Tale of an 1899 LEC (Lee Enfield Carbine) refurbishing. (Lots of pics!)

[louthepou]

Hi everyone,

Haven't been posting in a while, life has kept me busy for the past year or so. Still, I have finally been able to spend some time on this LEC belonging to a fellow named Gary.

He trusted me with an interesting project; refurbishing a sporterized LEC.

This carbine came to me with a cut forend, no handguard, but Gary did find the middle band and the nose cap, with screws.

And, a very kind man named William agreed to lend me his complete LEC so I could use it as a guide. What a gentleman!

I started this job with a No1Mk3* forend; the action is very similar between the LEC and No1Mk3, so that was a really nice shortcut. I needed to plug a few wholes, and hide the cut-off sections in which the rear handguard retaining clip and rear sight guard would have been found on the No1Mk3.





Then, I needed to work on the overall length, shape and thickness of the forend. Again, having a model to compare, and on which I could measure different sections, was very helpful. I mostly used a band sander for the rough, then rasps, files etc. for fine work. I was surprised to see how much material I had to remove (the shop was covered with wood dust...)




I cut the forend to length, then I carved the front tip and drilled the screw hole so that the nose cap could fit:



Then, I had to fabricate the handguard. I sourced a chunk of walnut at a local fine wood store (great placewith tons of super fancy exotic wood, etc). I found a leftover chunk that I cut with a table saw, to get a piece roughly the right length, width and height. I used a router to carve the barrel chanel, then used tha band sander to shape the exterior side.

Here's a picture of the leftover of the original wood chunk (left), a spare length cut to size, and the router'ed and sanded part before fine work.


The fine work involved carving the front and rear portions of the handguard. This took time, expecially the front because it needs a tight fit in the nose cap, and there's not much wood keeping the handguard stable up front.


The rear has a funny shape which is still rough in this picture:


Here is the current status of the project. The handguard fits, with the nose cap and middle band. Fine sanding is next, and then linseed oil... oh and I need to work on the butt stock too. The original is still good and won't require much.





I hope you enjoyed seeing this progress report. Cheers!

Lou

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