303 Brit Martini Enfield Carbine

[Wheelwaits]

I picked up a barreled action.. No wood.. Some deep corrosion on the underside of the barrel... Should be hidden by the forearm.. Bore is great.. Front sight has been filed down... Think this one is safe to shoot w/ factory/issue ammo ??? Seems tight enough...

[Outpost75]

Should be fine with any factory-equivalent .303 ammo. Nice score.

[Hooker53]

WheelWaits, just wondering if you could post a few photos of that action??? I have one as well and would be interested in seeing if we have one alike. For your question, I have shot factory loads as well as some a hand loaded. I do plan to turn it into a 32-20 though. I'm not set on the Cal. But I got that action with the intent on doing so. Good find on that action. You do t see many of them around.

Roy
Hooker53

[John Taylor]

From what I have heard the the Martini in 303 did not use standard ammo but was loaded with black or cordite. Modern 303 ammo is loaded to 49,000.

[BigEyeBob]

From what I have heard the the Martini in 303 did not use standard ammo but was loaded with black or cordite. Modern 303 ammo is loaded to 49,000.

Black powder or Cordite was the standard of the day .A load replicating the original black/cordite load with 215GN round nose bullets would be ok.Or use gas checked boolits of a similar wieght. Some of the 303 Martinis were converted to 303 Brit from the Martini Henry 577/450 rifles. Very robust action can handle nitro express
cartridge pressures. 49,000 psi would be a walk in the park for it.
The small frame cadet actions were tested to 65,000psi with out failure , the weakness here is the extractor.

[Wheelwaits]

This is what it was supposed to look like.... It's buried in my junk somewhere... I figure the corrosion on the barrel is due to the top wood holding water... I'll put top wood back on to hide it...I've started a butt stock for it already.



202916

[Bad Ass Wallace]

Sorry WW, that is not what they look like. A 303 ME has no wood in front of the rear sight, only from the rear sight to the knoxform. There is no barrel band like that one either only the stock nosecap.

The correct carbine will have markings under the year date, either "AC1"for an artillary carbine or "CC1" for a calvery carbine. I have 3 including an 1894 "MM1" and 1896 ÁC1 and a 1901 CC11 with boar war insignia.

Great pity you don't live just around the corner as I have a full set of spare wood and correct nosecap for an AC1, and our local export laws seem to think that if ISIS terrorists get them, they will somehow beat innocent citizens to death with a flamin stick!!

[Wheelwaits]

That was all I found on a google search... I wasn't going for a military look, I just wanted to hide the pitting...

[Hooker53]

Well Wheel W. Now you can at least fig out what you have thanks to BA. I have one with markings that NO ONE can fig out. Ha. Ha. Good luck with the work on yours.

Roy

[Bad Ass Wallace]

The MM1 is very interesting. Stands for "Martini Metford" Mk1 (1894) and is quite unique having a breech block that is different to an Enfield model.

[Wheelwaits]

I have one of these too.. not as nice as this one though. Mine has been reblued poorly...http://http://i.imgur.com/YK3Bo3J.jpg (https://imgur.com/YK3Bo3J)

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Aha, the Portuguese Guedes! It is a far rarer rifle than almost any military Martini, for only about 18,000 of them were made, and a lot, perhaps all, were used only by the Transvaal and Orange Free State in their war of 1899 against Britain. Probably most got thrown away as Boers got their chance of a Mauser or even Lee-Enfield.

A Portuguese Lieutenant Guedes designed it, as possibly the best of all single-shot military 11mm. rifles, but at the stage of preparing Steyr's production contract they changed it to 8mm. A bullet patched with copper foil proved unsatisfactory, but could have been easily replaced. Steyr reported difficult extraction after heavy firing, which was ostensibly the reason for cancellation, although the realisation that they were about to have the last single-shot military rifle in the world might have come into it. Not to mention that the world was realising that the French, in the year it was adopted, had at last found a way of gelatinising nitrocellulose into granular form, and making it suitable for rifles.

There is more recent history in it, though. I bought mine in Birmingham, centre of the British gun trade, where the local police force approved the sale of some cartridge antiques. Back home in the British equivalent of Li'l Abner's Dogpatch Arkansas I was prosecuted for unlawful possession, fought my corner and got it back. The government's own consultant on the subject later declared it as the final catalyst for the list of cartridge antique firearms which he was invited to compile. The criterion is ammunition not commercially available, up to 1939 if it isn't, never if it is.

I shot mine quite a bit in the early 90s, using brass made from .348 Winchester. My guess is that the 1886 extraction problem was due to early brass which had never been necked down that far before. Be careful not to use small charges of slow powder though. The hammer inside the block, and a thin though adequate breech face, means that you can't bush the firing-pin to a smaller diameter as you would do with some rifles, and it can't be a really close fit. Once I blew a primer, which hurled the hammer back and broke the fiendishly complex mainspring. So now I know I can carve and heat-treat a Guedes mainspring from a piece of truck spring, but I didn't enjoy it at the time.

I don't think there was any danger, and my guess is that it was due to the hammer bouncing, or at least losing forward motion, after an undetectably brief hangfire with slow ppwder. All the signs were that pressure was very moderate, and I never experienced any trouble with the same velocity using Reloder 7.

[Ballistics in Scotland]

Back on the .303 Martinis, I don't think any are unsafe with service .303 pressures, which are rather more than the service .30-40 Krag. They can be extremely useful rifles, with a better trigger-pull than most Lee-Enfields, long or short. Converted "big Martinis" were competitive for quite a while in 25 yard indoor rimfire shooting, which was very competitive.

Some of the early .303s used to get deformation of the breechblock, while it was simply the .577/.450's. But a special block cured that, and I don't think it was ever dangerous, unless perhaps if you determinedly ignored difficult or very difficult extraction. The early Martini-Metfords had the rounded Metford rifling which was considered too quickly eroded to be used in the Lee-Enfield of 1895. But I don't think this is muchFi of a consideration for the civilian user today. They were discovering that a trained soldier could fire fifteen aimed shots a minute till the woodwork charred, and the early cordite was a very hot-burning powder. The nitroglycerin was reduced before the First World War, and most commercial powders are much less still.

No .303 rifle was truly designed for black powder. It was known that the French had a "chemical powder" which would probably be used, as the Lee-Metford was designed, and they made a good guess at how much higher a velocity to calibrate the sights for, than what black powder would produce. The use of black powder, compressed into a pellet, was only a temporary expedient. I think the great majority of .303 Martinis used the Enfield barrel.