Enfield Sniper

[Peter Laidler]

This is for Tower06............ If you already have a 'No4T' rifle, stripped of its pads, then you face a real uphill struggle because the chances of finding a set of pads is pretty remote. And a set that exactly match your threaded holes in the body are...., well...., even pretty more remote to say the very least. BUT there is a way and the engineers among you will soon see where I'm going.

What you need to do Tower (and anyone else out there in difficult land) is to get a set of pads made up to size WITHOUT THE SCREW HOLES. You then soft solder and cramp the front pad to the side of the body (or cramp it tightly to the body across the centre hole). You get a concentric centre punch ground to the EXACT core diameter of the 4BA screw holes in the body. Then, supporting the pad, gently but firmly centre punch through the threaded hole into the pad. Remove the pad and using a 4BA clearance drill, drill through the pad where you have marked the holes.

That's a very simple method of reverse engineering

As for the rear pad then using measurements taken from the rifle, mark out where the large 1/4BSF hole will be and bore this out with a 1/4" drill. There's a bit of leeway here..... Now, using this hole, bolt the pad to the body side.

Here is the problem now because you cannot get the nice new specially made centre punch into the hole to mark the pad. But what you CAN do is to machine the threaded portion of a 4BA screw to a concentric point. NOW, put a engineers marking blue onto the sharp point of the screw and carefully insert it into the threaded hole fron the INSIDE of the body until it just touches and therefore marks the exact centre of the required screw hole. Now do the same to the second screw hole.

Now drill through and countersink the outside. I know that this works because a batch of stripped L42 barrelled actions were released into the UK gun trade in the early 80's and I oversaw a friend of mine doing it. I realise that we had a large machine shop and he was another long time Armourer, but he did it.

There. Now Tower06, you are at the same start point as those who are about to embark on a damned good, reasonable accurate replica No4 sniper (let's not cal the replicas No4T's but No4 snipers.....)