Proceed?-LE Sporterized redo project

[cheese1566]

This is the Lee Enfield sporterized rifle my dad bought at a garage sale 15 years ago for $20. It needs a new cocking piece and a complete safety mechanism; otherwise complete (some suff missing in the pics). The side plate says "Lithgow SHT. LE III 1919".

-The front sight was removed and the top of the barrel was filed down until the sight keyway was ground out.
-The rear sight was removed and the pin hole was filled in. Slightly to the rear of the base on the left is an ugly spot (crater) similar to poor arc welding (in the pics below)...
-The charging bridge may have been filed flat too and modified-with v grooves and holes (in the pics below).

<<<and the kicker>>> it looks to me now that someone filed the top of the receiver+barrel junction above the chamber to give a contour.

I was planning on proceeding in making this a plinker since it would cost about $20 in parts, plus a cheap scope and base. I was thinking of maybe a brush gun and having the barrel shortened past the filed keyway slot. or maybe a scout type rifle...

Should I proceed with that ugly spot and odd contour above the chamber? or was that common practice in sportering these?

or make into a lamp for my dad's birthday? (and pillage spare parts for my Ishapore 2A!!!)

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[docone31]

Wow, now that is a rifle I might not trust. It looks like the reciever is really filed down. I have not seen that before on an Enfield. Not a lot of meat left for a factory load. Sooner or later, someone somewhere is going to try a factory load.
I hope lots of experienced folks pipe in here. That sure does not look right.
I wouldn't even make a lamp out of it.
I like as much reciever over my cartridge as I can get.
You can always get a new barrel.

[cheese1566]

I thought about a replacement barrel, but also wondered if there would be enough meat left in the top of the receiver area.

[KCSO]

You got a nice stock how about finding a barreled action for it? You might be able to get one cheap and then you wouldn't have to worry about the butchered receiver.

[Multigunner]

I vote pilage the stock, perhaps save the bolt for a future project along with any usable parts and turn the barreled receiver into a Lamp or a jack handle cause thats all its good for now.

Theres a site that advertised barreled action bodies , haven't checked recently, bills or Bud's Milsurp I think. Barreled receivers were about 80 bucks last I looked.

The filed down receiver was probably a rusty wreck someone tried to pretty up then realized it was toast.

The stock looks nice enough though.

Could be someone was using that old receiver to practice fitting stocks.

[PAT303]

That year and model LE would sell for $1000 in Oz if it was original,with the reciever ring ground off like that I would not use it,removing metal from that area is the worst kind of No No. Pat

[Bloodman14]

I would consider a complete rebuild, too. Find a local FFL, and get ahold of Springfield Sporters, or Numrich Arms for a receiver.

[dragonrider]

I agree with the other who say scrap it, keep the bolt and stock and any other parts that have not been filed or ground. JMO but that reciever and barrel are junk.

[MtGun44]

Hey, let's think about this again.

The LE locks up at the rear NOT at the front receiver ring. I do not think there is any
safety issue here as far as pressure from normally loaded ammo. I'd like to know the
diameter change at the front of the reciever ring before I'd be absolutely certain. I'm
a mech engineer with 35 yrs experience in stress analysis and my first look opinion is
that this is mostly a severe styling faux pas rather than a structural safety issue.

I think you guys are thinking in terms of Mauser type actions where the lockup is in
the front ring. I'm no expert on the SMLE but I have a few and I believe that the
front ring mostly aligns the bolt head and provides a stiff mount for the barrel.
IIRC, Hatcher cut down a Springfield 1903 bbl to about .040 or something like that
before it blew out, testing the minimum safe barrel thickness. Of course this was
maybe 6 inches from the chamber (memory here - away from home and my copy
of Hatcher's Notebook). Visually it looks like around 80% of the receiver ring thickness
is still there. My guess is that instead of being safe for 150,000 psi (rec ring; brass would
fail before that, of course) it is now only safe for 110-120,000 psi. Probably pretty safe
for a std 45,000 psi factory load.

All this assumes no welding or extreme heating on the barrel around the chamber.
I have no idea if any of the receivers or barrels were heat treated in 1919 ( I would
tend to doubt it, but have no facts to base that on) but welding on heat treated
alloy will be very detrimental to strength. Not so much for non-heat treated alloys
if done properly, with proper rod, etc.

Not sure how you'd mount a scope on that tapered mess of a front rec ring, tho.

Shame to take a $1000 milsurp and make a $75-100 sporter out of it.

Bill

[Multigunner]

Enfield action bodies are spring tempered rather than carburized, and usually of a high grade of steel, the surfaces of the locking recesses are given an extra hardening process to prevent wear, they were heated with electrodes and the hardening was localized.
The rest of the receiver is not particularly hard, it must be able to stretch a tiny amount and spring back to shape.

If you note the angle of the grinding away at the top of the ring and remember that both the ring and the barrel have deeply cut flats required for cranking the barrel on, you'll see that far more metal has been removed than you might otherwise have thought, and far more from the top than anywhere else. The top is ground down very close to touching the threads.

The metal looks like it was heavily rusted and probably salvaged from a fire.

I doubt this was an $1000 collectable when ground on, more likely a piece of junk, possibly a war trophy picked up on a battlefield.
You can still find very decent SMLE rifles in gunshops and pawnshops for from 150 to 300 bucks depending on condition.

The stock looks interesting, probably worth a few bucks and should be easy to pretty up.

As for the receiver, its done its duty, time to send it to the happy hunting ground.

[MtGun44]

If salvaged from a fire, the heat treat issues would be potentially quite serious.

I'd love to see the original dimensions compared to the final dimensions before
making a final judgement.

I have a Mauser that I bought from a guy that thought it was unsafe due to a
corrosion pit under the barrel. I did some measurements, and while it did LOOK
ghastly, there was way plenty of steel left to be safe. I have shot it many times
with full power loads, no problems.

In any case, safety is very important. Knowing how much material has been removed
and how much is remaining is mandatory to make an accurate assessment of the
damage done.

Certainly it has not made the rifle stronger, the question is how much strength has
been ground away. In any case it certainly has lower margins than it originally did,
whether there is enough margin to be safe needs to be carefully looked at. If it were
mine, I'd want to do some detailed measurements and some structural calculations to
see how much loss of strength has occurred.

No question that not shooting it is safer than shooting it, but at least the bolt locking
surfaces are unaffected and all that remains to be concerned about is the radial
bursting strength reduction.

Bill

[cheese1566]

Thanks for the input guys!

I pretty much have concluded that a $75 chopped up rifle with all the unknown variables isn't worth the slight risk to myself, bystanders, or anyone who comes in contact with the rifle.

I have relegated it to the gunlocker for now and see what can come my way in the future for a barreled action. Or I may steal the useable parts and springs for spares for my Ishapore 2A.

How can I plug the chamber? The gun cannot fire anyway since the cocking piece is broke, but I want to safely make so no one can ever chamber a round.

[Brithunter]

Me I would just cut off the barrel just in front of the action ring after all the fornt ring is acap as is the actual action so this way it would make it very hard for soemone to remove what's left of the barrel so it could not have another barrel fitted either.

I am also not sure the parts would fit a Ishy No2A although in theory they should but your talking about after the british supervision had long gone and let's face it the Indian quality control is a crapshoot.

Now the stock is a different matter and looks like it's quite a good one. I would find another rifle to put in it :-D.

[Multigunner]

I've been thinking on the angle of the grinding done to this ring and barrel.
I then remembered a photo spread on captured guerilla rifles that had seen decades of use in the jungle without upkeep.
On those rifles every area where a mans hand would grip the rifle while carrying was very deeply rusted away, some M16 rifles in that bunch had the entire front of the magazine housing eaten through.

The natural carry point of the SMLE when fully stocked is exactly on the rear hadguard and ring.
Sweat or blood from wounds or bloody hands could build up under the rear guard through the semicircular opening over the Knox Form and not be easily wiped away. If not cleaned and then left unattended for decades much of the metal there would be eaten away.

I had a No.4 bolt which was very deeply rusted on the underside, apparently from blood that got into the magazine when topped up by a soldier with bloody hands.
The rifle smelled like rotten flesh when I first got it, probably taken from a corpse on the battlefield and left unattended for months or years before being roughly cleaned up enough to be shipped off as surplus.
Hunting rifles sometimes suffer from this same sort of Blood rust, when a hunter dresses game and then carries the rifle home with blood still on his hands and forgets to clean it for awhile.

PS
The top of the threads of the Enfield barrel are very nearly at the same level as the flat of the Knox Form. since the Knox Form is ground away the ring at the front in probably ground down to a tiny fraction of an inch above the edges of the threads. Also theres no torque shoulder left there at all.

Possible uses for such a compromized receiver would be to weld it up and reshape the ring enough that the action could be used to assemble a non ffiring drill rifle or blank firing theatrical prop.
A .22 rimfire conversion is another possibility.

Best to let the old girl rest in peace, she did her duty.

[357maximum]

If that came to me:

I would keep the good parts.

Grab a shovel a pound of salt or fertilizer

take the barrelled reciever for a walk out back

dig a trench about 1 foot deep the length of the barrelled receiver

lay the barrelled reciever in the trench

sprinkle the salt/fertilizer over the metal


Say a few words and give it a proper burial.


It is a hard thing to do, but YOU must do something similar. I about cried when helping a friend take care of the mess left over from the fire in his gunshop. I swear the ghost of a particular cooked sako vixen still haunts my subconcious, but it will not ever blow up in someones hands. DOING THE RIGHT THING IS NOT ALWAYS EASY, BUT IT IS ALWAYS RIGHT.

[dualsport]

If that stock and bolt come up for sale or trade please consider letting me know. It would work good on my project, a .444 conversion. Thankyou dual

[legend]

Cheese,i am delighted to see you are not going to use the bbl.good move!

leigh

[KCSO]

Geez I picked up an Enfield barreled action at a garage sale this fall for $20. Why even spend the time and work on something that when finished will still look like a ground down ***. Sorry, but it's true, anyone who knows Enfields at all will get an urge to puke just looking at that and it's too bad because the stock has some possibilities. Was that too blunt???

This reminds me of a fellow who wanted me to build him a muzzleloading rifle one time. He had a Hawken Lock, a Penn. stock. Germanic set triggers and a mix of brass and silver mounting. Talk as I might he insisted that was what he wanted. A moth later and 100 hours of work and he had what he wanted, and brought it back a month later to trade in because everyone laughed at his rifle, and the sad thing is that he couldn't understand why he couldn't get the cost of the work back on his gun. That was the LAST time I ever did a job like that. I learned a lesson that the customer is NOT always right and sometimes you need to say so in no uncertian terms.

Now it wouldn't be that hard to fit a new bolt and a safety and sights to this gun, but then what do you have, even if it is technicaly safe? Because if you won't be proud of it when it's done you will just be wasting your time and money. I personally wouldn't work on this gun just because if it ever did come apart I wouldn't want the liability.

[cheese1566]

Still have that $20 barrel action and is it for sale?

I appreciate your comments and admitting to being blunt.

[KCSO]

Hey I'll look and see I had it in a barrel in the back of the shop.