More Bad Press For The Enfield

[Alan de Enfield]

It looks as if the bad press is starting to spread.

"Sporting Rifle"
March 2010 Edition page 85

The article is about shooting in the rain :

"Water in your action or on your ammunition will cause elevated and variable chamber pressures. At best this will mean erratic elevation, at worst a stretched action. Lee Enfield actions are notorious for this. A No4 shooting 7.62 ammunition is already doing a job a little beyond its design parameters.
This coupled with questionable gunsmithing and significantly undersized bores when the rifle was 'converted' from .303 gives a poor starting point in the safety stakes. Add to that an action full of rain and wet ammunition and you may be heading towards disaster.

For a ferrous alloy, such as steel used in a rifle action, as long as stresses do not exceed a particular level the fatigue life of the action can be regarded as infinite. But we do not know what level of stress that is, so we must assume that any stressing of the action beyond its design parameters is dangerous. The crucial point is that stressing the action beyond this limit has a cumulative effect, which ultimately leads to failure. The more we overstress the action the closer we come to that failure.

Dozens of times I've seen shooters shooting Long Lee Enfields and SMLE's, particularly at the Trafalgar Meeting in the pouring rain, making no effort to keep the rain off their ammunition or out of what is an even weaker action than a No4. To cap all this, when the rifle passed into civilian hands it was subject to a deliberate overload at the proof house. The fact that it didn't give way then is no guarantee it wont give way tomorrow"

There then follows a photograph of a No4 action with the by-line :

"This post-war No4 action is the best of the Lee Enfield bunch but if you overstress it you risk your life"

I, for one, would like some evidence of the fact that LE actions are 'notorious' for this !!!!!

If anyone else feels strongly enough to write in, the magazine is published by :

Blaze Publishing
Laurence House
Morrell Street
Leamington Spa
Warwickshire
CV32 5SZ

Email : info@blazepublishing.co.uk
Tel : 01926 339808

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[Edward Horton]

Alan de Enfield

I emailed you and told you that you were conversing with "inherent weakness" Alfred AKA GunnerSam in another forum.

In this same forum "inherent weakness" Alfred said he was in contact with the British NRA and "other sources" warning them about shooting the Enfield in the rain and the .308/7.62 conversions.

Common sense by the reader is required when reading this material printed by uninformed gullible sources.
It is also my understanding that wars and conflicts are not called off due to rain.

I can also tell you the Enfield Rifle was proof tested with oiled proof rounds to increase bolt thrust to seat the bolt lugs and bolt head. I can also tell you that after this proof test the Enfield rifle was checked to see if the head space had increased excessively.

Oil and water on your ammunition and in your chamber can increase the wear and head space on ANY rifle, BUT it does not cause the Enfield rifle to explode.
(Just ask your veterans who fired them under wet combat conditions)

I can also tell you that here in the U.S. there are no warning stickers on our bananas telling us that if you step on a banana peel you can slip and break you neck.


Signed
Ed the Agitator

[Beerhunter]

Where on earth do they get these people who write this scaremongering rubbish - the NRA?

[Alan de Enfield]

Where on earth do they get these people who write this scaremongering rubbish - the NRA?

The contributing author is "Chris White".

What is also a little bit 'off' is the comment about "questionable gunsmiths", I suppose he is refering to RSAF Enfield and Parker Hale and their various 7.62 No4 based rifles (L39, Enforcer, Envoy, etc etc)

No doubt there have been some 'questionable' gunsmiths and home conversions but one would expect the MOD, RSAF Enfield and Parker Hale to have enough knowledge and experience not be lumped in with the 'questionable' crowd.

[Peter Laidler]

You could write them a letter and tell them that the UK MoD doesn't have any record (so far as their records go nowadays) of a Lee Enfield breaking due to water on the ammunition or the rifle. You could also say that Malaya had/still has its fair share of wet weather ......, in fact it has daily monsoons that you can set your wristwatch by. In fact, monsoons to end all monsoons, that would shove big armoured Bedford QL and RL trucks off the laterite tracks with their ferocity and the little Lee Enfields seem to have behaved admirably there.

Of course, I might have been missing something but I certainly didn't keep my rifle under a groundsheet or a poncho. Maybe the editor knows something we don't know. Maybe you could ask Chris White to contact me at the Small Arms School................................

[villiers]

Scientific literature is of one accord on the damaging effects of water. Moisture can damage the skin and brain damage caused by light rain is not unknown. It is now common knowledge that Lee Enfield Rifles (especially the 7.62 adapted No.4s) can easily be disolved in water causing the bolt to evaporate. But when I lost my rifle on exercise in the late 1950s, this explanation was not accepted by the authorities and a miscarriage of justice was the inevitable result. In these enlightened times, we must congratulate Chris White and his erudite magazine Sporting Rifle on their campaign to enlighten the yet uninformed public.

[bradtx]

Alan, Even though I think the info is either bogus or overly a CYA article, thanks for posting it.

While I wasn't the first in my area to shoot a L-E in mil-surp competition, I attended enough for other shooters to become aquainted with me and my L-Es. There was a notion that L-Es will fly apart with the least bit of encouragement. That has been corrected in my small corner of the world simply by how well I did (usually okay), nothing blew up and letting them fire my rifles afterwards.

All in all I'll pit my inferior two piece stocked, weak actioned L-Es against any mil-surp in the world, and that includes my 'overly stressed' L42A1.

Brad

PS There have been a couple of POF rounds go through the Mk.2 that made a 7.62 NATO round in the L42 feel like a .22 short and actually brought tears to my eyes without any damage whatsoever (is that one word?).

PPS Okay, there was a bit of a struggle to remove the empty cases.

[Edward Horton]

I think I found the connection between the banana peel and the Enfield publications in the U.K.

In 1966 Donovan in the U.K. had the hit song "Mellow Yellow", these writers in the U.K. must have been smoking dried banana peel when they wrote their articles.

Mellow Yellow - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rumor has it these Enfield writers frequent the coffee shop below and then travel around in their Yellow Submarine writing gun articles.

[PrinzEugen]

Trouble is it's all based on bad science. The people (person?) who believes the 7.62 action is weak (and let's face it, it could well be him who's behind the whole thing, including the NRA notice and this article) basically spend their entire time trawling for 'evidence' which backs up their viewpoint, and ignoring any which doesn't. I mean, what's more persuasive - dealers and armorers who actually have had hundreds if not thousands of these rifles through their hands and fired and tested as their daily job, or cut and paste anecdotal stuff brought together by trawling the internet, and without any attempt whatsoever to verify or conduct their own tests, then put forward as evidence to back up the argument. Science vs a 'dodgy dossier'...

[me2]

Jeeeezzzeee! I guess a proven battle rifle with over 100 years lineage must NOT be fired in the rain!!! As Peter so aptly pointed out, the Malayan penninsula was about as wet as wet can be. These "experts" need to crawl back under the rock from whence they came!