No. 5's really are a pain.

Picked up another No. 5 as part of the amnesty handback, looked ok so decided to save it.
After sorting out the paperwork, I thought I'd better check it over, bit of surface rust, paperthin front barrel band and a shot out barrel.

No worries, had a good barrel in the box...........and that's where the fun started.
Both the original barrel and donor barrel were BSA, a '44 and a '45 date stamp, but one barrel was the standard flash eliminator fit, the donor barrel was fitted with a sleeve.......mumble mumble.

Now I remember removing that sleeved barrel, that rifle was original.....so what was with the sleeve. The new rifle had no sleeve...........also all original. I thought the sleeved flash hiders were an after market thing as I had only ever read about them on US forums.

After a bit of swearing to get the sleeve off, the donor barrel was fitted and all's right with the world again.Attachment 87365Attachment 87366Attachment 87367Attachment 87368Attachment 87369

To be honest Muffer, I've removed a fair few No5 barrels and flash eliminators but never seen a sleeved F/E. We had a seating set to support the F/E and a short stumpy steel nickel ended bar that went down onto the muzzle. So if the sleeve remained in the F/E, we wouldn't have noticed. Operate the hydraulic lever and the barrel would drop down and off. Unless anyone has an official explanation I'm minded to suggest that the barrel was sleeved oversize in order to utilise a number of otherwise defective flash eliminators. But in any case, this would only have been permitted for approval after due consideration by the SACommittee. If over bored F/E/s were issued as replacement parts we'd have been informed as an EMER amendment. But we weren't!