MKIII* Lithgow General Questions

englishman, cheers for the comparison in the smoking techniques. I'll have to shop around and see what I can get out in the bush here :D.

Bindi, yeah silly me I only found out about that perhaps a few hours after I started this process, hence I am asking before going any further.

CINDERS, I have heard of smoking the sights to reduce glare, but never knew what to use, cheers.

smleaddict, you might have just hit the nail on the head: The primer protrusion happened when using these 150gr 'minimum' down-loads (I made them up with the lowest suggested amount of AR2209 powder from the ADI reloaders books), for the fact that with these old guns I want to make sure they won't blow up, so I keep the hot loads well away from them. Only problem is that I thought the phenomenon where the cases grab the chamber and do not butt into the bolt was supposed to happen, hence you don't polish the inside of your chambers and make them slippery. I always thought that the bolt was only meant to take a small part of the force from being discharged as the case bit into the chamber walls rather than slide back. Maybe this just doesn't apply to LE's.

Thanks everyone, this is really helpful stuff.

Skew trigger guard: twisted/not flat? From the photo it seems to bottom out on one side and sits proud on the other.

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I have examined the guard closely, but I don't have the experience or the keen eyes to spot if it is the case.

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Here we have our mixed brass. I really am thinking it is these downloads since I used this stuff in a few different rifles and got the same result, some of this brass may be from my No4 but its all the same.

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And trigger guard. Looks pretty straight to me. If it is skewed then it would be in the recess of the wood correct?

From the photos the trigger guard looks OK. Lay it on a flat surface to see if there isn't a gap somewhere. If there isn't, fine.

If the trigger guard isn't seated evenly in the wood something in the fore end isn't right. Without handling the rifle I can't say more. If seats evenly no problem.

If all are as they should be it's the photo causing the questions.

Yeah the trigger guard recess could by all means be bearing unevenly as I have been poking around in there trying to make sure there are no odd contacts acting side to side to side on it. Possible I've nicked something.

Yup, from the photos of your cases, I would say they are low pressure and wouldn't worry about the primers backing out. My guess is if you'd bump up your loads in half-grain increments, you'd gradually see those primers stay in their pockets. If you're happy with that loads performance, I say fire away. The loads for my Metford all look like that, and its only a good load for 50 yards, but its cheap and fun.

Sounds good to me smle. I guess I don't have to radically headspace all my rifles after all. Thanks for that.

Can you get your hands on a set of go/no go gauges? They would be the definitive indication of a serviceable headspace.

Your cases and primers show a low pressure load, as others have stated. It will not hurt anything IMHO.

I don't have a set laying around but I want to to get them.