also do it, even when assembled correctly, if you over power the charge.
You need to test the bolt after assembly and not shoot hot loads.
Glenn DeRuiter learned this the hard way with the Winchester-Lee 
December 9, 2002
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Great point made gentlemen, on this very informative thread post!
Tony
October 14, 2024
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There is a big part of me that really finds the Winchester Lee intriguing and neat but, I enjoy shooting my rifles. Catastrophic failure is not something that I want to experience.
I have never had any inkling of fear or concern when I shoot my 280 Ross. I do still check to make sure that the bolt head cams into the breech of the barrel even though I don’t take my bolt apart. I think that the Ross design is brilliant. In fact, I just picked up a nice R-10 in .303 British recently. I’m looking forward to taking her to the range to see how she performs.
March 31, 2009
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March 31, 2009
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steve004 said
Chuck said
The Winchester Lee Navy bolt will hit you in the face if assembled incorrectly. It will also do it, even when assembled correctly, if you over power the charge.
You need to test the bolt after assembly and not shoot hot loads.
Glenn DeRuiter learned this the hard way with the Winchester-Lee
Unfortunately no one but he knows what he did wrong and dead people can’t talk.
January 20, 2023
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Bert H. said
I found it interesting that the bolt rotates counterclockwise on the Ross, whereas my Remington 742 rotates the bolt clockwise when locking into battery.
Bert
That’s because Ross was a heretical Scot who thought anything an Englishman did was effeminate and to be avoided. The poofy Enfield rotated clockwise into battery.
Ross was descended from men who fought naked in the dead of Winter, to avoid getting blood on their fine woolen kilts.
- Bill
WACA # 65205; life member, NRA; member, TGCA; member, TSRA; amateur preservationist
"I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both, and I believe they both get paid in the end, but the fools first." -- David Balfour, narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
November 19, 2006
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Zebulon said
Absolutely. There’s an expression that came into common use in the Nineteen Eighties, in contracts for the sale of an ongoing business, after industrial videos started being extensively used in-house as teaching tools: “Show-How”, a riff on “know-how.” Show-how became shorthand for the intellectualM property businesses accumulate like assembly videos, maintenance videos, safety videos, etc.
This video is a great piece of show-how. Well produced, geat pacing, understandable narrative, enough camera time on the mechanisms for the viewer to grasp what’s being shown. I watched parts of it twice. A great thing about show-how videos.
Steve, I think I actually understand enough about how the Ross action operates- after watching this video — that I can now see just how slick a .280 Ross sporter would be!
[However, I passed on the Jackson Armory Mk IIII and bought another 99 EG – a 250.]
My only disappointment with the video was not dealing with the, “mouse trap” aspect of the bolt head. However, he does allude to the answer to the puzzle about the, “incorrect bolt disassembly” lore. It’s been conjectured that soldiers in the field were taking the bolts apart and them reassembling them incorrectly. Really, they’re taking their bolts apart?
However, I find it much more probable they were simply taking the bolts out of their rifles. I’ve had quite the variety of bolt actions rifles and I’ve taken bolts all the time. And with nearly every bolt rifle, it’s simple enough to put the bolt back in the way it came out. The same can true with the Ross – for those with steady hands! But when it snaps shut (i.e. retracts), you have to grab the bolt head and twist it. To do this correctly, you need to pull the bolt forward while twisting it. But if you don’t pull it forward, and spin the bolt head in the opposite direction, some fiddling (as Ian demonstrated) could result in the outcome Ian achieved. And all this from simply taking the bolt out and then faced with the task of re-inserting it. Again, you’re fine if it hasn’t snapped shut – but if it has – you have no choice but to engage your intellect.
January 20, 2023
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Steve, I think Ross — the consummate sportsman — designed a rifle with well trained and highly motivated Highland regiments like the Black Watch in mind. We can’t know what he really thought about the Common Man, if he ever thought about him at all. But I suspect he had little sympathy for the trooper who got harelipped because “Ya dinna listen, Laddie.”
- Bill
WACA # 65205; life member, NRA; member, TGCA; member, TSRA; amateur preservationist
"I have seen wicked men and fools, a great many of both, and I believe they both get paid in the end, but the fools first." -- David Balfour, narrator and protagonist of the novel, Kidnapped, by Robert Louis Stevenson.
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