my long lee winter project

got me a winter project this weekend; a 1901 long lee enfield I*

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...leesmall-1.jpg

thought it would be a good addition to my IMA Lee Metford
https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...10/twins-1.jpg

there's a lot of things wrong with her;
- missing swivels
- wrong bolt
- damaged and bondo-d stock
- missing volleysight pointer
- and then some

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...uttsmall-1.jpg

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...angsmall-1.jpg

what kind of wood is this? oak?
anyone got parts?

check ebay, right now they have quite a few complete volley sight sets, im going to get a 1901 MLE i a few weeks, metfords MLE's and early smle mkIII's are by far my favorite.

Hm, makes you wonder what colour they were going to paint it.

Nothing for it, but to degrease that stock and soak/steam the ess aitch one tee out of it and probably most of that bondo stuff will just fall out.

After all the ancients used to split rock with wooden wedges made wet...

The tack marks around the wrist of the butt suggest it was once in the care of some swarthy folk east of Eden.

Hi everyone,

I'm new to this forum but have spent the last few days absorbing loads of info from the many posts on here. Look forward to seeing the after photo's of your winter project. Good luck.

After seeing your photo's I thought I would share some pic's of my own Lee Enfield 1* which came to me by chance around 17 years ago. Unfortunately I didn't take any photo's of it when I got it but it was painted entirely in gloss black paint so you can imagine the mess it was in. Anyway, to cut a long story short, after many hours with a scraper and many coats of paint stripper, I finally got rid of almost all the paint. Used some super fine steel wool to get rid of the fury bits and a couple of coats of oil later the result is not perfect but not too bad either. I was reluctant to go too far with the metal work so have basically left it how I found it under the paint.

Just need a correct bolt type, rear volley sight, correct magazine and front sling swivel to get her looking good. Any ideas on where I might find these would also be greatly appreciated.

Cheers
Gary

Hi Gary and welcome to milsurps. Looks to me like your rifle is one of the "shortened range pattern" rifle club jobs from pre WW2. Basically, when the rules were changed to adopt the MkIII SMLE for civilian competition, the Lithgow Smal Arms Factory, as well as several gunsmiths at the time, proceded to shorten the Long Lee rifles already in use by club members to comply. These have become collectable in themselves, and as such I congratulate you on the job done to clean it up- It looks great.
Just looking at the way the barrel was done at the muzzle, with regards to the front sight- I'd be interested in finding out what (if any) markings are on it.
There's a few blokes here who know more about these than me, hopefully someone will come along and add to this, but I think your rifle is probably correct to how it was set up, needing the front swivel of course.

I really enjoy the restoration stories... keep us posted on yours, hopmanhenk...

Cheers,
Brad.

Also needs the rear range sight not volley sight.( Gary in AUS. )

Thanks to Son and Bindi2 for the feedback. The wealth of knowledge on here is amazing and certainly gives those of us with limited knowledge a great place to learn a little more. As for the barrel markings, it's a BSA barrel and is marked "Motty Special". I would be keen to know what type of range sight should be fitted if anyone can help out in that department.

Cheers
Gary

lol, I'm pretty sure there's a range sight called a Motty Special, you may have a rifle that was one of his target rifle creations and have various accurizing tuning done to it, very interesting ...

Gary, have a look at this old thread from Gunboards. Might give you a few clues. SwedeM63 is the authority on early range rifles and aperture sights. If it's ok with you, I might drop him a line and see if he'll check out your rifle's details.

Motty barrel question

BSA made sights that fitted. can not remember the number off hand but Swede will be the one for that info.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Son

Gary, have a look at this old thread from Gunboards. Might give you a few clues. SwedeM63 is the authority on early range rifles and aperture sights. If it's ok with you, I might drop him a line and see if he'll check out your rifle's details.

Motty barrel question

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That would be much appreciated.

Wow, thats a great bit of history and a great find, well done.
Does someone has a few pictures of the Motty Special sight I could post on enfield resource.com?

Gary in Aus- here's the reply I got from Swede regards your rifle. Seems it's a nice piece of history all right...

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Hi Brad, you are spot on in your reply. Harry Motton had a strong connection with BSA rifles generally since prior to the adoption of the short rifle in about 1933 most rifles sold to civilians for target shooting were English Long Lee's.

Many rifle owners opted to change over to the "club pattern" by either shortening the barrel (and wood work) if it was a good accurate job as it was. If the barrel needed changing they then considered fitting the standard new H barrel for the conversion. I didn't check the post to see how the conversion was done. If the barrel and wood was shortened, the best jobs re-profiled to refit the nose cap. The cheaper jobs just cut and shut the foreend and left a vertical line visible where it was pegged together (saving the work of re-profling the wood for the nosecap)

The rifle in the post would would likely have originally had a Motty sight fitted on the four hole BSA patent 1909 plate which the owner retained if it was a good unit. Otherwise a range of other sights may have been added at the same time as the conversion. A really good period piece would be that site, but the other common sight was the 1909 BSA "McCubbin" model 9 sight on the same BSA plate. The latter sight was more expensive than the Motty.

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I don't have a pic of a Motty sight, but I do have one of the BSA side plate he mentioned as well as the No9 sight too (bit small, maybe someone will have a better pic?)

Thanks for following that up for me Son. I guess I now have the difficult task of tracking down a sight! Anyone point me in the right direction???? Does anyone have a picture of a Motty sight? I would like to get the rifle looking as correct as possible and I suppose tracking down elusive parts is half the fun! On a side note, I took it out for a shot the other day and after 3 initial sighting shots, put 3 shots into a 1 and half inch group at 50 yards using my sleeping bag as a rest. Can't wait to have a go over a bench on the range.

Cheers
Gary