Maltby Production

[Peter Laidler]

Maltby made rifles were highlighted as those likely to be fitted with barrels made by the earliest form of hammering over a rifled mandrill by Accles and Pollock. These barrels had the nocks form section pressed on and pinned with two taper pins about 2" from the breech end. They were then finally machined as a whole in the usual way. The problem was that during the breeching up, the closeness of the....... blah blah blah of....... breech threads, shoulders........ the pinned reinforce section would come slightly loose and you'd see the pins and the join between the two sections of barrel..

Technical instructions were issued and as a result of several failures, these barrels were deemed to be obsolete and to be withdrawn ASAP. The trouble is that these barrels were all supposedly marked III on the breeching up flat. Alas, they might have been but as. the....... anyway.......... So unless the III mark is present and not obscured, you can't see the joint and can't see see evidence of the pins, you don't know whether it is one!d of identifying them.

Having said that, if none of the features are visible, who really cares. I have only seen a few plus the class room examples

Information

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[Sentryduty]

Technical instructions were issued and as a result of several failures, these barrels were deemed to be obsolete and to be withdrawn ASAP.

That entire post is a fascinating bit of technical history, but outside of the service based examples, I gather this must not be a widespread issue today? Prior to just reading this I had no idea there were (potential) barrel failure issues on the Lee-Enfield platform, and given the rate that both information and mis-information spread across the internet, it must be a very uncommon occurrence?

This wouldn't be something to add to the checklist of things "Every person should inspect before buying a used Maltby produced Lee-Enfield" would it?