Bedding the "H" Barrel SMLE

[tbonesmith]

Howdy all, here's a little job I've been getting into. The next project has arrived and so this on must be finished and moved on.
I bought a crusty old '41 Lithgow SMLE a while ago. It was all matching No's but the barrel was rusted out, and the wood was beat up as hell but thoroughly sound.
The metal was excellent and the action showed little wear.
My only thought was that I could get a great shooter out of it with a replacement barrel.
I had a good, used heavy barrel, and put it in, then reamed out the rear sight base, mounted and fitted it.
Now I'm bedding the forend in the same method I've seen used successfully on other No1 range rifles that I've pulled apart, that is barrel bearing on the full length of the forend forward of the centre band.
The recoil lugs were already fitted perfectly and the barrel naturally sat in the centre of the barrel channel. I just needed to enlarge for the heavy barrel.
The only tool I've used to inlet it is a smallish curved chisel/gouge.
I've blued the whole barrel and knox with bearing blue, the reinforce needed a little relief, but the rest of the action was perfect and there fore left alone.
The top wood will need fitting and I'll just tidy up the finish on the inside of the channel, but it's gone great, the standard muzzle cap fits perfectly, and I'll be extremely surprised if this fella doesn't do the business on the range.

Information

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[RJW NZ]

ahh, I do love to see a workshop with an enfield project going together ...

[BushyFromOz]

ahh, I do love to see a workshop with an enfield project going together ...

same here, after using T' bones pictures for my own bedding job next week, ill move onto the all matching 1918 sporterised BSA with N /\ Z markings i found for 200 bucks today.

That can liven up my workbench ;D

[tbonesmith]

I thought that I could get the top wood to bear on the top of the barrel, but turns out that packing is essential to this. I'm not keen on that so I used bearing blue to ensure no contact of the top wood when fitted.
If the rifle shows that its accuracy is wanting then I'll pack it, but I think it'll be fine.
I plugged the centre barrel ring hole with beech so nothing can fall in there.
All in all I'm very happy with the job.
I'll give a range report ASAP.

[fergs]

Nice bit of timber work there, should be a nice peice on the range look forward to seeing results.
Regards
Fergs

[RJW NZ]

Ditto, nice work, especially with the ol chisel in the channel.
Where does a bloke buy bearing blue, as in what kind of stores?

Whats the plan for the nosecap hole, are you leaving it stock or opening it up? My Fultons has about a 25 thou gap, which is close and looks right. I've had rifles with the hole opened way up and then the gap blocked with rubber hose to keep possums out, but I always thought that a tight fitting bit of rubber hose would completely defeat the free floating barrel concept.
I'm a bit confused about your bedding plan re packed hand gaurds, is the barrel free floated the whole length or part floated?

cheers, nice work, ya can't help loving a wolf in sheep's clothing.

[tbonesmith]

You buy the bearing blue in bearing suppliers, like "ABC Bearings", took me a while to find it and I felt like a dill when I found out where to get it.
I'm going tho leave the nose cap hole as the standard size.
The barrel isn't floated, it bears on the centre line of the forend all the way from the centre band to the tip of the forend, the idea of packing the guards is to hold the barrel down and dampen vibration, don't know the physics I've just seen it on a lot of range rifles, but as it stands I think it will be fine, we'll see. Easy enough to retro fit, but if possible I don't want to add cork, I'm pretty sure they didn't do it on the HT's, correct me if I'm wrong.

[RJW NZ]

I'm going tho leave the nose cap hole as the standard size.
The barrel isn't floated, it bears on the centre line of the forend all the way from the centre band to the tip of the forend, the idea of packing the guards is to hold the barrel down and dampen vibration, don't know the physics I've just seen it on a lot of range rifles, but as it stands I think it will be fine, we'll see. Easy enough to retro fit, but if possible I don't want to add cork, I'm pretty sure they didn't do it on the HT's, correct me if I'm wrong.

The only H bedding I'm familiar with is a 3/4 inch wide by 1 inch 'pad' under the first inch of the barrel and fully floated from there to the tip, thats what is on those pictures of an H target I posted here about 4 weeks ago.It was making cloverleafs at 25 yards.
The other H method I know of is like the No4, bedded to the mid band and floated from the band to the tip.
Both have the nose cap opened up quite a bit.

The only time I've heard of the style you've mentioned is in James Sweets 1954 book and is referring to packing the barrel channels on stock barreled no1 mk3's, which resulted in nearly 1 MOA at 100 etc, not bad for a stock barrel over iron sights, huh?

The cool thing with your approach is you can work your way through several methods and find which your rifle likes the most. I think my only suggestion would be that as you're damping the vibes the way you are would be to make sure the nose cap attaches smoothly and squarely without torquing the barrel at all, and to use paper shims to make the hole in the nose cap is a tight fit on the barrel, instead of a potential 'buzzy' fit, usually a single layer of paper at 3.5 thou for common A4 paper, is enough to make a perfect push on snug fit.
Oh, and btw something I've seen on the enfield target rifles I've had from the golden days is that the barrels lay on the wood on a layer of graphite something, like a powder, probably helps it return to center.
All the best, looking forward to seeing the perforated paper ... with one ragged hole

[Son]

Hey, young Tbone... The real test isn't to see it shoot 1" groups at 100yds. That's pretty easy to achieve- fully floated, partial floater, centre bedded, muzzle bedded semi floater, India packing, - all can give you 1 inch. What you are after is a rifle that will hit an aiming mark with a cold barrel, first shot. Then fire four more shots within a couple of minutes, then go straight on to fire your five shot group. Usually you will find the first four are stringing an inch apart vertically, the rest might cut a nice group. Gives you 4+ moa... a pretty ****full result, really.

Best of luck, mate... I will admit to having fluked it more than once...

[tbonesmith]

We shall see...