Lee Enfield Aluminum stock

Hi, I'm a long time lurker on these forums but frequent many others. I have been in some discussions on the Canadiangunnutz.com website about some pictures a friend sent me of an Aluminum stocked smle rifle.

One other board member who I believe also posts here has one as well. Apparently the rifles were a trial rifle that made it's way into Canada and went walking soon after. Any other info on this would be much appreciated.

The rifle also sports a modified Ross buttstock.

here is the info gathered this far from a member who has one identical to the one I will post.

"Story was that it was sent to Canada in 1945 for evaluation and 'borrowed' in 1946, spent many years on a farm.

Supposedly, there were 6 of them made.

There also were 12 Ross Mark III butts reworked to fit the SMLE."

"There were at least 2 types of aluminum stocks, one that was aluminum sheeting, the other a composite of aluminum and woodwork. Mine is the latter."

"The rifle has a Suncorite finish, badly mucked-about and chipped and it has a recycled Ross Mark III butt.

Finish on thee aluminum fore-end is some yellow material (zinc chromate, from the look) with a coat of Army Brown paint over top of that. It's original for sure."


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I'm no expert on the Lee Enfield rifles and I'm probably wrong but it doesn't appear correct to me. I have heard about Aluminium stocked No.4 rifles for trials but not the SMLE, it would seem a bit pointless seeing as the SMLE was the older rifle and the No.4 was the current production rifle. Also, if this was a trial for service use, it wouldn't have had commercial proof marks (Unless there not proof marks) and I'm pretty sure it would have been fully stocked with a forsight protector with bayonet boss. I'm afraid I think this may have been a commercial venture or a small scale run by a arms firm.

Just my opinion of course so I could be completely wrong.

Guess what........ I'm with BP here. I'm not a betting man but to be really, truly honest and frank, I'd say that that aluminium stock was someones idea of fixing up his rifle when he broke the original! It just doesn't look like something that would have been submitted for trials to replace the real McCoy. Being honest again, I'd say that it was made by a little boy, probably about 8 or 9, who wanted to play with an old busted rifle that he found in his grandpa's shed.

I could be wrong of course and others might disagree with my theory.........

The screws appear to be commercial screws as well, not parked or blued. Looks like the material you would find in a hardware store.

looks home made.

Maybe someone used a sportered wooden stock as the pattern for an alloy casting? If so, maybe there is some evidence left behind - e.g. is there any mark on the underside of the forend where the rear sight protector nut would have been?

The thing is this isn't the only one, there is another on exactly like this a few provinces over, it seems strange that they are both a rebarrel done in 1945 when most of the smle run was stopped in 1943. Both rifles have the modified Ross buttstock, very close serial numbers etc.

I really have no idea really what this oddity is but I thought it was an interesting piece non the less.

---------- Post added at 04:43 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:43 PM ----------

I also believe the rubber hand guards are a bubba item.

This rifle is no bubba- Smellie has one.
(no guards on his.)

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Originally Posted by twosteam

This rifle is no bubba- Smellie has one.
(no guards on his.)

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Thanks for posting, I was just going to put up the video and you beat me to it.

Neal

---------- Post added at 05:16 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:11 PM ----------

I am looking at a thread I posted on another forum and someone from Australia thinks it is aftermarket and is looking for some info, will keep all posted.

Yes, I have had this rifle over 20 years. It appeared as a trade-in at a shop I was working at, swapped for 3 boxes of .243 ammo. I paid for it with repair work, $38 deducted from what I made refurbing an entire rack of Stevens 820s and almost 100 1886 Winchesters.

The aluminum forestock part is a very good-quality casting; it wasn't done in anyone's basement or garage. Seriously, I do not think we can blame these rifles on Bubba. The two rifles are closer than peas in a pod: pennies in a roll would be closer.

Like the OP's rifle, mine is completely numbers-matching, in this case 69111R and it also has a 1945 Birmingham barrel on it.... with Enfield Inspectors' marks.

Note kindly that neither rifle has the common "commercial" Proof stampings of the post-1945 period.

Mine is built on a 1918 NRF. Bore condition is near perfect. It is lightweight and fast-pointing, but that would qualify it as a combat rifle even more than for sporting use.

I believe that there is a passing reference to the aluminum-stocked and Ross-butted experimentals in the Reynolds book, but I do not have my copy at hand. There were some strange things being done right at and after the end of the war in Europe, especially as regards recycling and alternate materials; Britain was determined never to be caught-out again as they were in 1940. I note that this attitude continues with regard to the L-85 rifle, which is far too heavy because it is made entirely of LOCAL materials, Britain having no local Bauxite.

My rifle has languished on the basement rack for many years, the ugliest topic of conversation I own. I was quite shocked to discover that there exists another.... which is absolutely identical.

It is indeed a tragedy that so much original documentation was shredded in the 1960s and '70s.

Using a rigid aluminium chassis is quite common in benchrest, metallic silhouette, F-Class etc. circles, and has been for decades.

If fitted properly, it should withstand the elements, (including "dry" rot and termites), and recoil fairly well. However, salt water ingress could cause some interesting electrolytic effects.

Maybe one last trawl of the old Canadian archives is in order.

Was there a "wood shortage" in Canada at some time?

Not one of which I am aware, but there certainly was a wood shortage in England about 65 years ago.

Their huge stands of Ash all went for wagon wheels, artillery wheels, truck wheels during the two Wars. They actually imported Walnut from North America to build rifles at one point.

OTOH, the Aluminum in these likely came from Canada via one route or another. The refinery at Kitimat was the world's largest.

Don't mean to be disrespectful to anyone, BUT (you know what's coming now.......) anyone who REALLY thinks that there's something of an official nature about this sheer childlike exercise in either wood or metalwork is living up there with the fairies. My son could do better than this with an axe and hacksaw.

Look at it this way.......... If there was some sort of official sanction of this, er....... - and I'm thinking of my most diplomatic language now........ er....., sheer mechanical and childlike stupidity, it would be in the public domain by now. Or maybe, the sheer naive amateurishness of it meant that they sealed the files for 100 years!

I could be wrong of course...........

Remember the 'lost' 70 Spitfires in Burma and my bet of £20 to any Forces charity if they found them in a year........ Can you see what I'm thinking? Pure twaddle!

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Originally Posted by smellie

Not one of which I am aware, but there certainly was a wood shortage in England about 65 years ago.

Their huge stands of Ash all went for wagon wheels, artillery wheels, truck wheels during the two Wars. They actually imported Walnut from North America to build rifles at one point.

OTOH, the Aluminum in these likely came from Canada via one route or another. The refinery at Kitimat was the world's largest.

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UK managed to build another 400,000 or so wooden stocked No4s after WW2, and then refurbished and restocked about another million or so. There was no shortage of suitable beech.

There was also no need to look at aluminium for stocking up. No1s were obsolete, vast numbers of No4s existed, and the new FAL was developed into the L1A1 with wood as the primary choice for stocking up.


The No1 aluminium forends do not look military in any way. Probably someone had a few cast as private project.

Are the forends machined inside, where the receiver beds - or are they simply cast from a wood pattern?

Link to an older thread with photos of...?:

Sht.LE Mk.III with metal fore end.

ETA: What appears to be the very same rifle!

Not so much a shortage of wood in the UK Smellie as we were getting tjpousands and thousands of tons of it from the colonies - such as Canada and the USA (sorry about that you wild old colonial types!). However, we were certainly frugal with our use of it. Truck and gun wheels made from wood during WW2......... surely not!

T/box has numerically hit the nail on the head. But look what we produced in a paxolin type compound for the Bren Gun the later 30's (albeit more expensive to produce than the wooden butt and grips) and you'll realise the sheer childish amateurism of the crude, naff exhibit displayed here. T/Box, Tankie, BP and Skippy will understand the well used Army phrase or saying of '.....what a load of boxxxxxs'

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Originally Posted by Peter Laidler

(sorry about that you wild old colonial types!). '

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Some of us wear that badge with pride. We were a little short staffed about then as well. And i dont think our Coachwood was to your taste either we had enough issues with it.

Rather than these ally bits being a cast copy of the wood forearm, could the ally forearm actually be the pattern to make the wood? I've seen ally patterns where the machine follows the line of it and cuts the wood copy exactly. I wonder if some ones got a hold of some and fitted them to rifles? Just a thought.

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Originally Posted by Brit plumber

Rather than these ally bits being a cast copy of the wood forearm, could the ally forearm actually be the pattern to make the wood? I've seen ally patterns where the machine follows the line of it and cuts the wood copy exactly. I wonder if some ones got a hold of some and fitted them to rifles? Just a thought.

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The pattern for No4 butts (in a photo of Long Branch factory) and L1A1 butts (photo from Enfield) show that those patterns were about 200% size scaled.

I assume that forends were probably cut from at least two patterns - an inside and an outside? Given the type of machinery at the time, i imagine the forends were shaped in multiple operations.

Today's related trivia:

SMLE fore ends started out as a long sort-of rectangular block called a "flitch". These were seasoned for years (with any luck) before machining.

As near as I can understand from the document fragments I have seen, the flitch was trued and then several holes were drilled for clamping and indexing.

The interior was cut first. This is exactly the same as commercial timber stockmaking; it is a lot easier to hold a square-ish chunk of wood on a router table than it is a fancy shaped one. Commercial fibreglass stocks are built from the outside in; an afternoon at the McMillan factory was most educational.

The barrel channel, with its taper and all its clearances for sight beds, barrel bands, etc. was rough cut and then a long, specially set up mandrel fitted with all of the odd-shaped cutters was used to form the final channel profile. The excess wood at either end of the flitch was used to hold the fore end when it went into the copy lathe. These could transfer the external profile from a metal "master" to several stocks at a time. If anyone has a copy of the complete process it would make interesting reading. A picture of the actual machine would be nice, too

Butts were produced similarly. The stepped through-hole for the butt screw and oil bottle were drilled first. This then provided a handy location for the spindle /mandrel that held the butt whilst it was in the copy lathe. I am guessing, but there had to be additional setups for profiling the seat for the buttplate and drilling the hole for the pullthrough weight.

The handguards were made in a single long piece, then separated using a fine saw. Note that, at least in Australian manufacture, there was an allowance for the front handguard to be made with a parallel barrel channel instead of the specified barrel-matching taper. This meant that the front handguard channel could be made by using a router and table instead of a fancy and expensive, long tapered cutter and specialized table. The only downside was that this method resulted in even less timber supporting the front cap than on the standard model. Bonus trivia: the front caps seem to have retained the tiny thread in the mounting holes even when riveting became the normal method of fixing them to the handguard.

Slazenger (Aust) used the same timber and techniques on the L1A1 furniture; the laminated handguards required a bit of new technology.

After reading some of the comments, I took mine apart, just to see what I could see. I really do think that folks are jumping to conclusions too quickly.

For one thing, the aluminum fore-end root is a very nicely-done casting. It was cast vertically, with the long, thin section DOWN and with a Sprue of decent length, sufficient to give a solid casting at the vital REAR part of the fore-end where it fits the rifle so closely. Whoever did it had a GOOD casting-shop and they really knew what they were doing. There had to have been a wood pattern for this casting: aluminum has close to 2% shrinkage in castings and this thing bolts up almost solid..... and it shows NO evidence of hand-fitting. As well, the Reinforce for the Middle Band is in its correct place and this stock has THREE additional Reinforces in it. This thing was not just jumped together; it was designed. The Triggerguard fits rather loosely; this is proof that an oversize wooden pattern was made before the casting was done. Once in place and bolted-up, though, it fits tight.

I think this is a subject which deserves serious investigation. In my opinion, too many people are jumping to conclusions too quickly. NONE of us have seen absolutely EVERYTHING. Give you an example: the SMLE rifle went into production more than a year AFTER the demise of dear Queen Victoria, so there is no chance of possessing an SMLE with her Royal Cipher. As well, Edward VIII was never crowned, the Government was destroying rather than building rifles during his short reign and Enfield already was being shifted-over to Number 4 production although the process was far from complete. So there is no chance of having an SMLE with an Edward VIII cypher. I have both here, sitting side-by-side on a rack. Sure, they don't exist, but don't tell THEM that; you might hurt their feelings. The Victoria rifle is an SMLE (Converted) Mark IV and the Edward is one of the small number made at Ishapore in 1936, during his short reign. They might both be surviving anomalies, but they DO exist and they are here for anyone dropping by to examine, should they so wish. Exactly the same holds for this poor, ugly old NRF. I just have to find it a Mark III Ross buttplate and screws so it doesn't look positively naked when it has guests.

If one rifle had appeared here and the other in Hargrave (7 miles, about the distance from Dover to Folkestone), I would shake my head and ask, "Allright, what was Johnnie Miller doing in 1946?". Johnnie Miller was a local character, a gifted machinist, who operated an entire machine-shop on equipment which was antiques when I knew him, 50 years go; he could have made this without help, although anyone else would need a shop and crew. But the rifles didn't turn up 7 miles apart. They appeared in Brandon, Manitoba and in Toronto, well over a THOUSAND miles apart: think London to Reykjavik.

They are BOTH Birmingham rifles, both post-Second-War FTRs, they both have 1945 barrels, they both have Enfield Inspectors' markings, they both are numbers-matching and they are as identical as pennies in a roll, right down to recycled Ross butts and their Suncorite finish. That adds up to LOT of coincidences: too many to ignore, by my lights.

They are worth some serious investigation.

Well I certainly believe you about the Edward VIII cyphered SMLE because I've got one too.
I really know nothing about this weapon, but it did occur to me that sometimes small production runs of modified rifles were made for quasi-official organisations & so forth. If there are a few of these rifles all to the same spec., could they maybe have been a putative design for Park Rangers or some such organisation?? Somebody who needed the power of a 303 in a light rifle. It's pure speculation of course......

ATB

Part of the problem, I think, is that these rifles are just SO ugly that most hunters would have restocked one with whatever second-hand wood they could find.

I would not doubt that, were a small lot actually built (more than the 2 which appear to remain), most of the aluminum stocks would have ended up at the scrap dealer.

You have some very good insights into the possibilities of a small lot. Thanks for posting.

I think all of us understand "never to say never" when dealing with Enfields. Its just that there are some broad observations that most Enfield collectors accept.

For example, there are of course many different types of Enfield prototypes and experimental models in existence, and some of the esteemed collectors here have them in their collections. The point is that all of these oddball factory Enfields have a similar "look" about them - the "look" that comes from being made as a military piece for government testing purposes.

Another - rarer - category is that of commercial test pieces.

Sometimes a piece comes along that has the "look", but raises doubts about authenticity because of lack of documented provenance or unexplained disconnects in provenance. An example of this might be the "Savage Stevens mauser actioned No1 rifle" that keep cropping up. In cases like that, I think most of us just keep an open mind.

It would be great to see a detailed photo-essay of the two alloy stocked No1s. They don't "look" military, but they might be a limited project run by some private individual or company. The circumstantial evidence doesn't really mean anything. Having two '45 barrelled receivers with similar inspection marks might just mean they were picked out of a batch of '45 dispersals or rebuilds that just didn't get separated on their journey through the surplus market - e.g. many people here own No5s with similar BKxxxx serials, which appear to have come off the same pallet. I have several pairs of No1s with absolutely identical markings - and those are random rifles out of 4 million that have come into my possession separately.

Call me a pessimist here, but, and cutting to the quick, the crap quality of everything about this shouts out aloud '......fiction will soon become fact if I shout it out a) enough, b) loud enough and c) muddy the waters sufficiently.

I can see exactly where T/Box is coming from along the 'commercial testing' route. But what on earth would they be testing with something like that I'm bound to ask?

Sorry, but having been and seen these UK Military type trials and while I know sod-all about what BSA would have done, I don't believe that they'd turn out crap like this! If you'd given the job to BMC Cars or Leyland, then yes....., but BSA, never in a zillion years. There's a popular saying in England......... Well, there's a few that I use, but here's another for all you gulliable believers. You need to get out a bit more.....

Just my 2c's worth - again!

Are you implying Leyland didn't build a quality product?...... I'm shocked! :)


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

You can sleep soundly Gary..... I deliberately left Triumph out of the equation!

Looking at all of this dispassionately, a few things on both of these guns say they were not UK military trial guns in any way:

1) The commercial proof on a 1945 dated barrel,

2) The use of Ross buttstocks. Not UK standard in any way.

3) The lack of any kind of front bearing allowance, No 1 MK III barrels were well understood to not shoot well without damping of the barrel between in middle internal band and the front nose cap. Given that there would be no way a metal stock would be designed that did not provide for some sort of barrel damping forward of the middle band, at least on a full length barrel.

4) A check of Reynolds book “the Lee Enfield rifle” shows all the metal stock trails were with the No 4 and occurred in 1943. These attempts were abandoned after 1943 due to various difficulties.


So that leaves the possibility that this is in somehow a Canadian effort. There are several good reasons why this would not be the case:

1) Canada had no shortage of lumber, none whatsoever.

2) In the June and October of 1943 holding reports the total stock of CA No 1 MK III rifles was 15,798. They had fewer No 1 MK III rifles then Ross rifles of, which ~41,000 were on hand. By 1943 the No 1 MK III was a surplus item, and far fewer were in stock then M1917 rifles and even Ross rifles. In 1949 the holding were listed as 11,000, of which only 2,280 were serviceable.

3) By the end of the war ~900,000 No 4 MK I* rifles had been made of which 330,000 were sent to the UK, there was a vast surplus of No 4 rifles in Canada. There simply was not any requirement for No 1 MK III trial rifles of any kind.

4) The DCRA made the No1 MK II obsolete for competitive shooting in late 1946, thereafter all shooting was done with the No 4 MK I*. So it is unlikely done for DCRA.

So what evidence are there these might have been some sort of post-war commercial/home build?:

1) The use of a commercially proofed 1945 barrel.

2) The use of Ross butts. In 1946 the Canadian Ross rifles were transferred to the War Assets Corporation, which was supposed to dispose of them. According to “defending the Dominions” most of these rifles were broken up and sold as scrape. It is quite possible in 1946 that there was a number of broken Ross buttstocks available for next to nothing (scrap value). Having a supply of unusable broken Ross buttstocks seems to be the only possible reason for making them fit the No 1 MK III.

3) The inclusion of various barrel bearing in the casting between the barrel reinforce and the internal barrel band might have been and attempt to dampen the barrel vibrations. The Martian nodal bedded target rifles that were fairly well known in Canadian target shooting circles between the wars. If the chap doing this work thought he might be able to dampen the barrel by inclusion of nodal bearing points behind the internal barrel band, he was following a concept well known at the time in Canada.

4) Lastly thought he casting may be well carried out, the lack of a firm fitting between the buttstock socket and the front draws seems to indicate a lack of the most basic bedding concern according the EMERs. It is hard to see any military trial piece not attending to this detail. You can literally see light through the gap between the action body buttstock socket and the rear of the aluminum stock piece on both examples.

On the other hand I have known folks that claim relieving this fit on the No 1 and No 4 will make it shoot better at the close ranges, in the 100 to 200 yard region where hunting rifles are commonly used, as long as the fit of the forend to the barrel is fairly tight. That is purely a hunting rifle type build.

So overall considering what little facts are available, these examples have to me, all indications that they are local Canadian commercial or garage shop efforts.

The same observations keep poping into my mind, why bother fitting a Ross butt? What's wrong with the correct SMLE butt? or a No.4 butt? there's thousands of them surplus. Also, if it's intended for military use, why can't a bayonet be fitted and where's the sling points? And why not base it on a production rifle?

If I could see a need or some logic behind it I could understand. Is it any lighter than a standard Mk3?

See my post on the breakup and disposale of Ross rifles in 1946, posted just above yours.

Source, "Defending the Dominon" pages, 134 to 136 inclusive

Frederick, you have put your points across very well & I think what you say is very plausible. Shame we can only speculate on the issue.....

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Originally Posted by Roger Payne

Frederick, you have put your points across very well & I think what you say is very plausible. Shame we can only speculate on the issue.....

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I agree, but assuming his conclusion is accurate, it might be possible to trace who was likely to have taken this on. There can't have been too many outfits in a position to do that and capable of it, and people's memories can be long. I prefer to be an optimist. :)

I know I'm a pessimist Steve, and really truly would like to look on the bright side but would you want to be identified as someone turning out shi........., er......... cr..... rubbish like that? Go on, be honest........ really?

Just for giggles, if we are going to talk bout crap, let's think about:

Sten Mark 1

Chauchat

Pike Mark 1

and there are others, of course.......

I'm not shouting "loud enough and often enough", although that IS rather a nice quote from Dr. Goebbels.

I am as mystified as anyone. I just would like people to investigate this without preconceived conclusions getting in the way.

There must be a REASON for these and some indication as to where and when they were done. They didn't just grow on a Lee-Enfield bush out in the back pasture.

I know that guys will scream, "Buy the RIFLE, not the STORY", but I only paid $38 for mine, so there wasn't much of a story. The story was that it was on a Manitoba farm from 1946 until the day I got it: something like 45 years. It was supposed to have been "borrowed" from the Army by a fellow who was being discharged..... back to that same farm. His grandson disposed of the ugly old thing for something he wanted: 3 boxes of .243 ammo. Not much of a story; it wasn't even Andy McNaughton's personal sniping rifle (he grew up 42 miles from here: next decent-size town), much less Monty's personal Tank rifle. Just a beat-up, ugly old gun on a medium-size 1000-acre farm, a rifle which was too slow for modern fast-and-wary coyotes.

I just would like to see the bottom of the mystery..... especially as there seem to be TWO of them, identical.

Smellie it's obvious no one here has the answers your looking for

@ Homer:

Quite possible that you are right.

I just got a new digital camera. When I get it figured out how to work it, I'll post some good close-ups of that fore-end. I don't think it was made by a 9-year-old kid.

Take some time, though; I can be pretty slow with this electroniwockle stuff.

How about this for a scenrio:

A professional pattern maker who happens to like tinkering with guns, makes a high quality mould/ sand casting for the manufacture of some aluminium forends for No1 Mk111's. He skillfully knocks out a few thinking he might be able to sell them or use them for target shooting or that they's be ideal for hunting deer in the highly temperature variable wilds of Canada, and he just happened to have some Ross buts lying around or maybe he preferred them for some reason and put them to use.

I don't know anything about them, but skilled people can make excellent products that would appear to have come from a "line". Especially moulded products.

Just my 2 cent and nothing more.

Ah, smellie....... The Sten Mk1. I'm sure that you meant the Sten Mk2. But guess what? There's a saying that you can only kill a man so dead! And whether you do it with an expensive burst of gunfire from a £55, beautifully machined, blued, walnut stocked Thompson or a cheap burst of gunfire from a £2:7shilling (£2.35) Sten gun, of which 2 million were made, the result is STILL the same.

Just my take on the comparison. But then, I do have a vested interest in the well being of the remarkable Sten Gun. They said after the war that very little was expected of the Sten. But of that very little, it gave its all, very well. Or something like that!

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Originally Posted by tbonesmith

How about this for a scenrio: A professional pattern maker who happens to like tinkering with guns, makes a high quality mould/ sand casting for the manufacture of some aluminium forends for No1 Mk111's.

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Would guess further that the scenario would most likely take place soon after WWII. Aluminum was now available in great quantities and for cheap. Think of all the other aluminum products that came and went with the great aircraft meltdowns.

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Originally Posted by Peter Laidler

I know I'm a pessimist Steve, and really truly would like to look on the bright side but would you want to be identified as someone turning out shi........., er......... cr..... rubbish like that? Go on, be honest........ really?

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Well, yes, I would, because I'm not convinced it's ...rubbish. Someone went to a lot of work to produce that, and it doesn't appear to my eye to be as crude as suggested. Just because I can't figure out what the intention was, doesn't mean this was a basement/bubba/bodge job. We may yet find the answers.