Ok, after eight years I've got my Lee Enfield collection back. By most of the people here's standard it's a tiny group of rifles hardly worth dignifying with the monniker 'collection', but they are mine and I love them.

Here's the list;

No 4 Mk1 1942 LSA 2 groove very clean and shoots really well.
No 4 Mk1* 1950 Long Branch with a very nice bore and a stock that's a bit dinged.
No 4 Mk2 1955 Fazakerly unissued (The holy grail) that is a dream to shoot.
No 1 2A1 1967 Ishapor that I have plans for because it shoots 308 and it groups tight.
No 1 Mk3 1945 Lithgowicon unissued that I have yet to shoot but is very pretty.

Ok you lot in the back of the room, stop s******ing! With the advent of the internet I've just found out the last one is essentially a fake. What's more I paid more for it than any of the others. In my defense I bought it almost twenty years ago before the interweb was really prevalent. It was in a glossy ad at the back of Shotgun News and I had my local gun shop get it for me. Then I stuck it in the rack and just loved and dusted it because it was so valuable (har har). We moved away and now we're back and I've got my babies out of safe keeping and now I know I was taken all those years ago, well sort of. The rifle certainly looks and feels brand new and the barrel looks unfired. The stock is coachwood without a blemish and all the metal is parkerized.

As I have said I have yet to take it out and before I do I want to take care of a couple of issues because I'd like this expensive SMLE to be as good as it can be.

The first is that I'm almost certain that this coachwood stock doesn't have recoil pads installed. I haven't looked but everything I've read about these rifles leads me to this assumption. Coachwood seems to notorious for splitting/shattering and this stock is so pretty that I'd prefer it to not happen to it. Is it worth me trying to do the recoil pads myself or is there a gunsmith in the Pacific Northwest of the USAicon that could do this job for me?

The second is possibly an operator stupidity error or maybe something more onerous. I don't seem to be able to remove the bolt from the weapon. Now remember I've played with Hradini (my Ishy) and the other ladies and pulling the bolts doesn't seem to be an issue. However Sheila refuses to let go of her bolt. Here's the procedure.

1, remove magazine.
2, make sure safety is off.
3, rotate and slide bolt all the way back.
4, unclip and rotate bolthead anticlockwise so that the runner points stright up.
5, pull back bolt and clear the receiver.
6, the bolt should now be in my hand.

Except when I rotate the bolthead it binds in the receiver and the bolt locks tight in the receiver and will not move. Once I rotate the bolthead back down and click it back into the runner guide the bolt moves in and out of battery fine. Everything is working as it should be, I just can't extract the bolt out of the rifle. Is something defective? I'm a little concerned shooting her until I know that the bolt is ok.

Any and all thoughts will be gratefully received.

regards,

Paul.
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