No5 Forends - Endcaps

[Alan de Enfield]

I'm sure I remember a thread ( maybe on the old Jouster forum) by Peter Laidler where he made mention that the metal end caps were removed to reduce the chance of water / moisture becoming trapped and causing rot.

Am I dreaming it or did anyone keep a copy ?

On another forum I occasionally visit there is a thread in which it is stated that these metal endcaps were installed to stop rot, and that the woodwork was varnished to seal the grain and stop the ingress of moisture. Again - I'm pretty sure that Peter made some comment about this actually sealing in moisture and actually exacerpating (spelling ?) rot.

Funny how there are such diverse opinions, If Peter did say the above, I'd rather go with his version as he was 'on the ground' at the time.

Information

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[Peter Laidler]

It was pointed out to me that originally, the fore-ends were left OPEN for the tropics (Malaya etc) but would be closed off for temperate climes. This disn't work in practice because we saw hundreds of 'capped' fore-ends in service there. And as sure as night follows day, they'd rot out undernath so, if the fore-end was still sound, we simply removed them and make good the woodwork by rounding off. And once the'd been rounded off, you couldn't tell whether they were originally 'capped' or not. This didn't happen to the No4 of course because the fore-end caps were open at the top while the No5's were enclosed if I remember correctly.

DO NOT varnish the woodwork as it does indeed seal in the moisture. Just leave it open and well oiled with linseed. Even the jungle couldn't defeat a well linseeded fore-end (well, it did occasionally, but after many years.....) My dad always said that a polish with French polish or button polish did allow the wood to breath if you wanted a bit of a shine or even good beeswax furniture polish. Anything that leaves the pores clear

One further point was that most of the big armouries had the No5 rifles muzzle down in the racks to prevent the oil attacking the old rubber butt pads. Later ones seem to fare better as they had a high neoprene (?) content. I suppose being muzzle down didn't help when the wet fore-end was draining down into the cap

Well, it's rambled on a bit but hope it's answered the Q.

[villiers]

Wont argue with the logic .... but I still prefer the metal cap. Just looks better.

[Surpmil]

Wont argue with the logic .... but I still prefer the metal cap. Just looks better.

Agreed.