A nice looking No4 hunting carbine conversion

[crsoll]

Hi, thanks for that, all comments appreciated. The whole purpose of this was to make it a 'pseudo-miltary' piece, and not just another sporterised no4. Point taken about the large cut outs, but they definitely do not catch your fingers. The next prototype has smaller holes more in keeping with the military theme. These no4's need to be ventilated to let the moisture out, I've seen plenty pitted badly under the hand guard. There is no obvious weakening, the gun can be picked up by the vent holes and there is no deflection at those points. The weakest point on a no4 hand guard is where it fits into the rear retaining ring, the wood is only about 1mm thick at that point, and then again at the middle band where it registers on only about 5mm of wood. This top hand guard is very short and rugged in comparison with the original, and the extended width of the front band is designed to spread the load and hold it down more firmly onto the fore stock.

The flash hiders are repros and easily purchased, I think the bayonet lug should probably be removed, but the gun looses some balance by doing so.

Working on one with a pistol grip stock at the moment, but that's another $700. These bits can be purchased from Survival Arms in Australia., See image below in mockup in our workshop.

Trust me, no offence taken, love the comments. Please suggest improvements in keeping with the theme. Just trying to get the young ones interested in Lee Enfields again, and it is certainly creating a lot of interest from that sector.

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[crsoll]

Working on one with a pistol grip stock at the moment, but that's another $700. These bits can be purchased from Survival Arms in Australia., See image below in mockup in our workshop.

Attachment 40287

Finally got this completed. Bought this as a no4 mk2 that had been converted by the previous owner to 7.62 Nato, using the Sterling Conversion and Canadian barrel - not a genuine rifle by any means, so out with the hacksaw.

Cut it down to 16.7" barrel so it sits level with your shoulder when scrambling through the NZ bush. This has always been the number one bug bear with the typical hunting rifle, they catch on everything if sported over the shoulder.

The butt is most interesting being a skeleton stock designed to fit an AR15. The adapter to Enfield is worth about $250 NZ alone, needs no fitting, and attaches with an allen key.

I decided to screw the recoil tube straight into the enfield adapter and then shorten the skeleton frame back 60mm to give hand clearance for the pistol grip. (compare with the original photo in the last post). This created the problem that the force generated by the recoil was supported only at the top of the butt plate, and the bottom gusset transferred none of the load back to the rifle. To get around this we manufactured a sleeve to bridge the gap between the AR15 boss and the enfield adaptor, made of aluminium, and Dura coated matt black. There is also an additional 15mm spacer to lengthen the recoil tube, giving the overall correct dimensions of the original stock.

Inside the recoil tube is a long spring and weight design to take part of the recoil energy before you do - clever idea, but will it work?

Because the cheek rest sits higher than the original, this is ideal for a scope, and I have to say that when you bring the rifle up, what you were looking at in the bush comes straight up to the middle of the cross hairs without thinking.

The scope is a 1-3 vari-power Weaver, ideal for bush hunting, so you can shoot with both eyes open in an instance if need be.

The rifle has ended up quite heavy at 4.3kg with sling and mag attached, but the balance is perfect and rotates around the pistol grip and into your shoulder effortlessly. I can see now why the military went to this style of assault weapon.

Now all I have to do is go out and shoot it, when I get some time off.