I appreciate your honesty Patrick. I totally understand there are no guarantees, especially when we are dealing with a 100+ year old rifle. Just hoping to draw on some of the combined experience here to steer me in the right direction. The bolt is mismatched but will not close on the disc field gauge and no go that I have. Using the method in Rodger wadham’s book, the recoil lugs have good contact, so I’m not too concerned there. Just trying to be cautious as up to this point I have been lucky with my enfield purchases and have had no real external corrosion or pitting (same can’t be said for all the inside of the barrels!).

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Woodsy I can’t imagine what it would be like to walk into a gun shop and have a brand new SMLE, in full military configuration, straight from the factory! I’m sure they must have been so common no one paid much attention to them. I don’t even want to know what you would have paid for one in 1963, I don’t think I could handle it.