Full disclosure: This is the pick of the litter from ten unissued 1950 Long Branch No.4 Mk1s I bought in 1993 at $1250 for the crate. The last of the best in the Lee Enfield world; manufactured in the leisurely period at Long Branch after the war, where the last Lee Enfields were being built prior to Canada switching to the FN FAL (or C1 for those familiar with Canadian military rifles). Cleaned them all of the storage grease, mounted a no-gunsmithing mount and scope, and after a few foulers fired a 10 shot group at 300 yards using Greek HXP69 ball ammo - that particular ball ammo has proven to be very accurate in many .303s.
Kept this rifle, the standout, and gave the second place rifle to my brother who I was trying to get into Service Rifle competition at the time. The rest I sold at $175 each - unissued Long Branches are now selling at around $800 each last time I looked... wish I could have those rifles back...
Then fell under the influence of Ken Mollohan about the same time, who suggested trying cast bullets. Made a lap and lapped the barrel until the barrel felt nice and uniform from end to end. So I'm starting with an unissued rifle that is known to be far more accurate than the standard No.4 Mk1 is expected to be.
I did my best to measure the five groove barrel and a cerrosafe casting before coming up with the mould dimensions for the mould I bought from Accurate. It throws a 185 gr. bullet, cast out of wheelweights.
Anyways, after sorting out some/most of my rookie mistakes with Smoke's Clear PC coating with #314299, my first groups with this mould were fired with bullets randomly grabbed out of the pile I cast a few months ago. Just gave them a quicky eyeball to see if there were any obvious defects. Coated them, loaded them ahead of the well known 16.0 gr. of 2400, rushed out to the range to get the scope I put back on the rifle for load development on the paper...
And promptly fired two back to back five shot groups at 100 yards just a bit under 1.5". Nice and round; no horizontal or vertical stringing - four in a cluster and one a little bit out of the cluster.
What a nice place to start load development at!
So for those looking for a target (or hunting) mold to experiment with in their Lee Enfields, this one from Accurate might be worth taking a look at. Adjusting dimensions as needed, of course.
One note: my measuring/guestimating was off despite doing my best with the cerrosafe casting. Math has never been my best friend...
To seat the bullet to touching, I have to seat it far more deeply than I wanted to: 2.62" - meaning the base of the bullet is well below the neck into the shoulder area. Going on memory, a Lee Enfield Mk4 No1 magazine should take bullets of somewhere around 3.0" OAL at least. If I were doing it again, I'd reduce the .304" diameter portion to .302" and the .315" base dimensions to .314" because I'm now powder coating. Lee Enfields vary greatly in dimensions, of course.
Anyways, the mould (with the diameter adjustments I requested to the catalogued bullet) and equipment...
Hopefully this might help out some other Lee Enfield owner wanting something different/hopefully better for their purposes than the default #314299.
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