No.8 failure to fire

[Lee Enfield]

The BIG problem with the No8 was down to the TA and Cadet Forces DS/instructors. They would insist on perpetuating the old urban myth that the .22" waxed ammo meant that the rifle didn't need cleaning, would clean itself, would clean your shoes and boots if you left them neatly in the corridor, make the bed, sweep the floor and.......... You get my drift here chaps. All a load of old bollo......, crap of course. While the barrel wouldn't rust as such or corrode the rifle still needed to be cleaned of all the gunge around the breech and the bore rodded through every week or so AND examined for bulges.

While my son was in the CCF at his school and for many, many years afterwards me and the TA Permanent Staff WO from the training team used to spend a day going around the CCF's and ACF's (and some of the small TA's) by arrangement and sorting them out, CHS, and test the FPP occasionally. Once you're on top of them all they were trouble free. The only trouble was guess what.............? A lot of the DS used to know more about the maintenance and inner workings of the trigger mechanism than me and 'Mac' McGxxxxxxxy. Happy days!

...much like the local cadet corps who are (were anyway, don't know that they have firearms anymore) taught to cock and snap the C.No7 repeatedly onto an empty chamber to demonstrate that they are empty... It took a lot of cringing, begging, cajoling and crying to convince the staff instructors to modify their drill...

In the "civilian world" where people have to repair their own (or borrowed) property, the first thing anyone who deals with rimfire is taught in my experience is how potentially damaging an inertial firing pin is to a rimfire chamber...

Foolishly perhaps, I had previously wondered how anything could mechanically go wrong with a C.No7 which would force the unit to send the rifle back for cannibalization and conversion to deactivated status...