Lee Enfield Aluminum stock

[Brit plumber]

Rather than these ally bits being a cast copy of the wood forearm, could the ally forearm actually be the pattern to make the wood? I've seen ally patterns where the machine follows the line of it and cuts the wood copy exactly. I wonder if some ones got a hold of some and fitted them to rifles? Just a thought.

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[Thunderbox]

Rather than these ally bits being a cast copy of the wood forearm, could the ally forearm actually be the pattern to make the wood? I've seen ally patterns where the machine follows the line of it and cuts the wood copy exactly. I wonder if some ones got a hold of some and fitted them to rifles? Just a thought.

The pattern for No4 butts (in a photo of Long Branch factory) and L1A1 butts (photo from Enfield) show that those patterns were about 200% size scaled.

I assume that forends were probably cut from at least two patterns - an inside and an outside? Given the type of machinery at the time, i imagine the forends were shaped in multiple operations.

[Bruce_in_Oz]

Today's related trivia:

SMLE fore ends started out as a long sort-of rectangular block called a "flitch". These were seasoned for years (with any luck) before machining.

As near as I can understand from the document fragments I have seen, the flitch was trued and then several holes were drilled for clamping and indexing.

The interior was cut first. This is exactly the same as commercial timber stockmaking; it is a lot easier to hold a square-ish chunk of wood on a router table than it is a fancy shaped one. Commercial fibreglass stocks are built from the outside in; an afternoon at the McMillan factory was most educational.

The barrel channel, with its taper and all its clearances for sight beds, barrel bands, etc. was rough cut and then a long, specially set up mandrel fitted with all of the odd-shaped cutters was used to form the final channel profile. The excess wood at either end of the flitch was used to hold the fore end when it went into the copy lathe. These could transfer the external profile from a metal "master" to several stocks at a time. If anyone has a copy of the complete process it would make interesting reading. A picture of the actual machine would be nice, too

Butts were produced similarly. The stepped through-hole for the butt screw and oil bottle were drilled first. This then provided a handy location for the spindle /mandrel that held the butt whilst it was in the copy lathe. I am guessing, but there had to be additional setups for profiling the seat for the buttplate and drilling the hole for the pullthrough weight.

The handguards were made in a single long piece, then separated using a fine saw. Note that, at least in Australian manufacture, there was an allowance for the front handguard to be made with a parallel barrel channel instead of the specified barrel-matching taper. This meant that the front handguard channel could be made by using a router and table instead of a fancy and expensive, long tapered cutter and specialized table. The only downside was that this method resulted in even less timber supporting the front cap than on the standard model. Bonus trivia: the front caps seem to have retained the tiny thread in the mounting holes even when riveting became the normal method of fixing them to the handguard.

Slazenger (Aust) used the same timber and techniques on the L1A1 furniture; the laminated handguards required a bit of new technology.