Considering some version of lapping a Lee Enfield barrel?

[Surpmil]

That "velocity" equivalence caper is, apparently true. Bear in mind, that smokeless powder and jacketed bullets first entered British service in 1889. It was closely modeled on the German bullet for the Commission 88 cartridge.. Heavy and blunt-nosed. It all went out the window only a few years later when the crafty Germans introduced a much lighter, SPITZER bullet at a significantly higher muzzle velocity. The first serious adopter of this was the USA; .30-03 to .30-06.Britain tinkered with a "light" pointy bullet of approximately 150 grains. The catch was not accuracy or effectiveness, but getting it to feed reliably. The existing magazines were designed around a longer, differently-shaped bullet. Note the rapid progression through various marks of magazine before WW1. Eventually, somebody got it right with the Mk V11. A bullet of the same length as the old torpedo, but lighter at 174 gn. The same overall cartridge length was retained. The way most machine guns of the era worked is by dragging the rounds backward out of the belt, (Maxim) or "strip" (Hotchkiss) .

The .303 Mk V11 certainly proved itself as a rifle and machine-gun cartridge "One round to feed them all".

Actually it was the crafty French who first introduced the pointed bullet if I'm not mistaken.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spitzer_(bullet)

---------- Post added at 04:15 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:07 PM ----------

Thanks for the response Bruce. I have some general knowledge of the evolution in military bullets from about the time of the Minie ball design, but not as specific as you recounted.

My last comment was towards the suggestion that barrels may have been lapped in an attempt to regain some velocity lost due to barrel lengths decreasing rather than for some other reason i.e. a finding that it would reduce barrel fouling. I would assume that trials before production began would have supported that additional expense and time to do that, for whatever reason.

As to the possibility that lapping a barrel results in significantly increasing muzzle velocity, my experiences with 5.56 and 7.62 barrels being cut down looking for a uniform accuracy node (and my reading over the years) suggests that in a caliber with the expansion ratio of .303 British, you would see a velocity loss of somewhere around 20 - 23 fps for each 1" reduction in barrel length. I am certain that at some point in the past, multiple curious people have tested that with Lee Enfield barrels by cutting them down while chronographing the results.

Black powder would probably show some different results regarding how much velocity was lost per inch of barrel; probably a greater velocity loss per inch of barrel. But in either case, I can't see any significant recovery of velocity by way of lapping barrels after the drilling, reaming, and rifling is complete. I suppose it could be possible, but I spent a day carefully lapping my Long Branch rifle chosen for competition use in hopes of wringing every bit of grouping ability I could out of it, as well as preparing it for use with cast bullets in CBA military benchrest matches. I didn't see any significant improvement as far as chronograph results.

It is a fine barrel for cast bullet shooting in that I don't get any leading in the barrel unless I do something wrong, but it is quite possible that has little to do with the effort I spent casting lead laps to lap the barrel from end to end to be as uniform as possible. At the same time I also had custom bullet moulds cut to fit the ball seate/leade as tightly as possible to maximize obduration of the bore as quickly as possible. That was accompanied by lead alloy selection and heat treating the bullets after casting to best match the pressures of the loads being used. Other than if I had started out with a fugly bore on the rifle, a custom mould and some applied casting science probably had more to do with the results than all that time I spent lapping the bore.

I remain curious as to how manufacturers, especially Long Branch, made the barrels. If they started out with blanks of near finished length and then drilled, reamed, and rifled and when and how they did all the profiling and threading to end up with a barrel that could be screwed on to the actions properly indexed during times of wartime manufacturing. I'm not a collector or historian, but I wonder how many rifles every single day left armories like Long Branch in WWII or BSA or somebody else in WWI. Dozens per hour, certainly. If they lapped them prior to applying the finish and attaching them to the receiver, that would be an additional cost in labor, time, and expense. Minimizing those costs is reflected in the simple sight the Savage manufactured No. 4s left the factory with.

The clues are probably here:

Only 15 comments but here's two of them! No wonder Inglis was "losing" a HP a week! A rifle or a Sten would have been even more of a job to get past the gates.

My Grandmother worked here in WW2. She is 98 this year, and still telling stories about the past. She actually had a Sten and under her floor but gave them over to the RCMP during a grace period when they became restricted.

I was lucky to get hold of a No.4 Mk.1 1942 in mint condition 20 years ago.The owner passed on and his grandson inherited it but wasnt interested in the rifle so i grabbed it!Its a fantastic rifle and seeing a documentary like this showing me where she was "born" is really something special!Thanks!

[Eaglelord17]

Actually it was the crafty French who first introduced the pointed bullet if I'm not mistaken.

Lead the way in rifle advancements, resulted in designs that were obsolete within a few short years. The 1886 Lebel, with its 8x50r cartridge would proceed to hinder French arms development for the next 40 years.