frankenstein's SMLE handguard

[Claven2]

I was having trouble locating a decent walnut rear handguard in these parts to replace a broken, chopped and rotted out beech handguard on an otherwise nice walnut stocked SMLE.

I had an on chopped walnut WW1 era handguard off a porter that had been varnished and had some bad cracks in it, so decided to put on my ye olde armorer's hat to give patching it a whirl.

I should have taken a before pic, but you'll have to take my word for it, the ears were chopped off and what remained had sanded round edges and a coat of poly all over it. It came off a D&T's and shot out sporter I scrapped years ago.

In this photo, I'm splicing on new walnut to work with, using titebond. The dovetails were rough cut on the bandsaw and then filed and chiseled to final shape. Same for the walnut splice stock.



pegging the splice with bamboo pegs and titebond. It's what I had on hand, should be strong enough.



Forgot to take a few photos, but should have mentioned, this handguard had no clip. I pulled the clip off the trashed one I had and machined new brass rivets on the lathe. I cookied a hairline crack that ran the length of the handguard, and another crack on one side of the thumb cut at the back. CA glue wicked into the cracks. Also realized I should have used a taller piece of splice for the fingers, because they contour up, so I spliced on some more walnut and pegged that too with some hardwood toothpicks. The fingers were rough cut on the bandsaw before I re-installed the spring clip, and the barrel channel was roughly hogged out on the mill with a ball cutter before being chiseled then sanded to final interior contour. Here it is oiled, but not stained:







And finished, stained over RLO using oil based walnut leather dye. It's a great match to an old SMLE patina.



I'd say it's usable now and not that bad a facsimile of what armorers did when new parts were scarce.

[MasterChief]

Impressive.

[Salt Flat]

Claven , that came out perfect. It's very rewarding saving a vintage part like that.

[Alan de Enfield]

Marvellous - I cannot even saw in a straight line.

[smle addict]

Excellent work!

[browningautorifle]

Looks great. Hope Peter Laidler happens by, he sure did enough of this when he was very young. Now we about HAVE to do it as parts are drying up.

[Roger Payne]

Well done. That is quite first rate. I'd be happy to fit that guard to any SMLE of mine.
I've had a go at a few similar repairs, repairing splits & defects in forends & guards, & I use exactly the same 'dowels' as you!

[Bob Womack]

That is first-rate work!

Bob

[Low & Slow]

Outstanding! Fine craftsmanship, indeed.

[Peter Laidler]

Yep, first rate work and a credit to you. Armourers did do these patches until the early 60's when it became the accepted practice to simply cut off the front and rear 'wings'.

The difference between Clavens patch and ours is that Claven has dovetailed his HORIZONTALLY whereas we dovetailed our wing patches VERTICALLY. Same meat, different gravy. What is important is the amount of surface area between the patch surfaces.

That said, being patched horizontally does allow for the patch to be pegged. What I did like is that the patch was inserted as a complete block instead of each side being a separate patch.

If that was an apprentices patch, without telling you, the apprentice master/tutor, an old school between-the-wars ex apprentice himself, would take your work into the instructors rest room at break time and pass it around to show other members of the staff. That would Definitely have been shown around.