45-70 on Bubbaed Savage Made Enfield

[EMC45]

Was thinking of going the route of possibly building a 45-70 (a la Gibbs) rifle on a badly bubbaed Savage made Enfield.......Strong enough? Mind you these will all be cast loads and kept sane. A&B barrels run around 90 bucks from Midway.

[elk hunter]

I think you'll find it plenty strong enough for the 45-70. I have a #4 Mk1 that I re-barreled to 375 Waters Express aka 375-444, I keep the loads to 45,000 psi or less. Because the 45-70 has a larger diameter case head I would keep the loads to 35,000 or less. The real problem will be altering, building or finding a magazine that will feed properly. If you can find one of the Gibbs magazines for 45-70 you will be time and money ahead.

[W.R.Buchanan]

I have heard recently of guys rebarreling Mosin-Nagants to .45-70. I have no use for a MN, but I could find uses for a .45-70 MN or .45-70 Enfield.

I think a Sporterized Enfield in .45-70 would be a very cool and useful gun. I have seen several Enfields sporterized and whereas they are not a common gun to do this to, they still make attractive sporters if done correctly.

I think some of our Aussie Friends here at the board have probably seen more of this type of stuff than we do over here.

Some pics of Sporterized Enfields would spark a bunch of interest just like the .45ACP pics got many interested in converting dead Mausers.

Projects are all about ideas, and coming up with the ideas is the hard part. Pictures breed ideas, as well as convey them.

Randy

[45nut]

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/1003/45nut/rifles/websmle45-70.jpg

No1Mk3 I had built about ten years back , 45-70 . It'll hold up.

[EMC45]

That is SLICK 45NUT!

[longbow]

Hey, I remember seeing that photo before! I told someone I had seen an Enfield in military wood re-barreld to .45-70 and that's the one!

I would kinda like to do that with a jungle carbine in either .45-70 or .444 Marlin but keep it stock looking.

I have seen a Lee Enfield in .458 x 2" as well.

I like 'em. Maybe one day when I have more toy money.

Longbow

[TRX]

Ah! I'm well along in my .45-70 build. I'm using one of the prechambered, prethreaded Gibbs barrels Sarco was selling a year or so ago for $80.

Old Western Scrounger has surplus Gibbs magazines for $75, which has made me consider just making one. I haven't made the final decision yet.

There are variations in the "thumbnail cuts" between the various Enfield receivers. You may have to Dremel a tiny amount here and there so the case stays in alignment going into the chamber.

The big thing is the stop surface the barrel screws to. It looks like the "inner ring" on a 98 or later Mauser. Specifically, the rim on the .45-70 is too big to pass through my Long Branch No.4 receiver. You can open up the hole with the grinder. I went nuts and made a lathe fixture.

An empty case will eject fine. On a Gibbs, you pretty much have to remove the magazine, slide the bolt back, and drop the loaded round out the bottom. There's a small notch cut in the back of the receiver ring for the point of a .303 bullet to pass through; the notch is far too small for a fat round-nose .45. I haven't done anything to mine yet, but smoothly flaring the notch out shouldn't hurt strengh any.

The .303 extractor fits fine on the .45-70 rim. The SMLE has a huge amount of extractor travel and a flat faced bolt head, which eliminates many problems.

There's variation on thickness between .45-70 rims as well as variants on SMLE extractor hooks. If yours won't snap over the rim, a few strokes of the file will do to fix it.

The military forward wood absolutely won't fit over the fat .45 barrel. I haven't yet decided whether I want to try opening some surplus wood up, try modifying a short bottom-only sporter forend, or ?

Since I have a No.4 receiver with the rear-mount peep sight, I'm planning to just install a matching front blade on the end of the barrel. If you're using a No.1 receiver you'll need to do a rear sight.


When unscrewing the barrel, make sure your receiver wrench doesn't mung the screw tang under the receiver ring. It's thin and soft. Try not to destroy the .303 barrel; even "tomato stake" barrels are worth enough now to put up for sale.

[longbow]

I wonder if it would be easier to go .444 Marlin... or blow out .303 or .30-40 Krag brass straight... or go .444 rimless.

I have been seriously thinking about a .444 Marlin conversion simply because I have several .44 moulds that should work. I guess you could also say that factory .444 Marlin is loaded to higher pressure than factory .45-70 if that is an issue.

With the strong action (relatively strong anyway) boolits as heavy or near as heavy as typical .45-70 boolits could be used in .444 brass and the slightly smaller head size might for make an easier conversion. Also, like .45-70, brass is readily available.

I had a Siamese Mauser converted to .45-70 years ago. Nice gun, fun to shoot. If I do it again I will likely use the Lee Enfield action.

Go for it and enjoy!

Longbow

[45nut]

The military forward wood absolutely won't fit over the fat .45 barrel. I haven't yet decided whether I want to try opening some surplus wood up, try modifying a short bottom-only sporter forend, or ?




Hmm,, Mine seems to fit. of course the now-defunct "smith" took over 3 years to get the semi-finished rifle back to me. All along I thought it was the magazine issues that took him so long to overcome but it must have been the woodwork. :coffeecom

The Gibbs magazine was the finishing touch for the gun, until I got one I had a single shot that was quite useless.

[sav300]

45nut, am wondering if 444 marlins will feed from the 45-70 Gibbs mag?
Have a 303 converted to 444 marlin,

[Reg]

While you are at it, you should do the one piece stock conversion, really changes the appearance of everything. A much slicker rifle. I have the plans for doing it somewhere around here. PM if intrested.

:-P

[Jacko.357]

Early on I looked into the 45.70 conversion and in the end there was too many aspects of the conversion that as far as I was concerned I was not prepared to spend good money after bad.

Next I investigated the .444 Marlin family of Wildcats and it boiled down to the Lee Enfield Magazine is designed to function with the .303 British tapered case. Several Gunsmiths that I tracked down who had done this and other conversions said getting the Enfield to feed could get expensive

Next line of thought was the .303 Case blown out to .375, again feeding issue's as the case taper was effectively reduced and feeding was not going to be reliable. I ended up having a No1 Mk3 chambered in 35.303, it turned out a great Cast Bullet Round. My CBE 358250 projectiles shoot like stink and feed real well. I'm using a mild load of 38 gr of AR2208 [Varget] under the 260 gr with gas check proj at 1880 fps. Plenty of scope to bring velocity up to 2100fps + if jacketed loads are an indicator

I've since found out that either seating the 45.70 proj long or rechambering to 45.90 solves the feeding issue's with the Gibbs Conversions, seems all they needed was the extra 1/4" overall length, brings them back to around .303 British overall length. Capacity is still reduced to 3 but they feed.

A solution to grinding clearance in the Enfield Action I discovered on another Forum is too turn the 45.70's rim to pass through the Enfields action and cut an extractor groove. I figure this is a lot of messing about so why not use a .450 Marlin instead ???.

I have since had a rethink and would like to build Single Shot No 4 Mk 1 chambered in 45.70 and long throated to handle 500 gr proj.

regards Jacko

[StrawHat]

Some other cartridges are discussed here, if you have missed the thread. Also, some of those fellows have dealt with the SMLE and variants.

http://castboolits.gunloads.com/showthread.php?t=126264

A 405 WCF would be interesting to me.

[303Guy]

Someone did a 45-90 on an SMLE action! Nothing wrong with the pressure or strength, it's the recoil!

$80 dollar barrel, $75 mag, way cool rifle - why hesitate?

Other cool calibres (why does my spell checker force me to spell it that way?) would be 375-303, 405-303 and of course the obvious 444 Marlin followed by 375-444 Marlin. 405 WCF too! But with a 2.58 inch (65.5mm) case the boolit would need to be seated quite deep. No problem with that I should think. For me the choice would be 357/303 with basically no noticeable neck. That's because I don't have much that needs shooting with a bigger bore and I don't need the recoil all that badly plus it uses less lead. Also, the 357/303 feeds from the original magazine - I think? But I must admit the idea of a 45-70 gets my fancy. If I could get the barrel and mag at that price I would do it in a heartbeat (I have a spare action - it's a pre-SMLE Lee Enfield Magazine Rifle.

[Jacko.357]

303Guy here's a pic of 2 of my 35.303 / 357.303 Cartridges, left not fireformed CBE358250 proj and a right fireformed with 225 gr Sierra Gameking

http://i243.photobucket.com/albums/ff55/jackoarcher/CBE250225grGameking.jpg

I emailed Nelson Collie from Status Guns over there in your neck of the woods and he advised me of his experiences with converting the mentioned Cartridges in Lee Enfields. Very helpfull Fella, referred me to a mate of his near Brisbane who by chance was the Smith I'd already talked too about doing a conversion for me.

Where do you get an $80 barrel, used I guess ? Cheapest .458 bore barrel I've found here will set me back $500 by the time it's fitted. I've wanted a 45.70 Enfield for ages but the 375.303 conversion intrigues me also.

regards Jacko

[303Guy]

TRX said;
... prethreaded Gibbs barrels Sarco was selling a year or so ago for $80.
Old Western Scrounger has surplus Gibbs magazines for $75, Alas, we're not so lucky. I like those 357's of yours. It seems the most practical compromise for me and my needs.

[TRX]

Here's the original message I posted over on enfield-rifles.com:

Okay, a list member was kind enough to let me borrow his Gibbs Frontier for a while. It was a Lithgow Mk1 virtually identical to mine, which made the comparison much easier than it might otherwise have been.

Basically, the magic is in the magazine.

The Gibbs magazine has very short lips on the top. It's also single stack. The magazine presents the rim of the cartridge to the "thumbnail" cutouts on the underside of the receiver. These grab the rim and force the whole cartridge up into line with the breech as it moves forward for the first half inch or so.

It sounds complex, but if you look at an SMLE from the magazine well opening you can see how it works.

Where I was getting fixated was, all of the rifles and pistols I've dealt with before stripped their cartridges straight out of the magazine, which was sometimes notched for bolt clearance, or the cartridges slipped off the magazine at an angle, with the nose entering the breech and the base being levered up as the cartridge went in. I thought the Enfield did that, too. Of course I have a receiver, barrel, and bolt so far, with no magazine yet...

The .45-70 still won't fit into the .45-70 barrel screwed into the Enfield receiver; the rim wedges into the rails about 3/4 inch from the breech ring. It looks like the Gibbs people used a Dremel with a 1/2" sanding drum and reached in and took off .010 to .015" of the sharp corners at the bottom, not much more than just rounding the corners off. That's all it takes for the cartridge to slide forward.

There's a bulkhead in the receiver ring; the rim must pass through, and it's too big. Gibbs probably used a lathe to open it up. I thought the rifle's owner might not appreciate wrench marks, so I didn't pull the barrel for a look. Opening up the ring would be simple enough with a grinder if you didn't have a lathe; it's just clearance for the rim.

That's it for the receiver mods!

Like I said earlier, the magic is in the magazine. The magic consists of the short feed lips, which are 1-1/16" long, with the front edges cut back about 45 degrees.

The lips are so short that if you hold the magazine upside down, a cartridge will hang down at a 45 degree angle. The lips just hold the rim for long enough to get it started into the "fingernail mark" guide cuts in the receiver.

It's a single-stack magazine. There's a rib stamped into the front that guides the front of the cartridge. In back, they spot welded some L-shaped pieces of sheet metal. These are way back and close to the cartridge, and keep the rims lined up neatly. The rims can't pass forward and let the cartridges slam back and forth in the magazine, and they hold them in position to present to the fingernail marks. If the cartridge slid forward in the magazine when the bolt picked up the rim, it'd jam in the receiver rails.

I don't see any particular reason you couldn't modify a standard SMLE magazine to work the same way.

The magazine holds three rounds. As advertised, you can put four in there, but you get a big wedgie when you try to work the bolt. Five cartridges will fit, same problem.

I played with this for a couple of hours. My best guess is that A) the magazine spring is too weak and B) the follower gets tilted as the cartridges feed, letting things wedge up. I think it should be possible to tweak the magazine to feed four or five cartridges reliably, and I don't see any big reason they can't be double-stacked like the standard Enfield layout.

What it looks like is, Gibbs allocated a certain amount of time or money to the magazine work, then ran out of time (or money) and said, "to heck with it, just tell them not to put more than three in there."


Working the bolt took a bit of authority. The blunt front of the .45-70 bumps against inside bits the pointy .303 slides right past. After an evening's experimentation, I had a bunch of .45-70s with noticeably battered noses. You don't have to be abusive, but if you try to flick the bolt back and forth like you can with a .303, it's likely the cartridge will get a wedgie and you'll have to either force it or open the bolt and straighten it out.

It looks like you could safely grind clearances into the receiver to fix this. I'm guessing Gibbs didn't do it due to expense - it worked, and it was in inexpensive hunting rifle on a war-surplus action, what do you want for $299?

That would also explain the ejection problem. The Gibbs flings empty brass just fine. Trying to clear a loaded round will usually give you another wedgie.

If you look at an Enfield receiver ring, you'll see a notch up at the right side front just about the side to hold a pencil. The notch is to clear the point of a .303 bullet. The ,45-70 bullet is much bigger, and the notch needs to be bigger too. Again, opening it up should be safe and simple.

You might wonder why the cartridge wouldn't eject properly when it's short enough to slide entirely back from the breech. The cutout shouldn't be necessary. The reason is the rim gets caught on some of the edges near the back, and it gets stuck. A tiny amount of grinding or polishing might well fix the problem; it might be preferable to clearancing the ring.

I wound up clearing loaded rounds by dropping the magazine, opening the bolt, and letting the chambered round drop out.

Now, we're talking about very small amounts of interference here; with normal production tolerances, it's likely that not all the Gibbs guns do this. It's a bit quirky, but again, how much custom gunsmithing do you expect for the price?

Frankly, I don't see how they could justify the blueing job, which (in my opinion) was freakin' gorgeous. They'd done some polishing on the surplus bits, and the barrel was slick. I'm used to phosphated military stuff, and I felt like a vandal every time I put a greasy fingerprint on the Gibbs.

The bolt is a matte silver color; various articles say it's chromed, and it does indeed look like industrial matte chrome. The fit is snug and the movement is smooth. I'll probably send mine off somewhere to have it done; the couple of thousandths of plating really snugs up the fit.


and:

This first set is the Gibbs magazine. It's made from scratch. It's a single stack configuration, with the short lips at the back being the only thing that holds the cartridges in. Note how they hang loose when the magazine is inverted.

Though the magazine will hold four or five cartridges, only three will feed. This is because the follower gets tilted out of position because the cartridges are only held at the rim, so the fronts lift too high and stovepipe when the bolt is operated.

http://www.bacomatic.org/~dw/gun/Gibbs/Gibbs-mag-1-sm.jpg
http://www.bacomatic.org/~dw/gun/Gibbs/Gibbs-mag-2-sm.jpg
http://www.bacomatic.org/~dw/gun/Gibbs/Gibbs-mag-3-sm.jpg
http://www.bacomatic.org/~dw/gun/Gibbs/GibbsMag-rightside-up-1-sm.jpg
http://www.bacomatic.org/~dw/gun/Gibbs/GibbsMag-upside-down-1-sm.jpg


at:

http://www.enfield-rifles.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=3614&title=4570-conversion


Oh, and the original project was to rechamber the rifle to shoot 7.62x54R, since Soviet-era war surplus ammunition is cheap. Like so many of my projects, it shot off in an unexpected direction.

Given the cost of gunpowder nowadays, the plan is to load the .45-70s with cast bullets and black powder. I'm setting up to ball mill and corn powder to feed my .72 caliber musket project anyway...

[45nut]

45nut, am wondering if 444 marlins will feed from the 45-70 Gibbs mag?
Have a 303 converted to 444 marlin,

no 444 brass left around to try,,sorry mate.

[EMC45]

The Enfield is gone. It was at a local shop. He wanted 100 for it. Was waiting to get in there and try to talk to him about it. It sold already.