Iron sights

Hi,

Can anyone tell me if the front and rear iron sights on the Lithgow 1919 MKIII* can be removed and if they can how is it done?

Cheers.

The front sight is held on by friction fit over a separate "key" piece. The rearsight is secured by a cross-pin through the top of the barrel. Both can be removed with some difficulty - but at considerable risk of damaging the components if you have to resort to blow-torch and hammer to get them to move! If you have not done a lot of work on Enfields, then it is generally advisable to leave these items alone.

Thanks for that. I'm not touching my sights but a guy I'm buyings some parts off has a few and I was curious how they come off :thup:

Sights or sight bases? The sights themselves aren't much trouble to remove, but as noted above by Thunderbox, the bases really shouldn't be removed except in direst need.

:thup::thup::thup: cheers.

The barrels came as a complete assembly, complete with sights if I recall correctly. We had a load but the only rifles we had from the late 60's onwards were the EY's and Cadet Forces and to be honest, they didn't warrant barrel changes.

Didn't the foresight block also have a small cross pin that secured the block band foresight to the key that sat in a shallow keyway. This prevented the block moving under recoil forces

The foresight does have a very fine cross pin, and when you remove that, the block will move forward on the key with some gentle tapping with a hammer and a protective block.
The rear sight base has has a fine cross pin and also a little screw that locates the sight at the back of the base, under the ramp. When you remove these 2, the rear base can often be driven forward, but are also often too tight to be driven fwd without risk of damage, so I find that if you vice the barrel( with protection, blah, blah) then twist the base on the barrel with some good parallel jaws wrench, or even a very good shifter, it will free it up so you can drive it off fwd.
A bit of heat can be helpful.

The South African SMLE barrel that I had installed on the '08 a couple years ago came out of the wrapper with front and rear sight bases installed---but only bases.
Which makes sense, really---otherwise, how would one know which front post height was needed?
-----krinko