Another "treacle rifle" - FTR No.1MKIII*

[bigduke6]

Looking good Patrick, I,m not going to to teach you how to suck eggs, but at that stage and you mention the scratches try the damp tea towel and the hot iron to raise a few of them.

[tbonesmith]

The wood looks to me like it's been scraped, that's how they were done weren't they Mr Laidler? I've got a couple of No1 butts in my spares that look just like that, and that's how they look after I scrape them, but I sand the "streaks" out as far as possible.

[Peter Laidler]

Yep, you're right TBone. We scraped the woodwork down before we did anything. Those that were good could almost get a perfect finish with just the scraper. But just beware of letting the scraper drop into the band etc recesses. This will create rounded edges - the sign that an anateur has set about it. Preserve the edges at all costs

[Patrick Chadwick]

The wood looks to me like it's been scraped,

Yes, but by a bodger.
Properly scraped wood does not look like that. I have described how to do it and shown the results in the series on the Argentino Rolling Block. If you scrape with a flexible scraper - and it's a good idea to have several, with different degrees of curvature - you can flex it in your fingers to follow the curves and adjust the angle to have less scrape/more boning action. The final surface is smooth and hard, as the surface fibers have been ironed flat, and you can polish straight onto it. Which is what was done on fine furniture in the 18th century, but has been forgotten in the days of sandpaper and electric sanders. What I have here is not just scratches, but downright gouges, and if the fibers have been torn by gouging, then the steam iron method has little effect.

I think I will concentrate on shooting first, and only worry about the woodwork when the rifle is performing well. Even now, it is more pleasant to handle than before the varnish was removed.

[Patrick Chadwick]

I have been steam-ironing, scraping and boning, but the wood is not yet "fit for public consumption".

I wanted most of all to see how it shoots - whether it's worth the bother. So here is the first 100-meter target from "Fianna":
:
Attachment 36487

The vertical spread is largely an expression of my difficulty with a blade sight in changing light conditions. I would not blame it on the rifle or ammo at this stage.

The horizontal spread (tighter than the 10-ring) is very promising. The rifle has been set up "by the book", and passes my personal acceptance test for service rifles -a grouping quality that would place all in the 9 after correcting the point of impact. The blade is far over to the right, so the correction will bring it back towards the center - indicating that something was maladjusted beforehand.

I would be very interested to hear how tightly other Mk IIIs from forum members can group!

[jmoore]

...I would be very interested to hear how tightly other Mk IIIs from forum members can group!

I think I have a No.1 Mk.III* entry in the Milsurps 2012 Competition.

Regardless, a SMLE should be able to do quite well in good "as issued" trim- IF you can find an ammo it likes!

ETA: Wow all the way back in March! Post #4. Time to do another target. Might even have to hunt with it this year. It's been a while. It IS the first rifle with which I drew a bead on a deer.

[Clash77]

My MkIII is very picky with ammo. It was exceptional with the limited amount of surplus I had. It's terrible with Remington, and okay with Winchester. It likes the 174gr Hornady, but I only use that for hunting since it's expensive. I waiting on a couple of boxes of Privi to arrive so I can see how well it does with those.

[stevebc]

The above is based on observed markings on Irish rifles; with this rifle I have 78 rifles in the SMLE database.

Perhaps mine is #79?
I've a 1916 BSA No.1Mk.III* with a SSA stamped trigger guard that I finally got around to removing the rear handguard from. Here are the pics:






That's the only place I've seen the FF, but I haven't disassembled it any further.

[Frederick303]

#80, very nice example of a scrubbed Irish rifle.

Thanks for posting, 33 dated rifles are one of the less common years

[stevebc]

I'm rather new to this- do you mean scrubbed as in previous numbers/stamps ground off and new numbers applied? But it doesn't look as though anyone has done anything like that. Would you normally expect to see obvious signs of such scrubbing?
The rifle is all-matching: nose cap, barrel, receiver, and bolt handle.