Rude Keyholing 303 SMLE Boolits..ARGGH!

[Crash_Corrigan]

I gave in and got the No 4 Mk II or III Enfield. I'm easily confused. However it is marked Longbranch 1945 and somebody earlier had sporterized the stock.

A .30 Cal (USA) MG box of surplus j word rounds came with it. I fired of about 50 or so and stopped because it hurt too much. I put on a recoil pad and the pains stopped.

The darned thing shot pretty good although a bit high with iron sights. Then I tried to reload the cases and quickly realized that these were Berdan primed. Very bad. I got 150 cases from Midway and loaded up some 160 GR Lee LRN boolits with alox lube and sized to .312. I added some 12 gr of Red Dot and I was off to the range.

All went well for the first 20 or 30 rounds then the accuracy went down real bad.
Next I started to get keyholes in the paper targets and a perfect side profile of my hand cast boolit on my freshly painted steel target.

This is not good. I stopped and regrouped. I took the offending rifle home and noticed that it was totally leaded up from muzzle to chamber. I made a serious error and I failed to clean out the copper fouling from the surplus rounds and then fired lead boolits thru it. Stoopid....stoopid....stoopid.

Now it requires a good cleaning with Ed Red and then Sweets to get out the copper. Then I will slug the bore and make sure that I do not have a bigger bore than I expected.

I do believe that these SMLE's will slug from .311 up to .316.

Am I on the right track here or does somebody else have a better idea?

[junkbug]

It sounds like you have a No 4, Mk1, which is the late WWII model of the Enfield pattern rifle. The SMLE MkIII, which later had it's name changed to No 1, Mk3, is the First World War style Enfield pattern, with the heavy nose piece encasing the barrel right up to the muzzle.

You are probably correct about your boolits being undersized. The best way to find out would be to do both a chamber impact cast, and slug the bore. If you are not up to that, just trial and error loading of prgressively larger boolits (in dummy rounds) until they won't chamber will show you how big you can load.

It is very possible that you may not be able to load a boolit large enough to fill the groove, or go .001" over, due to an undersize chamber neck. Then you may have to consider altering the chamber, or sticking with jacketed bullets.

Good luck

[sturf]

I had 2. One was .314; the other .318. Never got either one to shoot well at anything over 1400 fps.

[VintageRifle]

.312 will be much to small. The grooves are at least .314. I have 3 Savage No4 Mk1* Enfields. 2 have a groove of .3155 and the one I have with a like new barrel is .3145. I do not get keyholes with my .3155 groove barrel with the Lee C312-185-1R bullet sized to .314. However, They do not group tight at 50 yards. I will eventually get a custom sizing die for .3155, assuming it will still crimp on the gascheck.

[45 2.1]

Boolit diameter is more important with a 4 or more groove barrel than it is with a two groove. The two groove displaces more of the boolit body than a four groove will. You don't say which you have, but Longbranches came in both. I prefer the two groove barrels with cast and buy them whenever I can find one.

[Ricochet]

Try backing down that charge of Red Dot to something in the 7-10 grain range and it will likely help.

[KCSO]

I lapped and Beagled my Lee mould till it droppped a 316 bullet, I then lubbed with Lee Liquid Allox and then seated a gas check and lubed again with Carnuba Red. These bullets were then seated over a healthy charge of IMR 4895 and shot very well in my #4, the velocity was right around 2000 fps. I managed a few 1 1/2" groups at 100 yards and NO leading so it can be done. My plinking load is 12.5 grains of Red Dot pushing a Lee 165 bullet made for the SKS ( I disremember the number of the mould). This bullet drops as cast at 314 and is a real shooter in most of my 303's.

[Larry Gibson]

If your groove diameter is .314 or larger I'd suggest getting a Lyman 323470 or the Lee C324-175-1R and a Lee sizer of .314 or a custom Lee sizer of .316". Seat the .32 GC on the .324 bullets, lube them well and then size them through the .314 or .316 sizer. The lube keeps the grooves from being compressed and the bullets are then a near perfect fit for the oversize .303s. The Lee in particular or the recent GB 8 mm bullets are excellent bullets for this when used for hunting. Attached is the 325471 and the GB 8mm bullets sized to .314" as mentioned.

Larry Gibson

[curator]

Make a throat cast or slug to determine the corect cast bullet size for your rifle. Size or cast boolits no more than .005 under throat diameter. Larger if you can chamber a loaded cartridge. Most Lee Enfields have generous throats as well as groove diameters. If it is a 2-groove, you may need to use some kind of a filler like Puff-lon or plastic shot buffer to get both accuracy and not leading. British 2-groover barrels are very different than the ones on American WWII Springfields. The Brits rifled with two very narrow, deep grooves. American 2-groove barrels have much wider, shallower grooves.

Read the article on Steve Regwell's website: http://www.303british.com/id37.html

There's a lot of good information there that will help you.

[Ricochet]

I recently mistakenly loaded a batch of 7.62x54R with 200 grain Lee boolits sized to .308" for my K-31. Wondered why the Mosins wouldn't shoot too well. Actually the 1929 hex M91/30 (ex-Dragoon) shot hand sized groups with them at 100 yards, but the M44 was all over the place.

[JeffinNZ]

Good comments thus far. 45 2.1 is right about the 2 groove barrels being more tolerant. My .303 Pygmy is a 2 groover and measures a deep/fat .317 but shoots VERY well with .3165 bullets. Both my SMLE and No4 Mk2 shoot VERY well with .314 bullets however both have 5 groove tubes in near new condition.
Just today I pushed a .314 ,175 grain, CBE, BHN 21 bullet over 47gr of H4350 at 2390fps and got 1 inch at 50m for 4 shots; the 5th went a shade left due to a 'biological interface error'.
If you have a 'fat' .303 Brit I can not recommend highly enough Jim at CBE as he has present something like 14 .303 Brit bullets available and it about to release another .316 and .318 designs. The best feature of his bullets is whilst the groove diameter is 'fat' the nose diameter remains .303-.305 so the bullets fit the BORE perfectly. Whilst groove diameters on LE's can vary Jim reports that almost always the bores are spot on at .303.

[Bigjohn]

'biological interface error'.

B.I.E. is that a T.L.A. for the "Nut behind the Butt"?

At present, my No. 4 is shooting quite well with the Lyman 314299 sized at .314". It could improve the accuracy with less BIE.

John.

[4570guy]

I have a #4 Mk1 Savage that I had a devil of a time getting to make round holes in the paper with cast bullets. I tried everything -- larger bullet, changed hardness, changed powder type - everything keyholed. Interestingly, it would should j-bullets okay (nothing great, but they didn't keyhole).

My local gunsmith was parting out a sporterized Savage that had a good full-length barrel. I swapped him for my barrel and problem solved. The new barrel has a tighter throat and overall better bore size. I shoot the CBE 316 180 gr sized to .315.