Bedding the "H" Barrel SMLE

[tbonesmith]

You may well be right, but this rifle is going to be sold to a club member (I hope) when it's finished. And it will be used at all ranges with a sling as everyone tends to use them. So I have to set it up to shoot well with a sling. It doesn't need to be spectacular, just a solid, very good, reliable performer. Even an 8" group would keep them in the bull at 300m, but 6" would leave a little margin for shooter error.
Next week is at 100m, so I hope to have it sorted out when I test again then. I will report.

[tbonesmith]

100m standing was not too bad today with this rifle but it is still shooting a little bit right, so it won't be right for longer ranges, and I'm out of adjustment on the foresight. I was standing so no great stories about the groups, but I could tell I was dropping points beyond those I pulled. I will have to pull it out of the wood, and have a good look at it all from a fresh perspective. It might eliminate a possibility and be a good first point to check the bore sighting in the wood as it sits now and then again with the barreled action alone, that should tell me if the barrel is being "bent" by the wood or the nose cap...
We'll get there but this is very frustrating (yet educational..)
In good news I did get to unleash my No4T rebuild on the full bore range at 700m, and got a few bulls with 2 points of wind on the scope (and guess what there was 2 points of wind blowing!!!) so I guess that ones pretty well collimated, there's one saga happily in the rear vision mirror anyway. Wrapped with that accuracy. Next week is at 800m, I might ask nicely and get to shoot a full stage with it.

[tbonesmith]

Update.
Since the last report I've had the rifle on the bench at 100m and tried with an opened up nose cap and no good. The foresight is right over the right hand side and the rifle is still shooting 8" right at 100m. Groups are mediocre. Something seriously amiss.
Today I pulled the rifle down, and found tell tails of quite firm pressure on the barrel from the forend on the right hand side at about the centre band, I hit the barrel again with bearing blue and then relieved the wood, so it's only bearing at the middle of the channel, and more towards the front. Interestingly the nose cap went on a bit easier, and now when I push the barrel up it goes up, in the fairly tight nose cap. ie the barrel is naturally sitting at the bottom of the hole. Anyway it looks and feels pretty promising, but I'll have to wait 'till next week to test it. Fingers crossed.

[Son]

Just check how much contact the foreend has with the butt socket right at the rear (.002" feeler gauge), and make sure the recoil blocks are equally tight and have good even contact down their faces.

It's never as easy as just a bedding job. I've done a few and only once has my initial work improved the grouping. Most times it's worse!

[Bruce_in_Oz]

Check carefully that the barrel has not travelled past top dead centre.

This is a problem with these old girls and it is the reason why, in later years, Lithgow produced replacement barrels with two different thread starts. There was a barrel meant for breeching up into new receivers or those with minimal thread crush or wear, and another meant for more "pre-loved" receivers. I have the data for start points for the thread on the Lithgow-made replacement No4 barrel and am trying to find that for the heavy SMLE barrel. I have a reference to a gauge used for setting up the standard SMLE barrel thread, but I don't have the drawings or full data for that gauge.

The difference is only a few degrees, but that is all it takes. If you ream out and fit a sight base on a heavy barrel, dead parallel to the receiver, but your front sight is effectively canted a degree or two, it gets very untidy.

Not saying that this is what happened, just that it is just one more trap for young and old players.

Regarding bedding, Mr. Sweet had lots to say on the subject in his classic book which was, at one time, available in this site. The pertinent bits are from page 63 to 74 inclusive.

[tbonesmith]

The fit of the forend at the receiver end is untouched and absolutely perfect. I did ream out the rear sight base, and fit it, but I was careful to use the knox flat as the datum. As it was for breeching up. The problem I found would explain the problem of the rifle shooting some 600mm out to the right at 100m, and the ordinary groups. I just hope to find that the action taken has cured it!
I've got the last edition of Jim Sweet's book but the later ones had info about No4 bedding and Omark bedding. Will try to hunt down an earlier edition.
BTW Bruce_in_Oz where do/how have you come by the wealth of information you possess on these things?

[Bruce_in_Oz]

tbone:

I have been an "enthusiast" since I was a lad at school. Being surrounded by mechanically-minded family and friends helped a lot. My Dad was one of those blokes who, if he didn't have the right tool would set to and design and make one.

I have lost track of the hardware that has passed through my hands over the decades. However, as the gun-cupboard waxed and waned, the library just kept growing. The good thing about information is that you can pass it on without actually losing it. One of my prized document sets is a swag of Australian armourers charts, notes and oddments from the late 1930s. These, and every book of Ian Skennerton's and sundry other authors have been invaluable. As a high-school kid in Australia in the 1970's, I got to fiddle with everything from Martinis to L1A1s with a lot of Lee Enfields in the mix. I was trying to restore Lee Enfields at the same time as match-tweaking M-14s and AR-15s. Actually pulling the trigger on something that you have built or restored yourself is sometimes scary; you feel like a dill if it doesn't perform, but the whole point is to make it work the way it should. You also learn something if it doesn't. In the "wild old days" I used to buy powder in 32 pound "kegs" and projectiles by the slab. My kids don't have anything like the freedom to do the stuff I did then. My clothes used to hang on the end of the bed because the wardrobe was full of guns, magazines and spare parts. Neither of my parents minded; they just insisted that I be safety conscious whether handling, shooting, reloading or "repairing". The same went for my brother who has a similar bent, but also used to rebuild classic British motorbikes in his room.

Some years ago, I encountered another "old" armourer and acquired his swag of drawings and a couple of good technical specification sets. He wouldn't tell me much about his personal past, but he had obviously been fairly high in the food-chain. When I go to gun shows, I look at guns but almost never buy. Almost invariably, however, I will go home with books, parts, charts and a couple of new phone numbers or email addresses.

I have been involved in a couple of attempts at manufacture in Australia; absolute nightmare of bureaucracy, small-mindedness, technical brick walls and terminal cash shortages. I am doing the "backroom stuff" for a .303 barrel caper that is being run on a very threadbare shoestring at the moment, but I am not giving up yet. The first two P-14 barrels are going out to be "warmed up" by my shooting equivalent of "The Stig" this weekend, a whole year later than initially planned. That design exercise provided a deepening of the suspicion that P-14s seem to be hand-fitted from one end to the other. After doing a lot of metrology, it became apparent that it is futile to produce a barrel that is a "drop-in" as there is almost no chance that it will breech up correctly. Instead an "80%" barrel will have to be carefully fitted by a good gunsmith. But that's better than nothing. The latest mad caper is to find a reliable source of a Mk7 equivalent projectile whilst tidying up the specifications for an "almost" drop-in No4 barrel. Now, that’s scary.

[RJW NZ]

Hi T Bone, just wondering how the shooting is going with the H barrel project?

[tbonesmith]

Not good. I put it aside while I did another project. That was the No4Mk1/3, now that's done I'll get back to it, too many rifles apart at once means none get completed if you're me. Hopefully this week. I spoke to some guys who've had success with H barrel bedding, and I only need to make slight mod's to emulate their take on bedding.
Helpfully also I've got a range to use for the moment which makes testing.... possible.

[fergs]

Hey Tbone i wonder if there would be any of the old gun smiths still floating around who used to set up rifles at malabar, they were all over that with the heavy barrels, I seemed to have purchased quite a few of these rifles in the past which had been fitted by these gentlemen. It would only take a minor tweek here and there to get that performance you want. you can only but try. will be interested to see the end result.
Regards
Fergs