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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[Son]

Quick suggestion... if the foreend is actually loose between the bottomof the receiver and the trigger guard at the rear above the trigger,... then the foreend is already undersize and no amount of work will fix this without adding to the wood. First thing I would do is give the foreend several very liberal coats of BLO over a period of a week or two. It may have shrunk, and occasionally can be fixed by doing this.... certainly don't go doing anything else until you have tried it... there is still a hope it's right.

One thing you will learn the hard way... you can follow the techniques by the letter, achieving all the set areas of contact and pressure and at the end of the day (more likely several days!) , it can still shoot no better than 4"... fully float the same rifle and it might shoot 2". They can be very pedantic....

Here's a pic of factory bedding at it's best.....Attachment 32023Attachment 32022

[tbonesmith]

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?

As it turns out I've been doing a bit of steaming timbers of late myself, and what do you know I took some photo's!
So you make a box of the appropriate size for your pieces of wood, make it 5 sided, then you connect a steam source, I used a wall paper remover, which is like a boiler with a hose coming off it.
Put you timber/s in on cleats which just keep the timber off the bottom so they don't get soaked with liquid condensation put a towel over the end and turn it on.
I needed a really tight bend in some 1/2"*1/2" mahogany and it took 3 hours of steaming.

Once your timber is suitably subtle (the longer you leave it the more pliable it becomes), you pull it out, and clamp it to the shape you want it to form, and maybe go a bit further to allow for some springback (a few degrees), then leave it clamped in situ on the jig for a few days to a week and then pull the clamps and it should hold the formed shape pretty well for ever (the springback will be immediate on clamp removal). It may creep a little over time but it shouldn't much if you leave it in the clamps long enough.
Here are the pics!

For what it's worth I would give you odds on, that you would completely ruin any SMLE forend that you steamed in order to bend. I could well be wrong, but I would anticipate unpredictable warping of the timber through the grain, as the section of timber is so uneven ie thick here, thin there, lightening cuts, holes etc grain often at 45^0 through the section.
Good luck though!

[jss]

Ditto with my Fultons No1 MkIII* on the first few items at the wrist, trigger guard and receiver areas. How many thousands of an inch can BLO swell the grain (across and along) and increase the dimensions of a dried out forend in this area I wonder, as I imagine it would be better to patch the woodwork without the presence of linseed oil.
The other thing that springs to mind is that if it's varnished on the outside then is it wise to oil it on the inside only or might this cause distortion.
Is there any method of packing in this area that would not draw down the wrath of the serious collectors here?. I'm not so interested in the accuracy but the possible damage to an ancient dried out and ill fitting forend from the recoil forces. Surely it's better to pack with a bit of modern bedding rather than run the risk of ruining the matching forend!.

[RJW NZ]

'unpredictable warping of the timber through the grain.'

... thanks for all the tips tbonesmith, and re the quote above, I understand just what you're saying and thats a scary and relevant comment that I'm going to think seriously about before doing anything. I wonder if we have anyone else on the forum who has dealt with a warped forend?

Love your steam box, thats a wow construction if I ever saw one, what do you mostly use it for?

[tbonesmith]

You could clamp it back straight (or slightly past it) without steaming it. Set it up on a jig or bench and clamp it far as you dare without breaking anything, then a day or 2 later tighten the clamps a bit more, and more in a couple more days etc until its just past where you want it then leave it for as long as possible. Might work, as the bend you've got is on a short radius being close to the end of the forend. Obviously it wouldn't work over a long radius as the wood would just bend in it's normal "flexural range" and not actually take a set, if you know what I mean.

And I've been using it in the building of this little guy:
And don't worry there will be some further fitting of those whales before they're glued on.

[Peter Laidler]

I always remember the wise old John Sookey from Jouster saying once that there were two kinds of wood. Wood that has warped and wood that hasn't warped........, yet!

You'd be a braver man than me to steam a fore-end 'straight' TBone or RJ. I've seen No4's and 5's where they'd be warped in the vertical AND horizontal plane. We had a good example in our drawer of horrors for visitors to see that was warped in the V and H plane AND visibly twisted in a rotary plane!

[smellie]

When I lived out on the East Coast, on Fogo Island, I once saw an interesting Tamarack lath.

The man who showed it to me had TIED IT IN A KNOT.

Tamarack, in that part of the world, is called "Juniper" for some reason or other. The Americans call it "Hackmatack". It is very hard, very difficult to work with, very pretty IF you can saw planks from it. It makes lovely boats although it is rarely used for that: too hard to work with. More common is a "Juniper" keel or ribbing.

The Tamarack lath had been STEAMED for a day in a piece of Culvert-pipe which had been sealed at the far end, the near end being balanced atop a steel barrel in which the fire for the shop was burning. The wood to be bent was a foot or so away from the fire-barrel and extended along inside the Culvert. Water tossed into the corrugated near end of the Culvert was heated by the fire below and turned to steam which entered the wood, permitting it to be bent. This is pretty much standard procedure for bending ribs for small fishing-boats.

So the lath was steamed and removed from the steamer, tied into a knot and nailed to the wall of the shop. It was taken down the following day, after it had had time to cool and dry.

So the sequence here was
Steam
Flex and Clamp
Cool and Dry

I would follow this with a quantity of boiled oil to stabilise the wood.

If you don't want to try that, there is always Cork sheeting laminated in with BLO.

Me? I know it's barbaric, but I repair my bedding with Acra-Glas Gel. I think the old-timers would have used it if they had had it. But they did not, so they did the best they could with what they had. Nice thing about Aca-Glas is that you can remove it later if you want to: treat it with ACETONE and it turns to powder, just as any other fibreglass resin.

Hope this helps one way or another.

That is one BEAUTIFUL rifle.
.

[tbonesmith]

treat it with ACETONE and it turns to powder, just as any other fibreglass resin.

That's some weird resin if acetone turns it to powder. I would not recommend anyone to rely on this. Polyester, vinylester and epoxy resins are typically impossible to dissolve in their hardened states.

[Beerhunter]

Being the proud owner of exactly that model of wallpaper steamer, I now know how i shall construct the prod for my crossbow project. The other main part, an Ash tree for the stock, was dropped last week.