Enfield No4 Mark2

[Larry Gibson]

Is that one of the put-togethers that Long Branch made with the remaining bits and pieces after the production run ended in 1950?

If I recall correctly, they continued putting together rifles in an on/off fashion up until 1953 when they switched to manufacturing the Canadian FN FAL, the C1 and C2. The cases of rifles I bought were all 95L serial numbers, although not consecutive. They continued servicing the Lee Enfields until Diemaco (I think) replaced them as the service depot about 1974.

I have no idea what my brother has arrived at to reload for his military Ross's, although I told me earlier he's going to try and knock down an elk this coming hunting season with one of them. That would probably be the Sierra game bullet........

I have no idea, suppose it could be? It's actually a C No 4 Mk I*, # 9219330. It is odd as it has a rear sight marked "B" with elevation only to 800 yards. Been told that was a No 5 rear sight?

My Ross still has it's 30" barrel. I've a pleasant load of IMR 4895 pushing a 150 gr Hornady .312 SP along at 2950 fps. The Ross M10 with it's multiple front lugs is quite capable of increased loading as is the P14. Should be as effective on deer as any 150 gr 30-06 load.

Of course, those loads should not be used in SMLE or N0 4 rifles. In the case of my M10 the cases are NS'd and will not chamber in the No 4. The cartridge boxes are also clearly marked for which rifle. I do not have any such loaded cartridges around anyway as I really don't intend on hunting with the Ross. It was just an exercise to see what the 303 would/could do safely in the stronger Ross action.

[MOC031]

I have no idea, suppose it could be? It's actually a C No 4 Mk I*, # 9219330. It is odd as it has a rear sight marked "B" with elevation only to 800 yards. Been told that was a No 5 rear sight?

Yes, with the B it's for a No. 5. So... somebody before you replaced the as-built sight. For poops and giggles, there's two (or more) possible reasons for that happening:

1. The Mk III rear sight was in use by 1950. It has notches for each range graduation - not a thumbscrew to move the aperture between range graduations. So... the final Mk III less expensive to manufacture and for the soldier in battle much quicker to make sight adjustments instead of cranking on the thumbwheel. But if you prefer a rear sight where you can make click elevation adjustments between the range hash marks (especially now that you're not exclusively using Mk VII ball ammunition, then you'd go looking for a rear sight with elevation clicks between the hash marks.
   
   
2. The rifle owner was a wily bugger who actually did some serious shooting with the rifle and knew the No. 5 rifle's rear sight click values are finer than the Mk 1's clicks - when mounted on the longer barreled No. 4 Mk 1. A click value of about .5 MOA versus a click value if 1.0 MOA. Very helpful as the ranges get further out there...

Some stuff to share:

Replacing No. 4 Rifle Micrometer Sight with No. 5 Rifle Sight



For No 4 owners, replacing any of the sight variants on their rifle with the click adjustable rear sight for the No. 5 jungle carbine will provide them with elevation click adjustments on the leaf sight that are ½ MOA, rather than the 1 MOA provided on the No.4 Mk1 leaf sight – or the Mk2 and Mk3 which have no click adjustments at all.

Each click of the No.4's sight moves the slide .008" - vs. .0043" on the No.5's sight. Consequently, the 1300-yard sight gives very close to 1.0 MOA per click with the No.4 rifle's 28" sight radius while the 800-yard sight has a click value of ~0.66 MOA with the No.5's 23" sight radius and yields ~0.55 MOA on a No.4 rifle.

[ulav8r]

I have only one experience with a Lee Enfield. While a student at the Colorado School of Trades, I purchased an action with stock from a student from Canada. I got a Springfield 1903 barrel from someone else. This happened on the same trade day, which was held one day a month. After getting the barrel, I went back to the seller of the action and persuaded him to fit and chamber the barrel. My argument was he would work on lots of Enfields when he set up shop in Canada and I was at the point where I was ready to train for barrel installations. A month or so later I ot the barreled action back as a 30-40. I did a little trigger iimprovement, bedded and refinished the stock. After I polished the buttplate, the steel pin of the hinged stock bolt cover looked out of place. I decided to cold blue the ends of the pin. I discovered that Oxpho-Blue would form a brown patina on the brass buttplate, so I colored the entire buttplate. The barreled action had been test fired after chambering, after completing work on it I sold it without firing it myself. It was bought by a co-worker to be used for elk hunting. I do not remember what version it was, The only thing I remember for sure is that the trigger was pinned to the action and that some versions were pinned to the stock.

I was the only SMLE I ever worked on.

[Larry Gibson]

Yes, with the B it's for a No. 5. So... somebody before you replaced the as-built sight. For poops and giggles, there's two (or more) possible reasons for that happening:

1. The Mk III rear sight was in use by 1950. It has notches for each range graduation - not a thumbscrew to move the aperture between range graduations. So... the final Mk III less expensive to manufacture and for the soldier in battle much quicker to make sight adjustments instead of cranking on the thumbwheel. But if you prefer a rear sight where you can make click elevation adjustments between the range hash marks (especially now that you're not exclusively using Mk VII ball ammunition, then you'd go looking for a rear sight with elevation clicks between the hash marks.
   
   
2. The rifle owner was a wily bugger who actually did some serious shooting with the rifle and knew the No. 5 rifle's rear sight click values are finer than the Mk 1's clicks - when mounted on the longer barreled No. 4 Mk 1. A click value of about .5 MOA versus a click value if 1.0 MOA. Very helpful as the ranges get further out there...

Some stuff to share:

Replacing No. 4 Rifle Micrometer Sight with No. 5 Rifle Sight



For No 4 owners, replacing any of the sight variants on their rifle with the click adjustable rear sight for the No. 5 jungle carbine will provide them with elevation click adjustments on the leaf sight that are ½ MOA, rather than the 1 MOA provided on the No.4 Mk1 leaf sight – or the Mk2 and Mk3 which have no click adjustments at all.

Each click of the No.4's sight moves the slide .008" - vs. .0043" on the No.5's sight. Consequently, the 1300-yard sight gives very close to 1.0 MOA per click with the No.4 rifle's 28" sight radius while the 800-yard sight has a click value of ~0.66 MOA with the No.5's 23" sight radius and yields ~0.55 MOA on a No.4 rifle.

I like reason #2 as it makes perfect sense. Thank you very much for that information. Guess I'll quite looking for a rifle rear sight......

[30calflash]

"Do we have a library section here somewhere to upload military pams, sighting targets, armourer instructions, etc for the Lee Enfield rifles? I've amassed/scanned quite a bit of data over the last 30+ years. Some of that, especially the pams, can be found at an assortment of other places, but I'd like to make all of that available to everyone here in one spot if that's possible."

I like MOC031's suggestion to make this part of the forum's 'library". A sticky would be great as we have it for the Mosin on this sub forum also.

Good info is always a worthy thing to have access to.

[MOC031]

I like reason #2 as it makes perfect sense. Thank you very much for that information. Guess I'll quite looking for a rifle rear sight......

There is also other possibilities i.e. "Oh, here's one of those things... this one will do". However, that would assume somebody before you got the rifle with no rear sight at all.

In my travels to Alberta to spend time with my brother who works for the Brit military out at BATUS, we usually hit local gun shows when our timing is right. The Calgary Arms Collectors one in particular because it has the widest range of types of rifles rather than endless tables of Remchesters. The No. 5 sights that used to be fairly common are now harder to find (although I'm not specifically looking for them, I just notice them). Ditto assorted other Mk. 4 bits and pieces. It's not like the local kids are still getting their first hunting rifle out of the barrel of surplus rifles at Vic Dick's Store down on mainstreet any more, or that Granddad needs a part to replace a worn part on his rifle - it's the curse of The Collectors Have Arrived. The result is an inverse relationship of availability going down while price goes up... I guess they call that Basic Economics. Happily, I have my one and only Lee Enfield exactly as I want and need it so it doesn't affect me personally. But I do feel for guys wanting to restore their old war horse - unlike most of the collectors, they actually want to take it out and shoot it.

You may (or may not) be disappointed with the consistency for each click on your sight. It took me about a year to find the Parker Hale No. 5 rear sight (this was in the days prior to the Web and Web shopping). During that time, I bought a bag full of Mk I rear sights - my 1950 Long Branch had the last version Mk III with set range stops. The reason I ended up with a drawer full of them was I kept buying them in hopes of finding one where each click resulted in exactly the same amount of elevation change for each click out to 900 meters. I finally came to the conclusion that a click adjustable LE service sight with consistent clicks did not exist.

It isn't really all that bad, and the sight was intended for use in battle, not belly shooting off a firing point on a nicely mowed range at Bisley, Connaught, or Camp Perry. Your known come-ups don't change, but the further you get out, unless you do so much shooting that you know your sight very well, it is a bit of a distracting aggravation. At least for those of us who are punters rather than slaves to the discipline.

For simply zeroing the rifle, especially at 300 yards and less, 1/2 click adjustments are just fine with the inherent grouping ability of the vast majority of these rifles.

For those with rear sights that are the none click adjustable Mk III, the solution is to buy a replacement front sight that is too high and then carefully dress it down with a file so you have your desired POA/POI. There's a guy on the internet selling his home brewed cramps, complete with an altered screwdriver to fit the front sight lock screw, that makes windage adjustments a lot less painful. You could buy a LOT of ammunition for what an original front sight cramps will cost you now - if you can find somebody willing to sell them.

Collectors... once again; buying, not using.

[MOC031]

Another basement hobbiest solution for Lee Enfield owners with the Mk 2 rear sight i.e. Savage as an alternative to finding a replacement rear ladder sight. This would provide you with one aperture that is the correct zero for a cast bullet load and the second aperture which would be correct for a jacketed load for hunting or range shooting at longer distances.

Given how quickly the rear sight can be switched out (but don't lose that spring!), the easiest solution would be to have two sights that work with the same front sight: one that has an aperture correct for the jacketed bullet load and the second sight with an aperture correct for the cast bullet.

Old idea that's been around for a while - I've never actually done this myself as I don't have a Mk 2 sight.

Improvised Twin Zero Aperture For Mk. 2 Fixed Sight

To create a basement gunshop twin zero sight for your Lee Enfield when you don’t have a Mk1 micrometer adjustment leaf sight:
The Mk2 has two apertures; one sighted for 300 yard zero with Mk VII ball, the other aperture regulated to 600 yards.

Find a fine threaded bolt small enough that it will self tap into the larger, 600 yard aperture. Or, as you’re probably going to screw up the 600 yard aperture anyways, drill out and tap to the thread of the replacement bolts. Buy a bunch of replacement bolts for experimental purposes with drilling holes offset holes offset from the bolts’ centers. Depending on your drill press skilz, you might go through a few bolts before you drill one with the right offset.

Sight in the 300 yard battle sight aperture with your jacketed load of choice. By going just a bit too far with your front sight until it is shooting just a bit too low, you can dress down the height of this sight blade until you have precisely the right MPI with your load of choice.

Having established your choice of zero with the 300 yard battle sight aperture and zeroing for that, we return to the 600 yard aperture to use with your cast bullet load.

Face off the tops of the bolts until there’s just enough left for a nut driver socket to get enough of a grip on to turn it a bit side to side. Cut off most of the bolt shank – at least enough so that you can still fold the sight as before and don’t have too much file work to do at the end. After you end up with a correctly offset drilled bolt, you can do final facing of your bolt with files.

Now drill a hole of your desired aperture size through the bolt. Drill it WAY off center, right out towards the edge of the bolt. Insert the bolt in the aperture; turn it so that your offset drill hole/new aperture is turned so that it is closest to the bottom of the aperture. Test the bolt to see how close you got to your desired elevation zero with your offset hole. You can boresight or just fire some of your desired ammunition at the range you want to zero for. If you’re off to either side with windage, rotating the bolt in the sight will give you as little or as much as 10 – 15 minutes of windage adjustment either way (and a little more elevation as well, of course).

It’s a trial and error process to get just the right offset from the center of your replacement bolt peepsight, as well as to find the right size diameter for this second peep. Once you have that done and everything is to your satisfaction, finish file dressing both faces, blue the bolt if you haven’t already; after confirming your zero is right where you want it, a little dab of RTV or a tiny spot of JB Weld, and your sight won’t move unless you want it to move.

[MOC031]

This internet entrepreneur makes a replacement cramps for adjusting front sights; bonus is he also supplies a screwdriver altered to fit the front sight lock screw.

[MOC031]

I like MOC031's suggestion to make this part of the forum's 'library". A sticky would be great as we have it for the Mosin on this sub forum also.

Good info is always a worthy thing to have access to.

There would need to be an actual library, not just a sticky. Some of these files are Mbs in size, even after I've used Acrobat Professional to minimize their size as much as possible.

For example, DCRA "how to" instructions on bedding the No. 4 rifle where first scanned from their mailer they sent to members back in the 1960's, then the scan processed for character recognition. Black areas on the page around the diagrams and text cleaned up after they were remnants of scanning or copying back then. After that, the text post processed to correct missed spelling, words that became hieroglyphics, etc. And then finally saved as a clean .pdf document.

The Canadian Armed Forces pams from 1991 like First Line Maintenance (788 kb) and Rifle Maintenance Instructions (444 kb) are fairly small. But Rifle, .303 Caliber, Lee Enfield, No 4, All Marks, Preparing Rifles For Competition is 2.26 Mb.

I just took the morning scanning that so it could be put in a separate thread so it didn't get lost in this thread... I'd never consider doing that for everything in my personal library of all Lee Enfield Mk 4 stuff...

https://castboolits.gunloads.com/sho...-Armed-Forces)

Absolutely no criticism of this forum, but many users whether they have military rifles or not, would probably benefit from a library where tech manuals, catalogues, etc could be viewed and downloaded for printing or use at the reloading bench. So again, maybe I should learn more about this cloud storage thing to make them available there.

[Vonllamawitz]

I'm in a quandary about cast bullet size for the .303. I've been handloading FMJ (.311) for a while so I'm familiar with all of the variance issues between SMLE rifles. I use the same piece everytime (Long Branch 1944). My question is about casting and sizing. I have a .311 mould and ordered a .312. Should I size to .311 or .312? I want to size them with gas checks to be able to increase muzzle velocity.

[pastorcurtis]

My Lee-Enfield shoots the following at 1 MOA
311041 beagled, wheel weights/scrape, crimp on gas check with 315 push through sizer, powder coat, then size to .314. Brass is neck sized from same rifle. Powder is 29 grains of H4895. Lee factory crimp in first band. A ladder test from 27 to 31 grains recommended to find the sweet spot for your rifle.

[MOC031]

My question is about casting and sizing. I have a .311 mould and ordered a .312. Should I size to .311 or .312? I want to size them with gas checks to be able to increase muzzle velocity.

Whether you shoot them sized or not, choose the finished size that most closely matches the dimensions of the ball seat/lead. Most will find tighter fit is mo' better.

If you're planning to go the powder coating route, I find powder coating adds about .002" to my bullets diameter.

[Vonllamawitz]

My Lee-Enfield shoots the following at 1 MOA
311041 beagled, wheel weights/scrape, crimp on gas check with 315 push through sizer, powder coat, then size to .314. Brass is neck sized from same rifle. Powder is 29 grains of H4895. Lee factory crimp in first band. A ladder test from 27 to 31 grains recommended to find the sweet spot for your rifle.

When you size a 311 in a 315 does it widen out? Or do you do that just to get the check on without much deformation? Curious. Been thinking about a ladder test as suggested. I read in a different thread about a guy doing that with an M1A and leads that rendered some amazing results.

[nicholst55]

When you size a 311 in a 315 does it widen out? Or do you do that just to get the check on without much deformation? Curious. Been thinking about a ladder test as suggested. I read in a different thread about a guy doing that with an M1A and leads that rendered some amazing results.

Realize that the .311 diameter die is the manufacturer's spec on what diameter it's supposed to cast at, with their specified alloy. Unless you're using foundry certified alloys, the mold will probably cast either larger or smaller. Obviously, if the bullet is smaller than .315", when run through the sizer die, all that happens is it will seat the gas check. Bullets do not magically expand to fill the sizer die.