Building a No.4 Enfield

[Alpha1]

I've had a half-assed idea for a while about building myself a No.4 Enfield. An RFD friend has a 'bare bones' No.4 receiver with bolt. It's not in good condition at all - it looks like it was exposed to prolonged damp at some point in its life, but the rust is surface only (as far as I can tell).

What I want to do is build an 'as issued' No.4. Obviously (less fitting the barrel) this means I'd be assembling (and tweaking!) the rifle myself. I like to think I'm a practical bloke but all said and done, I don't know much about metalwork or woodwork. Is building a No.4 from scratch likely to be a difficult job? Answers gratefully accepted!

Sorry but I dont get this at all why would you buy a old clunker when you in your own words dont have the skills required to re build it and it is going to cost you a arm and a leg.
If you want a No4 I can put you in touch with dealers who will sell you a all matching rifle in excellent condition all you need to do is buy some ammo and shoot it. If you want to take it to bits a refurbish it thats up to you.
Dont make sense to me.

[Dangermouse]

Should anyone be looking, I have just found that Brownell's are selling a PRO MAG Enfield No4 Mk1 .303 ten round magazine for $28.00 / £17.73
http://www.brownells.com/.aspx/pid=4381 ... _I_Enfield

DM

[Gaz]

Sorry but I dont get this at all why would you buy a old clunker when you in your own words dont have the skills required to re build it and it is going to cost you a arm and a leg.

I said I don't know much about gunsmithing, not that I know nothing. It's a nice chance to learn what goes into building a rifle - I know I can buy a No.4 and take it straight to the range, but that's not quite as fun as fitting it together myself and shooting it afterwards. Like eating home-grown veg, you have to wait months for it to grow and keep on watering it etc, but it tastes that bit better at the end!

Popped into Fultons last Saturday and they quoted me around £175 for a "good condition" secondhand barrel, fitted and proofed. Given that I'll only be paying for the furniture (~£100ish?) I reckon I'll be saving money compared to buying one off the rack!

[saddler]

Many years back I was involved with a MG CAR restoration and visited a MG CAR Parts specialist somewhere near Belfast. I remember him saying that he could build a complete new car from all the parts that he had in shop and looking at them, they were all new parts not SH salvage parts.
When I came into shooting I assumed that for rifles like the No4 that the same would be available ie brand new parts available for whatever part you needed.

I know now that there is not and wonder if there is a market for such reproduced items,

DM

NOTE TO SELF

MG can sometimes mean other things than Machine Gun EVEN on a gun/shooters forum - hence you cannot build a car from Bren & Vickers components (not unless you have a really big hammer...)

Morris Garages - likewise - were not in the small-arms business

FIXED IT FOR YA

[Rearlugs]

Sorry but I dont get this at all why would you buy a old clunker when you in your own words dont have the skills required to re build it and it is going to cost you a arm and a leg.

I said I don't know much about gunsmithing, not that I know nothing. It's a nice chance to learn what goes into building a rifle - I know I can buy a No.4 and take it straight to the range, but that's not quite as fun as fitting it together myself and shooting it afterwards. Like eating home-grown veg, you have to wait months for it to grow and keep on watering it etc, but it tastes that bit better at the end!

Popped into Fultons last Saturday and they quoted me around £175 for a "good condition" secondhand barrel, fitted and proofed. Given that I'll only be paying for the furniture (~£100ish?) I reckon I'll be saving money compared to buying one off the rack!

I build No4s from receivers. It is not a practical proposition unless you are an RFD and have access to multiple sets of each component - there are wide tolerances in the parts, and so you have to have sufficient choice (i.e. as in an armourers' shop) to get a fit within specification:

1. barrels generally have to screw hand-tight to about 15-20o to be sufficiently torqued on. Generally, you need a choice of about 5 barrels to be sure of a fit for one particular receiver;

2. bolt bodies should have even bearing surface between bolt lug and receiver pockets; whilst Enfields are commonly used with "mismatched" bolts, you might still need several bodies in order to find one that displays even bearing. Trying to adjust a recoil lug by grinding cuts through the hardened surface and almost inevitably leads to a bolt that can't be headspaced.

3. bolt heads have to (a) index within 10o of the bolt body when screwed up (b) have to give the correct final headspace. To get a good fit, I generally try 15-20 separate bolt heads in one size only (there are four sizes for a No4!).

Note that all of the above parts are controlled items and need to be listed separately on an FAC - if you are able to convince the police that you want to buy a large stock of parts in order to be able to build one rifle!

4. firing pins are not easily matched with cocking pieces, which in turn are often not easily matched with trigger/sear position; hence multiple items of these are needed to get a correctly-functioning rifle.

5. firing pins have to match with the bolt-head in order to give the correct striker protrusion;


The trigger let-off on an Enfield depends upon the relationship between receiver/bolt body play (rifles can be worn), cocking piece, firing pin, sear, trigger, trigger guard and forend fit (the last two except No4 Mk2). The mechanical system has to be set up after the forend is correctly fitted and bedded. hence the need for large stocks of parts.....

[Gaz]

Well, I'll bear that info in mind. The bolt and receiver are matched, and as I'm paying Fultons to fit and headspace the barrel for me I (hopefully) won't have to worry about that too much. The real question is bedding it and sorting out the rest ...

I now have a full wood set, which is coming up nicely with judicious use of steel wool and linseed oil. Pictures of receiver and wood to follow in due course!

[Gaz]

Here's some pictures of the receiver. You can see why it's costing me nowt! I've since cleaned the crud and surface rust off.

Side view, as I was first introduced to it.


Serial number.


Towards the breech end - that orange rust was mostly on the surface, but there's some pitting to the top of the receiver ring.


Trigger mech - all present, correct and functional.


Into the receiver body - you can see it's perfectly sound around the locking lug areas.


The bolt and body are matched and I've got a cheap secondhand barrel waiting at Fultons. Furniture's currently absorbing a coat of linseed oil. I'm going to have Fultons fit the barrel and headspace it so I don't cock anything up, but I'm going to try and do the rest myself.
I know all the old pros are saying it can't be done without huge stocks of parts, but hey, this rifle will never be a competition winner or a collector's piece. Just a bog-standard No.4 assembled by semi-skilled labour. :G:

[ovenpaa]

I will be interested to see how the project goes so please do post lots of pictures. Have you decided how you will fit and bed the action to the furniture, will it be the traditional way or something more modern such as pillars and resin?

[1066]

Great project - Well done Gaz.

[Gaz]

I will be interested to see how the project goes so please do post lots of pictures. Have you decided how you will fit and bed the action to the furniture, will it be the traditional way or something more modern such as pillars and resin?

Traditional all the way - let's see if I can't replicate what a wartime BSA worker would have done...

Here's the newly cleaned up receiver. Bit smarter now, eh?






Below, you can just about see that some person in the past decided to peen the sear axis pin in place. I don't want to damage anything, and the sear works fine, so that'll be staying in place as long as nothing goes wrong. I stripped out the rest of the trigger mech, cleaned the crud off it and put a dab of grease on the magazine catch axis screw before reassembling.

There's also traces of brown paint over what would have been the exposed parts of the metalwork, which strikes me as a bit odd. I'll take some #0000 steel wool to that and remove it.




Top view, just about showing the pitting to the top of the receiver ring. I'm a lot less worried about this now the rust's off - it's not deep at all, just cosmetic. Does anyone know a good method of filling it in or smoothing it out?




Serial number (AV10***) and year of manufacture, 1943. Apologies for the bad focus of my phone camera!




Final photo showing the brand new, never used (but slightly oversize) furniture. All matched - cost me £120 off Ebay in the end. I do wish I'd waited until last year's Phoenix, as I could have had a similar set for £80 there! It does need a fair bit of fitting - I've taken what looks like millimetres off the boss of the butt but it still won't quite locate all the way home. I think the fore-end is going to be the toughest part to fit, as even with judicious tapping the receiver wouldn't quite drop all the way home. The whole lot sits a good 5mm proud.




Next stage is having it barrelled, which I should be able to do this weekend. Fingers crossed the barrel at Fultons indexes within limits...

I'm also toying with painting the exposed metalwork so it's in keeping with the brand new woodwork. This chap on Ebay is selling 1 litre tins of Suncorite 259, which I understand the MoD uses on its .22 No.8s still in service. Any thoughts?

Also - I'm looking for a butt bolt and possibly a spare front band, as the one I have is hinged whilst the forward handguard doesn't have a cutout to take it.
Plus a rear sight plunger, as the leaf sight/spring/plunger/axis pin/retaining pin I bought as a kit from Welsharms turned out to contain a stainless steel nail instead of the actual plunger. :cool2: