SMLE Rear sight question

Hey guys,

Bit of a novice question here............

I recently bought a '41 lithgow that has had a heavy barrel installed on it. (shame cause its all matching stock and all apart fromt the barrel.) Its has no standard rear sight on the barrel and has had a Central no 4 range sight added on the receiver . I bought it cause it was cheap and needed someone who'd love it to take it home (mistreated by previous owner) not for the H barrel or the range sight.

So, what are my options as far as getting a standard rear sight back on this thing?
And if it is possible...whats the process?
I'd love to get her looking original.

I'm very inexperienced when it comes to stripping down the no 1. My other 2 are pristine so ive never wanted to pull them apart. I just shoot and clean them. This is the first one i've stripped down to bare bits and peices so i'm still learning how all the works.

Paul

A standard rearsight bed can be made to fit, but it does require some metalwork and precision fitting: briefly, you have to cut/split the rearsight base and enlarge it to fit the wider-diameter H barrel. You then have to make a pin hole or braze the base onto the barrel - taking care to ensure it is correctly located.

An alternative might be to find a gunsmith to take off the H barrel and fit a standard one. You'd then have to pack out the barrel channel in the places where it was relieved for the H barrel.

Simplest solution of all would be to buy another (standard) rifle for military shooting, and save your H rifle for target shooting...

I watched my old boss, W)2 'Jock' Annandale at Ngaruawahi fit up a standard backsight to a heavy barrelled No1 rifle and he did pretty well as suggested by Thunderbox but he (Jock.....) split the base at the bottom and dollied it open using the H barrel as a sort of former (In fact, I think he used a bit of bar turned to the H barrel taper on the lathe next to my workbench because I watched him doing it while I was scrapping some useless L2A1's......). When the backsight bed was sort of roughly to shape he tacked the gap with a bit of plate and reamed it the final few .000"s to the exact taper and fit. Then the tacked on plate was unpicked and the bed which didn't quite encircle the barrel was soft soldered in place.

Being 'Jock' and the boss, I wouldn't imagine that it ever came loose. Mind you, he was a MasterM, a master craftsman andwe had a good workshop and Ray Hurley had a good tool store so it did make life easy

It would be a lot simpler to obtain one that has been reamed out for the heavy barrel, they are out ther and available.
Or you could have your local armourer do it for you.

Thanks fellas.

Looks like she'll stay a range rifle.

Go with muffet on this one. But then what is wrong with a range rifle even if it dose not have the full wood if it dose then leave it as is

Get a standard rear sight assembly and find a competant gunsmith to ream/turn the base out - Lithgow must have produced them for their H barreled rifles.

Can we assume from that Rowdy that there is sufficient internal meat within the standard backsight bed to alllow it to be reamed oversize to H barrel size?

Not so easy to machine out without the correct reamer and if you pick one up already reamed it may not necessarily fit your barrel well. Nothing worse than wasting your money on an item that may not fit.

Thunderbox's method is easy and cheap.

Ditto on using a stock sight base, I reamed one out with a dremel no problems, there's plenty of metal. Another choice could be to cut the tube part away and just using the base, plenty of earlier Enfields show up this way as well as the ocassional H barrel. The sight base is held to the barrel with short screws.
How about a picture of your rifles, always appreciated here? Range rifles are increasingly collected and holding their value, you made a good find.

There's no skilled gun smiths anywhere near here so really theres nothing i can do about it. So I'll just leave her as is.
It's a nice rifle, (now) and i'm happy with it. Just thought i'd suss out what was involved.
Thanks everyone for your advice.

http://s1135.photobucket.com/albums/...rrent=l411.jpg

Thats her after i removed a thick layer of black crap off every part. I didn't take any before shots unfortunatly. Picture a rusty look black rifle and thats what it was. Couldnt even cycle the bolt on it when i got it because there was so much junk in the receiver. The barrel is minty and shines luckily.

Thanks to Demo i got the missing king screw for it, just need a new extractor spring now and she'll be right for a shoot.
Anyone got one they wanna sell?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Peter Laidler

Can we assume from that Rowdy that there is sufficient internal meat within the standard backsight bed to alllow it to be reamed oversize to H barrel size?

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Yes peter, they usually ream out nicely.