I tried putting a No4 midband on a No5. Does quite fit right? Been told there's a difference. Can anybody tell me what it is? Ron
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I tried putting a No4 midband on a No5. Does quite fit right? Been told there's a difference. Can anybody tell me what it is? Ron
The No.5 band is sort of "squared off" instead of oval like the No.4 band if you can understand what I'm saying. The contour is completely different. I have a half dozen or so if in need.
We used to encounter this very often. The shape is slightly different but so far as I remember, the length is the same or so close as to make no difference. If a band was tight on a No4 say, we'd just relieve the wood slightly. Same as on a No5. If it was loose then we'd wait until it'd fit onto a slightly larger dimentionally fore-end. Sometimes it just meant fitting a different handguard sometimes not but I don't think I/we ever resorted to packing the gap with emery cloth or cardboard but I suppose we could have done. The problem with using these methods was that unless the packing was plastic based, or strictly non absorbent, then we knew it'd be back within a few months absoutely minging with rust. And you knew whose work it was because the rifles were all marked with the Base or Field workshop marks and dates!
Not so happy days!
When stuck with a situation described by Peter above, and not having hundreds of bands to sort through, I've used the same method as with loose-fitting butt stock: a strip of brown paper soaked with and glued in place by epoxy resin; it has worked well. I think it's also pretty stable in terms of shrinking / swelling.
Question, why were the two bands made different? Is it again simply a matter of reducing cost / speed of manufacture?
Lou
Iam a packrat, no doubt about it! I had a loose band situation using an original front band with loose fit. I dug into my "cache" and found a few venetian blind strips, plastic wood grained no less and after cutting to size I no longer had a loose front carbine band!
Ron I had the same problem and got mine from Brian, the machined front bands don't seem to fit with out woodwork, the non machinced front band will bend but still doesn't look the same when compared to the No 5 proper band.
Myles