question on No1 mk bedding.

[newcastle]

Just stripped down a No1 mk3 after adding the spring under the nosecap failed to improve accuracy. When putting back togetHer I noted that the barrel sat to the RiGHT in the foreend channel and that where the forend meets the butt socket its more worn on that side too. By adding a tiny shimm of metal on the right where recoil plate would be on a Lithgow the barrel sits centrally. Question is, if I add the metal to one side and it's still wood on the other,will this affect how the. Recoils hammers the wood and damage it at all, specifically on the left side?

Information

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[smellie]

Draws should fit solidly on both sides and the barrel should be free in the barrel channel. There is a pressure point in the forestock where the Magpie Screw draws the Inner Band downwards. There is also a 2-inch reinforce at the front of the fore-end; many match shooters would cut this back to ONE inch, but no less. The action and chamber of the barrel should be solid in the woodwork, then free ahead of that.

There is considerable vibration of the barrel while the rifle is actually firing. In order that this vibration be allowed to work its own way, there is relief around the barrel. A sheet of paper or a banknote should draw freely along the barrel channel and hang up only where the pressure points are found: at the Inner Band and at the Muzzle Reinforce.

I have an Australian 1918 SMLE which had been restocked in 1944 but never fired. When I got it, it made a 14-inch group at 100, using my test load. Actually, it was shooting two 2-inch groups, one above the other, about a foot apart. I bedded the critter exactly as above, using Acra-Glas and sandpaper (gently), let it set up for 4 days, took it out and shot it again. Group size now was very much under one inch..... and it was shooting only the single group.

Hope this helps.
.

[Son]

Sorry to hear that, smellie. Another matching collectable irreversibly altered in the pursuit of something it was never meant to do... (only my opinion... it is your rifle)

I too have an FTR'd Lithgow which was unfired when I got it. I gently degreased both the metal and the wood and took it to the range. It was a bit erratic for a while, but after a couple of hundred rounds it settled in and shoots better than I can.

As for the standard bedding, don't be so quick to dismiss it. Half your problem could have been your "test loads"... You mentioned the barrel vibrations. As you know, the trick isn't to control them, but rather to allow them to be the same at every firing. The barrel was set up for 174gn projectiles exiting at 2440fps.... how do your test loads compare with this?
If your rifle was shooting two groups- (was one from cold barrel, the other warm?) I'd say it could have been markedly improved with a check/ adjust of the front trigger guard screw collar, and correct tension on the screw/ wood relationship, and some good MkVII ball.
Was the foreend dry?

Here's a pic of the foreend from mine- you can see the the marks where the barrel lies... factory bedding, Lithgow 1955

Attachment 23739

BTW, set up properly, the inner band and spring in the nosecap should do nothing. The test of needing between four and seven pounds of weight to pull the foreend away from the barrel at the muzzle is done with only the trigger guard fitted- the contact one inch either side of the inner band recess and at least four inches from the muzzle back toward the inner band is achieved with carefull fitment of the foreend at the receiver.

To answer Newcastles question... to have surfaces of uneven resistance (wood vs metal) to the forces of recoil at the lugs will eventually cause the rifle to lose accuracy. I would advise fitting of metal plates on both sides. They need to be perfectly parallel with the rear surface of the foreend. Fit one side only and see how much effort it takes to put the foreend on. Then take it out and fit the other side to be the same. Use a marking medium to ensure the contact is right down the lug and the same on both sides. The final check with both plates fitted is that the barrel lies centrally down the channel- watch it going in.

[RJW NZ]

I might have missed something but just in case I didn't ... if the fore end sits central in the channel after making those wrist face adjustments described, imho, the next place I would check is the inner recoil lugs to make sure there is equal and even bearing there. If the wrist face is corrected , then it seems it would be easy for one of those inner lugs to have lifted off. I assume firing in this condition would hammer the one high one until they evened up, or manifest a noticable issue.
Perhaps Peter will comment.

[Brian Dick]

Sometimes the problem lies not with the internal draws in the sear lug recesses but on the very back of the forearm where it contacts the butt socket. It may be high on one side causing the forend to point off to one side or the other. By relieving the high spot carefully, you can bring the barrel channel back into alignment. Something to check before you get too drastic.

[newcastle]

Hang on a second though. Don't the draws and recoil lugs act as a fulcrum for the whole barrelled action.if I relieve th back of the forearm where its obviously in solid contact with the buttsocket, is that not going to be immaterial if the recoil lugs / draws hold the forearm away. The barrel sitting to the right in the forearm by the muzzle surely must be corrected first and foremost by getting the recoil lugs even? Or am I barking mad? I really don't want to muck around and screw this up royally.if I need the are hit by the recoil lugs to be the same on both sides, should I put the shims on both side and put two on the right side first?

[tbonesmith]

Hang on a second though. Don't the draws and recoil lugs act as a fulcrum for the whole barrelled action.if I relieve th back of the forearm where its obviously in solid contact with the buttsocket, is that not going to be immaterial if the recoil lugs / draws hold the forearm away. The barrel sitting to the right in the forearm by the muzzle surely must be corrected first and foremost by getting the recoil lugs even? Or am I barking mad? I really don't want to muck around and screw this up royally.if I need the are hit by the recoil lugs to be the same on both sides, should I put the shims on both side and put two on the right side first?

Where the forend abuts the wrist face and the draws work together. If you try to do all your adjustment on the draws, you can cut them to far and still have the channel off centre. As you stock them up you need to watch both of these areas. Yes, all being well you adjust on the draws, but often the rear of the forend will nee very minor adjustment to allow the draws to dictate the position. Think that you cant let the wrist face bind thereby making the further relief of the draws ineffective

[smellie]

Actually, I thought that they were supposed to shoot accurately. The rifle was purchased by a friend (now deceased) as a part of a 20-year project we worked on together. The idea was to find out just HOW good the average military rifle, when new or close to it, could be expected to shoot, using ammunition which coincided with the wishes of the rifle but which was within official standards for the time in which the rifle was used.

As to ammo, Mark VII bullets have not been available here for many years except as a part of loaded ammunition..... and the quality on that is, at best, debatable. We were running bullets in the 150-180 grain range with most rifles, staying with .311 to .312 for the Lee series. My own test load uses the Sierra 180 flatbase Pro-Hunter 180 at 2250 from the LE, 2335 from the Ross. This was the most accurate velocity for the .303 by test at the time the Mark VII was being developed. The 2440 speed was a Service expedient; it was not the most accurate velocity, and accuracy was what we were trying to obtain. This particular rifle also was shot with DI 1944 factory ammunition and with 150 Hornady flatbase .312 bullets running at about 2650, which is still well under the 2750 that Dominion used to load them to.

The idea was to see what accuracy could be expected of a good rifle, with a load that it liked which was close to Service specs. We fired 2-shot groups from a dead-cold barrel, let the thing cool off and then shot it again. We weren't interested in flukes but, rather, REPEATABLE results. To this end, we never heated a rifle up, being more interested in that "Sniper's Zero", which you could also call a 'Hunter's Zero': first round out of a cold barrel with a follow-up shot in 1 minute or less. We could take 2 rifles to the range and stay there all afternoon and have a great time....... and not go through 20 rounds in our testing, even though a lot of small rocks got made much smaller once the testing was over for the day.

When my friend bought the rifle, we tried it and it shot abominably, 8- to 14-inch groups at 100, no matter what ammunition was tried. After one particularly frustrating session, we stopped for coffee on the way home, meeting with the former Captain of the Canadian Bisley team. He told me how the thing should be bedded and pointed out The Damned Crack. So I took it home, stripped it down and found The Damned Crack, right where Bill said it would be: the stock was split at the rear end. Also, the lugs on the rifle were not seating evenly in the wood and the barrel was slapping on one side of the forestock. All I did was glue the crack and use a small amount of Acra-Glas to bring the bedding back to what it should have been..... and likely WAS when the rifle was FTRd in 1944..... if it was indeed. The rifle itself is an all-matching 1918 with 1933 and 1944 repairs noted on the butt and a 1944 forestock. Bore appeared absolutely unfired when we started and the metal showed no evidence whatever of use. As of right now, it has perhaps 100 rounds through it.

I don't believe in hogging the woodwork out the way the instructions say you should. Regularly, I can get 6 or more bedding jobs out of a small Acra-Glas kit and still have some left for small jobs; the instructions say 1 job to the kit. I'm not interested in seeing how modern goop can make an old rifle perform; I just use it to bring the bedding back to what it should be. This is a dry climate (most years) and it can be really hard on woodwork.

But yes, I suppose I did do something ugly but, at least, now it shoots..... just the way it was intended.

After the work was done, the rifle was shot again, off sandbags, of course. Using the same 2-round groups as previously, between us we got four groups out of five, none larger than half an inch. The 'bad' group was an inch. We shot those groups on October 19, some years ago; my birthday is October 18. My friend gave me the rifle as a birthday present; he had learned what he wanted to know about the Short Magazine Lee-Enfield Rifle as constructed at Lithgow, Australia, during the Great War. I still have the rifle and it's not for sale.

So that's the whole sordid tale. The critter actually is bedded to Service standards, just using something like a quarter of an ounce of modern material.... and that includes gluing that *#&%$(& crack.
.

[Brian Dick]

Get some inletting black from Brownells and check all of these areas before you get out the chisel.

[newcastle]

this rifle hasn't been taken apart in a long long time. there are some lovely smooth areas where it meets the butt socket. More to the right hand side as you look at it from the rear of the rifle though. The draws have obviously been replaced in the past as there is high quality woodwork there (it does say regulated by fultons so I'm assuming they did this work) and they LOOK to be identically worn and evidently touch the recoil lugs at every point. maybe the forearm is bent. never thought of that....will check