Help - SMLE down

[bdeveau]

My peddle scheme SMLE No.1 Mk. III cracked when I fired her today. Pretty bad, can't cock her. She is my baby and I want to bring her back!

Suggestions? Wood glue?

Thanks

Information

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[Ridolpho]

bdeveau: Yes, wood glue, but the fact that it split means there are other items that need addressing in that forend. Start reading the large amount of material available within this forum beginning with articles by Peter Laidler. Strip the rifle and post additional larger photos and the resident experts will likely chime in. If this is your first, proceed slowly and carefully.

Ridolpho

[bdeveau]

Will do, standby

[Hal O'Peridol]

If it cannot be cocked........were you able to eject the spent shell?? You might have had a split case.

[bdeveau]

The trigger had to be pushed forward manually or else the bolt would not catch the sear. That was when I noticed the stock was protruding on the right near the trigger assembly. There was no issues ejecting the casing. I have taken her apart and took the following pics.

Thanks everyone. She has the broad C arrow so I got to do whatever I can!

[Patrick Chadwick]

The true Enfield experts will doubtless chip in later. For the moment let us just look at the nature of the damage to the wood. Unlike a fully stocked rifle, where the tang banging back into the recess on recoil can cause a split in the neck, the forestock of an SMLE is basically a pre-loaded wooden beam hanging on to the system between the butt ring and the barrel, with the pre-loading being adjusted by the front trigger guard screw. Recoil will not damage it, but excessive flexing will. This excessive flexing could have arisen from grossly excessive pre-loading by some Bubba who though that an upwards force on the muzzle of a couple of stone would be a good idea. - No, I don't seriously think that. But the same effect would be produced by severe warping or shrinkage of the forestock, maybe creating a tight barrel channel that was wedged apart by the barrelled system.

Whatever the cause, the effect is that the wood is split over most of its length. Since an incomplete split varies from x down to nothing, there will be a portion where you will not be able to effectively force in any glue to hold the wood together. In time, the split is thus likely to spread over the remaining unglued length.

All this is just to prepare you gently for the following conclusion: as a matter of good woodworking practice (nothing now to do with SMLEs) the best repair would probably be to deliberately make the crack continue right down to the end so that you see daylight from end to end, and then glue the two halves together again, to create an unstressed solid bond over the entire length.

You can then fettle the once-more solid piece to suit the rifle. Unless, of course, it is too badly warped, in which case a new forestock is unavoidable. Impossible to tell from here.

[Peter Laidler]

If I was you, I would try the action/trigger/trigger-guard without the fore-end. If it works perfectly then, then you can be assured that the trigger jambing up problem was just a fore-end problem. If it jambs up without the fore-end fitted then you know that the action fault caused the fore-end to split.

As for the fore-end, it's an easy fix. I see where Patrick is coming from but I wouldn't do the break fully. I would drill a small hole at the end of the crack to stress relieve it and........ anyway, read some of the other threads about the why's and wherefores.

Good aircraft quality wood adhesive is as good as it gets for glueing wood and DON'T go down the epoxy route, please!

Then peg the split as per the 'ishy screw'' with an oak dowel. Machine away the broken internal part, fit new block and make good.

It's what Armourers would call a doddle! Don't make a mountain out of a molehill

[Son]

Will beg to differ here. The front trigger guard screw, where being very important to accuracy to keep it tight, does next to nothing WRT recoil. The bush under the screw is trimmed to only allow (IIRC) 20 thou crush on the foreend under the trigger guard at the screw. The foreend must be held tightly between the front face of the butt socket and the rear face of the sear lugs. It is the sear lugs that take all the force of recoil as the barrel and action attempt to move rearward in the foreend, which is being held by the left hand.

Take a step back... in an ideal world, all the recoil is taken through the butt socket, the butt and to the firers shoulder. If you attempt to hold the rifle with your front hand and don't pull it in hard to your shoulder, you are making p-art of the recoil concentrate on the wood behind the sear lugs. After a while, this area becomes compacted, allowing some movement forwards- backwards in the foreend. The front trigger guard screw can do nothing to prevent this. As the contact area for the sear lugs gets more damaged, the foreend moves a bit more, the bush under the front trigger guard screw doesn't move- the foreend moving over it is spread and splits longitudinally from the screw hole forward.

To prevent this, always when stripping your rifle, check to see the foreend fits tight to the receiver without any screws, bands or fittings on it. If it isn't tight, don't fire it! You need to repair the wood behind the sear lugs until it is tight. Take a leaf out of the Lithgow coachwood book... fit copper recoil pads to the foreend.

For more info, here's a link to an article I wrote on this a while back...

Milsurps Knowledge Library - Lithgow SMLE ... Causes of Cracked Foreends

As for repairs, I will leave that to the Master

[WarPig1976]

bdeveau, just know that, yes this sucks but is fixable. Follow Peter's advice and remember it's only wood and use clamps.!! Good luck...

[Ridolpho]

Son: I'm still having trouble understanding how these Lee Enfield forends work but it would seem to me that the clamping at the triggerguard, front, screw, must be presumed to be enough to (via friction) stop any relative movement between action body/ forend as the two adjoining beams (to use Patrick's vernacular) undergo a bending stress during firing. If the clamping is effective and the rear of the forend is tight to the cheeks then you effectively have a "truss", nothing deforms (other than minor elastic deformation) and the sear lugs carry no load at all- a good thing as the effective bearing surface on the draws is so tiny. I see what you're saying about the grip on the forend by the left hand putting some stress on the draws but I don't sense myself pushing outward upon firing. In any case what prompted me to comment was a couple of No. 4's I've been working on lately (actually a No. 4T and a No. 5) that had both been used with very loose front guard screw and both had been damaged inspite of extremely tight fitting draws. Respectfully,

Ridolpho