Re: Building a SMLE - difficult?
Posted: Sat Dec 07, 2013 10:37 am
The trickiest thing about restoring an SMLE is trying to find a set of matching wood, that is of an appropriate age and appearance to whatever finish is left on the SMLE.
I.e. there are new unused forends around (at a price), but no new butts or top woods. There are some Indian topwoods on eBay (usually USA), but the matching Indian forends are either wrong pattern or have the ishy screw. You can sometimes find old SMLE butts on eBay, but almost no old forends. Even when you find an old butt and an old forend, the chances are that they are completely different colour and grain!
And so on and so on.
I should know - I have about forty SMLE barrelled actions and restoration projects, and quite a large amount of wood. Out of all my stock, I can only make up about two sets that might go together to make a decent restoration! If you are trying to make a serious restoration - say of a No1 Mk1 or No1 with volley sights - then you are into serious hens' teeth territory and might have to wait years for the right bits to turn up.
You can of course use the new forends, and repro wood from EFD (£££...) or the new production topwoods that someone lists on eBay. You can stain/sand all this lot into some semblance of matching. However, then you end up with a rifle that has new wood and old metal finish - which looks a bit home built unless you get the metal re-blacked as well. Then you end up with the sort of thing C&G sells.
If you use old wood, then most SMLE barrelled actions will be a simple drop-in fit - they are astonishingly consistent in dimension, given the millions made. Usually, you will have to rebuild the recoil faces in old forends, as these will almost certainly be crumbled or indented.
If you use a new forend, then there is a lot of fitting to do. Typically, you have to dust the action and wood with talcum powder or similar, fit & assemble, dismantle, examine the witness marks, carefully scrape away the points need to adjust fit, repeat and so on. To make a good job of the forend fit, I myself usually reckon on about 30-50 assembly cycles, depending on the source of the forend.
Front handguards, bands and the nosecap all require careful fettling with new wood. Sometimes the top of the forend has to be relieved in order to avoid over-thinning the top hand guards, to get them to slide under the nosecap.
I love old SMLEs, and feel sorry for the sportered ones that turn up at the auctions. Quite often I buy them because they are all-matching less for the missing nosecap. Unfortunately, from an RFD point of view, they are wildly uneconomic to restore, and simply end up adding to the pile of waiting projects. If you are doing a rifle for yourself, then it is an interesting project. It makes you appreciate the skill and speed at which the workers at Enfield, LSA, BSA could work, given that they stocked up over 4 million of these rifles! A few years back I stripped an LSA built in 1916 - at the height of war production. The stock fitting was done so superbly, that it took about an hour to separate action and forend - the fit was that tight.
Fitting new recoil faces:
Using talcum powder to check fit (No4 here):
I.e. there are new unused forends around (at a price), but no new butts or top woods. There are some Indian topwoods on eBay (usually USA), but the matching Indian forends are either wrong pattern or have the ishy screw. You can sometimes find old SMLE butts on eBay, but almost no old forends. Even when you find an old butt and an old forend, the chances are that they are completely different colour and grain!
And so on and so on.
I should know - I have about forty SMLE barrelled actions and restoration projects, and quite a large amount of wood. Out of all my stock, I can only make up about two sets that might go together to make a decent restoration! If you are trying to make a serious restoration - say of a No1 Mk1 or No1 with volley sights - then you are into serious hens' teeth territory and might have to wait years for the right bits to turn up.
You can of course use the new forends, and repro wood from EFD (£££...) or the new production topwoods that someone lists on eBay. You can stain/sand all this lot into some semblance of matching. However, then you end up with a rifle that has new wood and old metal finish - which looks a bit home built unless you get the metal re-blacked as well. Then you end up with the sort of thing C&G sells.
If you use old wood, then most SMLE barrelled actions will be a simple drop-in fit - they are astonishingly consistent in dimension, given the millions made. Usually, you will have to rebuild the recoil faces in old forends, as these will almost certainly be crumbled or indented.
If you use a new forend, then there is a lot of fitting to do. Typically, you have to dust the action and wood with talcum powder or similar, fit & assemble, dismantle, examine the witness marks, carefully scrape away the points need to adjust fit, repeat and so on. To make a good job of the forend fit, I myself usually reckon on about 30-50 assembly cycles, depending on the source of the forend.
Front handguards, bands and the nosecap all require careful fettling with new wood. Sometimes the top of the forend has to be relieved in order to avoid over-thinning the top hand guards, to get them to slide under the nosecap.
I love old SMLEs, and feel sorry for the sportered ones that turn up at the auctions. Quite often I buy them because they are all-matching less for the missing nosecap. Unfortunately, from an RFD point of view, they are wildly uneconomic to restore, and simply end up adding to the pile of waiting projects. If you are doing a rifle for yourself, then it is an interesting project. It makes you appreciate the skill and speed at which the workers at Enfield, LSA, BSA could work, given that they stocked up over 4 million of these rifles! A few years back I stripped an LSA built in 1916 - at the height of war production. The stock fitting was done so superbly, that it took about an hour to separate action and forend - the fit was that tight.
Fitting new recoil faces:
Using talcum powder to check fit (No4 here):
