Tale of an 1899 LEC (Lee Enfield Carbine) refurbishing. (Lots of pics!)
Hi everyone,
Haven't been posting in a while, life has kept me busy for the past year or so. Still, I have finally been able to spend some time on this LEC belonging to a fellow named Gary.
He trusted me with an interesting project; refurbishing a sporterized LEC.
This carbine came to me with a cut forend, no handguard, but Gary did find the middle band and the nose cap, with screws.
And, a very kind man named William agreed to lend me his complete LEC so I could use it as a guide. What a gentleman!
I started this job with a No1Mk3* forend; the action is very similar between the LEC and No1Mk3, so that was a really nice shortcut. I needed to plug a few wholes, and hide the cut-off sections in which the rear handguard retaining clip and rear sight guard would have been found on the No1Mk3.
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Then, I needed to work on the overall length, shape and thickness of the forend. Again, having a model to compare, and on which I could measure different sections, was very helpful. I mostly used a band sander for the rough, then rasps, files etc. for fine work. I was surprised to see how much material I had to remove (the shop was covered with wood dust...)
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I cut the forend to length, then I carved the front tip and drilled the screw hole so that the nose cap could fit:
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Then, I had to fabricate the handguard. I sourced a chunk of walnut at a local fine wood store (great placewith tons of super fancy exotic wood, etc). I found a leftover chunk that I cut with a table saw, to get a piece roughly the right length, width and height. I used a router to carve the barrel chanel, then used tha band sander to shape the exterior side.
Here's a picture of the leftover of the original wood chunk (left), a spare length cut to size, and the router'ed and sanded part before fine work.
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The fine work involved carving the front and rear portions of the handguard. This took time, expecially the front because it needs a tight fit in the nose cap, and there's not much wood keeping the handguard stable up front.
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The rear has a funny shape which is still rough in this picture:
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Here is the current status of the project. The handguard fits, with the nose cap and middle band. Fine sanding is next, and then linseed oil... oh and I need to work on the butt stock too. The original is still good and won't require much.
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I hope you enjoyed seeing this progress report. Cheers!
Lou
