The journey began with a near mint, excellent condition Argentine 1909 that came into my shop direct from the importer. While the rifle was all matching numbers, the bolt was extremely difficult to operate. When inspecting the rifle closely, it was found that due to lug set back, material had been displaced binding the bolt.
The rifle was stripped down and the receiver was sent for sectioning and analysis. As you can see above they found that the bottom lug had a surface hardness of 7.4 Rc with no relative case depth. In the third picture you can see the lug setback in the top lug. This measured from .004" to .010". The fourth picture shows the lug setback under microscope.
