How not to take something for granted, re accuracy

[RJW NZ]

Its a rainy sunday poking around the rifles nightmare!
One of my most prized rifles is a No1 Mk3 that used to belong to the NZ Navy shooting team, which is also bearing accurizing stamps from both Fulton and Parker Hale. It has the three springs type of damping and also receiver work. It looks like a well cared for rifle, shiny bore, no wear of the blueing on corners and no signs of being dropped, nice , together rifle, right?
The only trouble has been that it has been a thoroughly mediocre shooter, probably better than the average No1 Mk3 but nevertheless, not great considering the pedigree. It should be trying to make cloverleafs but is a fair way from that small of a group.
I've not applied any accurizing knowledge to this rifle because a) its collectibility and b) it's got those names on it, how could I improve on their great work?
I decided today to inspect it as though it were a rifle fresh in for accurizing improvements and to closely ascertain its weak points or areas that were not up to spec.
What a shock. Here's the items that hinder its accuracy and need attention, it's not an item or two, its a flippin list!
- wrist face/forend; it has slight firm contact close to the trigger guard, the rest has no contact and is off the face about .005 - .010. It's contacting the wrist face about 10% when it should be up to 80%.
- The wrist face contact gap is unequal on the left and right sides, so that recoil the rifle is throwing shots to the larger gap side.
- the forend is loose under the trigger guard rear and requires considerable packing under the TG before it contacts the forend properly.
- trigger guard; it is only contacting the side rails at the front 1/2" of the magazine well, when it should be at least 2.5 inches front and back.
- the forend tip is warped downwards away from the barrel about 3/16ths inch,
- the barrel up pressure is about 2 lbs, I'd like to see the regulation 7lbs.
- the under sides of the front guard are bowed away from the forend when it should be a perfectly flat fit that won't allow a feeler gauge to enter, this means the spring damping pressure is being lessened.
- the barrel tip is contacting the left side of the barrel channel when it should have zero contact.
- the floating mid band, inner, is hard into the right side of the forend, when it should be centered so that its not contacting the barrel inside with side pressure.
- The receiver contacts the forend only at the front one inch, and absolutely nothing to the rear of that point. Its being held off by the bolt head release spring's shoulder making contact with the wood next to the draws.

To find this in a rifle I assumed to be up to standard is a bit of a shock. It does underscore the value of, if you want to go competing, at least once, coat the forend interior with white powder (spray with WD 40 and then dust with chalk, flour, glue filler powder etc) and make a contact test with a gentle reassembly. I've done this with two rifles now and discovered not slight but major items that are not set up the way they should. A third rifle, also a No1 Mk3, is not shooting to standard either and a chalk test revealed all was well except for the top of one recoil lug was just contacting the forend wood and holding the receiver high when reassembling, this meant that the receiver was properly mounted down one side but completely off the wood down the right side.

I get it now when people would turn their rifles into Fultons or PH and ask for them to be looked over, there are a lot of subtle items that are important to accuracy that are either made out of whack or accumulate out of whackedness over time.
I now have a whole new barrel of constructive tweaking to do on a rainy day, good. The great conclusion is that poor accuracy does in fact usually have probable causes, and that means they can be carefully put right.

I guess I'm just mentioning this to encourage folks to take a deeper look into their rifle if its not shooting within the Enfield standard range of accuracy, there could easily be reasons for it.

in the meantime
A - no, I'm not giving my rifle away as a piece of junk, sorry, lol
and
B - any suggestions how I correct the forend droop, perhaps with steaming? I've not done that before, how does one set up a steaming rig?

thanks

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