Replacing a Charger Bridge no1 Mk3

[Bruce_in_Oz]

About fitting a new charger guide:

One of the more interesting issues with SMLEs is that of dimensional variation. This is particularly noticeable when comparing British-made rifles to Lithgow production.

A major contributing factor is that there is a difference between the “Enfield Inch” and the “Pratt and Whitney Inch”.This came to light when early-production Australian rifles were shipped to Britain for evaluation. In the archives at Lithgow, there was once a chart, which was essentially a graphical representation of the differences between the two.

In 1926, this was more thoroughly investigated and documents showing the differences between British and Australian component specifications were produced. From my notes, these drawings were numbered: A.1833 and A. 1837. (the “A” refers to the document size, not any sequence information). There may be others, but that is what I found some years ago. I also noted that these drawings often showed dimensions to one ten-thousandth of an inch, but no tolerances; very strange.

From memory, none of the differences were huge, but could cause gauging and some interchangeability problems. (Not that SMLEs are exactly “interchangeable” in modern terms.)

Charger guides should be available, rivets can be made and things can be made to work without too much drama if care is taken.

Good luck.