My heartfelt thanks goes out to them both for helping me find out about these fine rifles.
"Hi James,
Herewith my response to your request!
1. The Lee Enfield cal.303 conversions were born out of the many rifles made available to reserve forces, military personnel and police force. You could buy an ex army / police rifle for about R100 which at the time, also included 100 rounds.
2. More than 90% were issued with either badly pitted barrels or worn out barrels.
3. The barrels were all 3 groove barrels.
4. Some, or most of these rifles were still grease wrapped, however, mother nature played it's part.
5. Due to the demand from the public to put these useless rifles back into action, Bennie Musgrave and Trevor Musgrave decided to convert them to an acceptable hunting and sporting rifle.
6. The bolt face design obviously was for a rimmed cartridge and the conversion subsequently was designed around the existing cartridge.
7. We removed the old barrel, fitted a new .243 barrel, cut the slot on the side of the chamber to accommodate the claw extractor & chamber with the 6mm / 303 chamber, which was a .303 configuration cartridge with a neck to accommodate the 6mm bullet.
8. Ballistics were same as 243 Win, however with lower chamber pressure due to cartridge design.
9. It was a lightweight 24" barrel with, 15mm at muzzle and no sights, some customers demands sights for cosmetic reasons.
10. The fore-end were slimmed down to look like a modern hunting rifle.
11. The butt was new in Monte Carlo style, either left or right cheek piece fitted with a ventilated or solid recoil pad from Pachmayer. Belt swivels were fitted, front and rear and the wood was finished in French polish style. The front end were glass bedded.
12. We kept the bolt action standard, however, the magazine the magazine guiding lips were slightly modified to guide the now smaller bullet.
13. The rear sights were removed, the original mountings were milled down and we manufactured a pillar that was fitted to the side of the bolt action, just before the bolt ring, to support the telescope fitting base, which was a flat piece of tool steel, dove tailed on both sides and run from the rear to the front of the bolt action, approx 100mm long. We cut grooves in the telescope base to accommodate the STD Williams rings.
14. Stock checkering were very fine hand cut on front and pistol grip.
15. Wood for butt was mainly walnut of a very low grade.
16. All metal parts were "blued" in acid baths.
17. Musgrave manufactured the barrel, rear butt, telescope mounts, etc.
18. The butt was machined on a Zuckermann CNC machine, while the barrels were button type, like all Musgrave barrels. The button machines and buttons were manufactured in-house.
19. The 6mm project were handled by the Musgrave custom rifle devision and we convert about 50 / month.
20. About 90% of all conversions were customer requests and never formed part of a dedicated product process.
21. The number sequence were issued by the South African Police, including the cal, 6mm Mus.
22. They were very popular, although, the conversion were on par with the price of a new Musgrave, Brno, type rifle. The fact that about 100% of this conversion were handmade, push the price to the level of new rifles.
There was a lot of sentimental value to these rifles due to the history of South Africa.
The Musgrave factory had 120 employees and all hunting rifles were hand fitted, checkered & every rifle was tested for accuracy over 25m with a grouping of 5 shots within 10mm. Needless to say, the 6mm were very accurate achieving a "clover leaf" grouping over 100mm.
Tx
Daan
Daan Els"
