Square butt problems in 1940!

[RJW NZ]

Its ironic that tbonesmith posted his repair thread about this onthe same day ...

Despite my advice to someone here to remove the fore end before taking the butt off their no1mk3 to make sure they didn't have one of those rifles with the protruding square shank on the butt bolt and slotted steel plate in the fore end rear, I've actually been pretty cavalier about this myself.
I've been thinking its an old pre 1915 thing because I haven't seen an enfield fitted with the square shank and fore end plate for a long long time, that is until I opened my newest enfield, a 1940 Lithgow, 5 matching serial numbers, incl fore end and found to my shock that the square shank and plate is on this rifle and clearly produced in 1940, not pre 1915.

Another case of never making assumptions about enfields ... I will never make that assumption again, I'm done with fixing cracked fore ends ...

Information

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[Alan de Enfield]

Part of a post by Peter Laidler (March 2008)

"......We still had thousands of No1 rifled in Cadet service in the 60's and 70's but after that they were whittled right down. All(?) were modified by fitting No4 stock bolts or grinding the square portion off and plugging the plate hole in the rear of the fore-end.........."

[S-A-M3]

Hi Roger, Must be missing something but all the Smle`s that I have still have the square shank still attached.
Stuart.

[fergs]

Square pegs and round holes,
The good old boys at Horsley park gun shop had heaps of the SMLEs with the square bolts back in the 90s. To which they proceeded to take old stocks off and put synthetic on. The problem they had with a lot of them was that when removing the but they would unscrew the bolt whilst the stock was still attached. They would then put the buts and stocks in a big bucket for later sale, unfortunately most of the stocks were broken due to there inherant lack of care!
Oh the humanity!!
Regards
Fergs