Inherent Weakness ?

[Edward Horton]

Ed with French soldiers... I HAVE to see that!

OK, so I lied, the French Foreign Legion wouldn’t let me take all my British Enfield books with me, so the only thing left to do is try and educate the “Dynamic Duo” as much as possible on the difference between “inherent weakness” and abuse, the lack of knowledge and just plane stupidity.

Oil or grease or water in the Enfield cartridge chamber.
When the chamber is clean, the cartridge shell expands on firing to be in intimate contact with the chamber walls, but if grease or water is present an incompressible cushion is formed between the shell and chamber such that the shock of the explosion no longer permits the shell to take up intimate contact by fully expanding to the chamber walls, further the lubricating effect on the shell adds about nine tons to the square inch extra pressure on the bolt-head, and hence the barrel vibration will vary.
Conclusions from the above:
(a) Remove oil from both bore and chamber before firing the first shot.
(b) Every precaution should be taken to keep ammunition and chamber free from water when firing in rain.
(c) If bullet grease is used care must be taken to ensure that none is wiped off on to the chamber when loading.

At this point it is interesting to compare the effects of wet cartridges on different rifles.
(i) P-14-owing to the way the bolt is locked on this rifle, wet cartridges will move the centre of the group no more than one point higher.
(ii) No.4 Rifle-Wet cartridges cause a four point change in the group centre. The extra shock is taken fairly evenly, owing to the strengthened action-body and good groups can still be formed with this rifle.
(iii) S.M.L.E.-Wet cartridges cause the centre of the group to form about five points higher. The group size cannot be relied upon to the same extent as with the No.4 rifle, as the extra shock is not distributed so evenly in the action- body and in extreme cases the action body has been known to fracture on the left hand side.
(v) S.M.L.E. with B.S.A. heavy barrel-group change will be about 12 points higher.

So go ahead and oil and grease your cartridges on your SMLE Enfield and fracture the left hand side of the action body because of EXCESS BOLT THRUST.



Stupidity is the major cause of all “inherent weakness” problems,
and all the knowledge in the world is written in books and all you have to do is read…………. RTFM.