Enfield P14 head space help

[22SqnRAE]

G'Day Ed,

I'll see if I can assist you with a few points.

1. The British Army has always had only 2 headspace gauges issued to the Armourers from REME: 0.064" "Go" and 0.074" "No-Go." There is no other gauge for Service requirement.
2. The passing of Go is given.
3. Should the bolt close on No-Go, then the headspace is beyond specification and requires further attention of the Armourer. The rifle is taken out of service and refitted with a bolt that gives appropriate gauge clearance.
4. The Forster gauges are made to the SAMI specifications. Despite the American's authority on matters firearm, the SAMI specs do not account for the long established firearms manufacturing industries in the UK and European countries. These specs are agreed to by modern commercial manufacturers who are interested in getting away with producing only what is necessary to remain safe and be sufficiently repetitive to keep buyers and users relatively happy. Consequently, the chamber dimensions for SAMI and Enfield/BSA/Long Branch/Savage Stevens/Lithgow/Ishapore are not identical.
5. Your "Field" gauge will be 0.067" headspace. This figure is an artificial measurement preferred by Target Rifle shooters form the 1950's and 60's who used to use Military Issued cartridges. In order to maintain match grade consistency, they weighed up their cartridges and grouped them, measured their rim thickness and grouped them further and then shot a 21 (plus 4 sighters) match with "consistent" size and mass Military Issued cartridges to eliminate further inconsistency.
6. The 0.067" gauge allows a headspace tolerance of... 0.003" Meaning, there's a long way off the 0.074 sloppy, loose, bordering on damaging (to brass) limit. Miles, nearly....
7. Your Field Gauge showed that while you were beyond that measurement, there's no indication (yet) that you're in dangerous territory. It's just an inconvenience for reloading.

I'll go and dig out a book and see if I can find the bolt lug dimensions for you.

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