No.4 barrel support vs sporter?

[crazy4milsurps]

Its general knowledge that the No.4 rifles need to have support(pressure)at the nose cap in order to achieve better accuracy but what about sporters with their forestock cut down? I just won a restorable sported No.4 at auction that has a cut down forstock. I noticed that owners as well as companies such as P&H and Sussex etc. put out sporters with cut down timber. This confuses me, why would this alteration be done if it attacks the accuracy? or does it attack accuracy?

Thanks in advance

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[browningautorifle]

Free floating barrels are accurate. When they have full wood and something bears against them, they need to be regulated. Otherwise they shy away from the spot they bear. Lots of things are involved that aren't there when the wood is shorter. There'll be more along to explain again in a minute.

[Ridolpho]

An easy enough experiment- free float a full length No. 4 forend after first grouping it with the proper forend pressure. Easy to do and I somehow suspect the main users (ie. military)might have tried it over the decades of use. The No. 1 Rifle, on the other hand, with its skinnier barrel is documented as being very innacurate free-floated. Perhaps the sporterized No. 4's (numbered in the thousands) provide adequate short range hunting accuracy but "accuracy" has to be defined. The acceptable dispersion for a normally bedded No. 4 is well known. It would be interesting to hear case histories of actually seriously tested free floated rifles.

Ridolpho

[Peter Laidler]

Take it from me crazy 4, it WILL affect the accuracy. Why do they do it.......... Let me explain it in another way. Do you remember the craze for fitting air-dams to the front of cars in the early 80's? Yep.......... every cheap shix car owned by every boy racer in the village had one. And the less brains they had, the BIGGER the fxxxxxx air dam!!!!!!! Add to that a rear wing spoiler made of flexible fibreglass. No kiddin'........ Why did they do it when your average jo who took the effort to put his hand out of the car window at anything over 2 mph could have told them that it WILL act as a brake. I'll tell you. They fell asleep in the school physics lesson that dealt with forces, thought it looked good - and did it.

Same as those the cut the fore-ends short.

There will be other less humourous reasons why and a lot if it is to do with harmonics. And, as I say, to REALLY understand that you need a degree in music!

[crazy4milsurps]

Right then, exactly what I thought. thanks fellows !!

[Ridolpho]

crazy4milsurps: Since you already own the gun why don't you give it a good workout on the range as it is (and keep your targets) then obtain a decent full length forend and, using the detailed instructions available on this forum, carefully fit metal to wood and try it again? I think the answer to your original question is that the chopping of forend was done simply to make the old things look like everyones impression of a sporting rifle and not for any other good reason. It could be worse though- lots had barrels chopped and can't really be restored. I have a mechanically excellent Ross MkIII in that condition- very sad. I recall as a kid even my local Co-Op grocery store had a catalogue with sporterized Lee Enfields and I wanted one bad as it fit my nearly non-existent budget.

Ridolpho

[Bruce_in_Oz]

Furthermore, range table and grouping wise, if your bog-standard No4 is not shooting true Mk 7 ball, all bets are off.

Also, note how once you have turned one into a "sporter", a prodigious amount of effort, and trigger-time, goes into finding the "magic" load.

A LOT of effort and taxpayers money went into building the No4 around the utterly proven Mk7 cartridge. Fiddling with the recipe is a great boon to reloading suppliers.

[ssj]

A standard no4 should be good for about 2inch MOA. Ive seen written that a badly sporterised no4 can be as bad as 10~12inch MOA (apparantly, yes that bad). I have a small plan afoot to test this. I bought a "sporterised" no4 "fully floating" (read - can wobble where it wants) barrel with a view to returning it to as issued. (probably not my best decision but anyway). Since then I have got 2 other no4s. Both No4 mk2's full wooded and accurised (I can hear Peter retching now) for target work. In addition at present I have 2 un-issued new forestocks plus these 2 accuriased forestocks plus the "free floating" sportorised stock. At present Im fitting one un-issued stock as per Peter's articles, ie std 3~5lbs front loading for a no4, then Im going to do some testing. So I have the following,

a) Sporterised free float.
b) Std as issued no4.
c) Centre bed, alloy pillar.
d) Centre bed no pillar.
e) bed "everywhere" (5 bedding points all along barrel).
f) Carbon fibre stiffened front end but otherwise std no4 technique.

Later on,
g) Carbon fibre stiffened front end with centre bed (a modified f).
h) Carbon fibre stiffened front end with centre bed and alloy bed plate, (a modified g).
i) Take sporterised stock and centre bed it.

a) v i) should be interesting.

---------- Post added at 01:33 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:30 PM ----------

8><--- think the answer to your original question is that the chopping of forend was done simply to make the old things look like everyones impression of a sporting rifle and not for any other good reason.
8><---

Ridolpho

Yes, a ParkerHale look alike, except ParkerHale fitted their own stiffer barrel?

[harlton]

I Must say I find this an interesting subject, I have a better than new, very nicely 24" barrelled, better than normal sportster. As new bore, nice tight bolt, No2 trigger conversion, with the forestock wood done alla L39 style of rifle.
I also own one Faz No5 which has been fully bedded at some point, I understood from the seller it was done by parker-hale for the services, but who know's. It certainly shoots well, 1 moa or better, as long as the shots are fired on a warmed barrel and equally spaced, it's fully bedded, Barrel to, with what looks like titanium putty, but I cannot be sure as I've never taken it apart so not to disturb it. One note it was purchased from a small shop, right by the Toronto Armouries about 25yrs ago.
I've read some range reports on the effectiveness of which bedding and stocking was used vs results, and some with good bedding and center bearing modifications, seem to fair well.
It Makes me wonder how those lovely Canadian made, shorter barreled, half stocked Scout sniper rifles performed at the range, acceptably I presume, and how were they bedded. I do understand that some had slightly heavier barrels in some cases. Pls some feedback on how they were stocked and performed would be great, as I love em.
As I have one of the cut down, but hardly used sportsters available, it would make a great build starting point. Even some of the DCRA rifles had similar half or 3/4 stocking.
So surely the humble sportster must have been able to perform to a certain degree, or wouldn't sales would have sucked very quickly.
I'm not trying to start an argument, Just curious as there's a lot out there, with shorter but very good barrels, and it would be nice to put them to some use. Other than killing tree's, or the odd poor accidental deer.

[Peter Laidler]

As a quick answer to some of the above. I have never, ever yet been told by a yound car owner that his car, fitted with the air dams and rear spoilers, made from fibreglass and bolted to the front panel of your average car, that would withstand pressure forces of XY and Z didn't perform better than it did before. Add to that jacked up rear wheels and............ And that is in spite of the science that says that it is not possible

I have never yet been told by someone who sporterised a No4 (or similar) rifle that it was any worse than it was before.................... You know where I am going with this don't you?

One is in the business of selling aerodynamic improvements that don't work - but look good and the other is selling old Army rifles that are made to look good.

Just my view based on nothing more than a bit of classroom theory, a dob of experience all mixed in with a bit of savvy