Lee Enfield MkV Questions

[Patrick Chadwick]

I agree with the previous contributors (and I do actually have a Mk.V myself): all looks OK apart from the front band. This can be described as "pure unobtanium" and a reasonable job has been done with the replacement. So don't fret about getting an original.

As already posted: relax and enjoy! My Mk.V was functionally new, but well dinged from being shunted around for decades. Yours may well be the same, i.e. the internal condition will be a lot better than the surface of the wood leads to to expect.

A point to check: the foresight blade has a stake mark that no longer matches the mounting block. As the sights would have originally been set up quite carefully - with service ammo - before the mark was applied, this suggests that the backsight moved at some time and the blade was drifted to compensate.

On my "shunted" example, the rather flimsy backsight ladder had been knocked skewy, and it took a bit of patience to straighten it out. Check that the (rather fragile) arms of the ladder are still dead straight and parallel AND square to the front end (i.e. not a parallelogram shape). You need a proper engineer's square for this - unaided eyeballs are not good enough.

On your example the slider also seems to be skewy, which is an indication that it is loose. With GREAT care you can pinch the slider slots a gnat's whisker or two, so that it is a closer fit to the ladder, and this might put the aiming point back (or at least closer) to where it was originally.