Enfield Sniper

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Originally Posted by tower06

My apologies for the mistake. It sounded like it was thought I was making a replica sniper. I'm actually trying to restore/refurb (whatever term you like) to close to original condition as possible.

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I was wondering about that too when you said it was a No4(T), but guessed you had one with the pads removed, hence my last post.

To Luckydog, with refitted pads you have some hope of getting a functional rifle. It will not be exactly collimated of course, but as close as one can get without replicating the original manufacturing process.

It would be interesting to know if the Israelis for example machined the pads after fitting to the rifle. Probably they did not, given the finished Israeli pads that turn up. Presumably also they were able to achieve a satisfactory result as they are usually quite practical about their weapons, aren't they?

I dont believe there is any misunderstanding :

You have a 4T without pads
You have pads
You want to fit the pads to the 4T without pads.

The information from Peter & others is just a warning that you do not just screw the pads on and they fit and the scope will collimate.

One additional note here: If you are using a more "modern" scope which does not show cross hair movement when zeroing, you may not realize that your optics are far from being optically centered when you sight the rifle in. If its far off center you may:
Run out of travel when shooting at long range
Run out of windage adjustment under certain conditions
Have imprecise or "sticky" adjustments
Reduced clarity or other optical aberrations like "fish eye" on one side
Very slighty reduced light gathering quality
Plus some other dramas that don't come to mind immediately!

Yah, it may work OK for giggles, but its not likely to be RIGHT!

This doesn't address the issues concerning pad parallelism or other mechanical fitment dramas, BTW!

On the Israeli No4T's, due to the small (?) quantity that they produced, then I should assume that they didn't production-line the process but did it on an individual rifle basis as did Enfield when they started. Indeed, as did Hollands to start with until they realised that to make ANY progress, they'd have to get to grips and start afresh with known product (from BSA). The rest is history. Even Long Branch didn't get it right until H&H went there and put them right about production lining the whole process. The trouble there was that scope production couldn't keep up with the 'new' speeded up process..

Where were we...............? Ah yes, What I'm going to do in the next few weeks is to tell how you can do a reasonably good and accurate home No4T conversion given that you've got a reasonable set of pads, a bit of nouse, half a brain, a repro bracket and a telescope. I can't comment on the commercial telescopes that have been mentioned except to say that whether it's a moving wire (No32) telescope or a moving image telescope, the optical principles will be the same.

This is for Tower06............ If you already have a 'No4T' rifle, stripped of its pads, then you face a real uphill struggle because the chances of finding a set of pads is pretty remote. And a set that exactly match your threaded holes in the body are...., well...., even pretty more remote to say the very least. BUT there is a way and the engineers among you will soon see where I'm going.

What you need to do Tower (and anyone else out there in difficult land) is to get a set of pads made up to size WITHOUT THE SCREW HOLES. You then soft solder and cramp the front pad to the side of the body (or cramp it tightly to the body across the centre hole). You get a concentric centre punch ground to the EXACT core diameter of the 4BA screw holes in the body. Then, supporting the pad, gently but firmly centre punch through the threaded hole into the pad. Remove the pad and using a 4BA clearance drill, drill through the pad where you have marked the holes.

That's a very simple method of reverse engineering

As for the rear pad then using measurements taken from the rifle, mark out where the large 1/4BSF hole will be and bore this out with a 1/4" drill. There's a bit of leeway here..... Now, using this hole, bolt the pad to the body side.

Here is the problem now because you cannot get the nice new specially made centre punch into the hole to mark the pad. But what you CAN do is to machine the threaded portion of a 4BA screw to a concentric point. NOW, put a engineers marking blue onto the sharp point of the screw and carefully insert it into the threaded hole fron the INSIDE of the body until it just touches and therefore marks the exact centre of the required screw hole. Now do the same to the second screw hole.

Now drill through and countersink the outside. I know that this works because a batch of stripped L42 barrelled actions were released into the UK gun trade in the early 80's and I oversaw a friend of mine doing it. I realise that we had a large machine shop and he was another long time Armourer, but he did it.

There. Now Tower06, you are at the same start point as those who are about to embark on a damned good, reasonable accurate replica No4 sniper (let's not cal the replicas No4T's but No4 snipers.....)

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Originally Posted by Peter Laidler

Where were we...............? Ah yes, What I'm going to do in the next few weeks is to tell how you can do a reasonably good and accurate home No4T conversion given that you've got a reasonable set of pads, a bit of nouse, half a brain, a repro bracket and a telescope. .

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:)A definition link for the non-British types (its down the page a bit):

Nous Definition | Definition of Nous at Dictionary.com

If starting this clone project with a standard No4 how concerned should I be about the pad mount area on the receiver being parallel with the bore center line.

Getting the pads square and parallel does not guarantee that the repro scope mount well be. My luck I'll get the pads right and the scope mount well be cattywumpous.

Don't worry about that mad crate breaker. You'll be fine if you follow the instructions as I cover this. Part 1 has been done and will be up soon and I'm into part 2. I also cover JMoores comments about using modern moving image scope as opposed to the No32 type moving wire type scopes

Are you ready for the long haul

Looks like this is going to become a very valuable thread. I'll watch intently.

I can't thank you enough Peter. I've had these bits for almost a year and want to get on with this project.