It looks as if the bad press is starting to spread.

"Sporting Rifle"
March 2010 Edition page 85

The article is about shooting in the rain :

"Water in your action or on your ammunition will cause elevated and variable chamber pressures. At best this will mean erratic elevation, at worst a stretched action. Lee Enfield actions are notorious for this. A No4 shooting 7.62 ammunition is already doing a job a little beyond its design parameters.
This coupled with questionable gunsmithing and significantly undersized bores when the rifle was 'converted' from .303 gives a poor starting point in the safety stakes. Add to that an action full of rain and wet ammunition and you may be heading towards disaster.

For a ferrous alloy, such as steel used in a rifle action, as long as stresses do not exceed a particular level the fatigue life of the action can be regarded as infinite. But we do not know what level of stress that is, so we must assume that any stressing of the action beyond its design parameters is dangerous. The crucial point is that stressing the action beyond this limit has a cumulative effect, which ultimately leads to failure. The more we overstress the action the closer we come to that failure.

Dozens of times I've seen shooters shooting Long Lee Enfields and SMLE's, particularly at the Trafalgar Meeting in the pouring rain, making no effort to keep the rain off their ammunition or out of what is an even weaker action than a No4. To cap all this, when the rifle passed into civilian hands it was subject to a deliberate overload at the proof house. The fact that it didn't give way then is no guarantee it wont give way tomorrow"

There then follows a photograph of a No4 action with the by-line :

"This post-war No4 action is the best of the Lee Enfield bunch but if you overstress it you risk your life"

I, for one, would like some evidence of the fact that LE actions are 'notorious' for this !!!!!

If anyone else feels strongly enough to write in, the magazine is published by :

Blaze Publishing
Laurence House
Morrell Street
Leamington Spa
Warwickshire
CV32 5SZ

Email : info@blazepublishing.co.uk
Tel : 01926 339808
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