reloading 303.

[Peter Laidler]

Once again, I have to chuckle at Ed's comments. When I was involved in the minigun trials I remembered seeing 7.62mm brass just pouring down the tube and into these whacking great 44 gallon plastic oil drums. We filled up drum after drum with the stuff, firing most of the day during the series of timed and technical trials. There's no doubt that we were firing it faster than they were loading it, that's for sure as when it overflowed the drums, we were shovelling it up. Happy days........... I took my son to one afternoon of the trial and let him have a go with a tethered gun with a burst of 2,000 rounds or so........

We all used to sit around with a cup of tea at the end of the day to unwind and get the cordite smell out of our system and discuss bits of the trial. Son Robert, who had been helping to sweep up and shovel the brass into the huge boxes, quite innocently asked if someone had to take it home to reload it and if they DID, could he come and help for some pocket money!

The trial Officer said that it was a kind thought, but we could UNload it faster than he or even Radway Green could load it!

Information

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[Brian Dick]

Hey Ed, those buckets full of .303 brass look strangely familiar although obviously allot cleaner. Thank God for the Lewis, Vickers and Bren, eh??

[Edward Horton]

Hey Ed, those buckets full of .303 brass look strangely familiar although obviously allot cleaner. Thank God for the Lewis, Vickers and Bren, eh??

I'm sorry Brian the 500 Greek HXP cases I bought from you have already been cleaned, tumbled, weighed, bagged and boxed by case weight and year of manufacture.

The five gallon buckets of brass are "strangly familiar" because they are 5.56x45 mm NATO cases (.223 Remington) donated by our local Swat Teams who were too lazy to police up their brass at the range. The swat teams would line up abreast at the 50 yard line and walk aligned and in-mass to the target boards firing and reloading.

The Swat Teams ruined most of my shooting day as I "sadly" walked back and forth from the benches and the targets over and over again "policing up the littered shooting range. This happened so many times my gas mileage dropped off that month as I drove my truck home from the range with the rear end of my truck sagging and almost dragging the ground.

Sadly the last rifle I bought was a Stevens 200 in .223 and not an Enfield, my heart is broken at the sacrifices I must make for my shooting hobby.

Did I tell you that you can adjust the headspace on the Stevens 200 by just loosening the barrel nut below.

[smellie]

Thanks for the tutorial on your O-ring method, Ed.

I have been shooting Lee-Enfields for more than 40 years myself and I really get tired of people telling me about those weak old actions which murder brass. The separating brass is caused, inevitably, by case stretch. With Ed's method, you reduce firing stretch to nil just as long as your pressures are sane.

The OTHER cause of case stretch is the expander ball of your reloading dies. The sizing die sizes the casing back down to below minimum size and then, when you lower the case on your press, the expander ball drags back through the neck, stretching it. I have found that some dies actually produce MORE stretch at the neck, from a single firing, than you will get at the back end from an ill-fitting casing. This happens EVEN if you are neck-sizing only, as you should be doing for brass which now is fitted precisely to YOUR chamber. Of course, when you use one of these over-length cases, it pinches the bullet in place because it is much too long, pressure spikes, you get a flyer at the target and, if your case is anything except perfect at the back end, it nips off because the increased pressure has made your action 'spring'. You can reduce THIS cause of case separations very nearly to zero just by lubricating the insides of your case necks before sizing them.

You now have .303 brass that will last just as long as any other calibre, given that you are not running absolute barn-burner loads. LEE Collet Dies are a great help on reloading for long life with your brass, but combining Ed's O-rings with the collet dies, or combining the O-ring method with lubing the insides of the necks before neck-sizing, will give you brass which will last much longer than you thought possible.

Have fun!

[chevy1981enfield1943]

geez, I've been reloading .303 for almost but not yet two years now and I've used the fire forming and Lee collet in my excercise and have gone from 2-3" groups at 100 yards using commercial factory store bought stuff but after practicing FFing and neck sizing my groups have decreased to 1.5" at the most. Now seeing how there is no "hour glass" done to the case and the o-ring centers the system, I am a little anxious to see my results using these methods. Thank you very much gentlemen!!!

[Edward Horton]

no4mk1shooter

Just remember that Smellie the Canadian is older and wiser than I am and also gives out very good advice and has a lot of Enfield experience.

In smellie's very first military formation, Smellie was written up for having Moose dung on his flint lock rifle. and they had not even invented brass cartridge cases or rubber o-rings yet.

[ireload2]

A lot of the banana shaped cases come from the fact that the front end of the bolt is hanging out in the wind with no lateral support with a bolt head mounted in losey goosey threads.
Then the asymmetrical receiver takes all the load just behind the magazine box. The result is sort like stretching an irregular rubber band. The front end of the bolt trys to yaw to the right aided by the extractor pushing side ways on the slot in the barrel.

[Edward Horton]

In the 1970s the American Rifleman Magazine did a long article on warped banana shaped cases fired in the M14 rifle. The culprit was small base diameter cases and uneven case wall thickness, this caused the off center case to expand more on one side when fired and when resized the cases warped and pushed the base of the case off center with the bore of the rifle.

The American Rifleman Magazine didn't blame the M14 rifle for having a losey goosey bolt. The fault lay with the cartridge case and its manufacturing methods.

Below you can see how the larger base diameter Prvi Partizan cartridge case and thicker case walls can "PREVENT" a warped banana shaped case. The Prvi Partizan cases have a larger base diameter and thicker case walls compared to the Greek HXP case which were fired in the "SAME" Enfield Rifle.



The losey goosey No.4 bolt head below was caused by bolt thrust wear on the mating surfaces between the bolt body and bolt head. Please remember to remove all oil and grease from your chamber before firing your *Enfield rifle.

*Warning printed in the 1929 British Textbook of Small Arms.

[Bruce_in_Oz]

If your bolt head is "hanging out in the wind" at the point of firing, you may have some serious problems with "galloping decrepitude" in your rifle.

The very front end of the bolt head is SUPPOSED to be inside the rear breeching ring of the receiver at the point of lock-up. In this position, for the bolt to be blown out if the receiver, the right side rail must stretch a fair bit. Mr Hatcher and Mr Ackley demonstrated this method of rifle dis-assembly whilst comparing action strengths decades ago. The right-side rail is the weakest part of a Lee-Enfield action. You will NEVER shear off the right-side bolt lug nor blow the rear of the receiver out before the right-side rail stretches and releases the pressure under a modicum of control.

Under lesser assault, the extractor may disappear to parts unknown and the fired case will assume an interesting configuration, but the action will not fail explosively.

However, if your rifle is 60-plus years old, and has not been near an ordnance depot for at least fifty years, all bets are off. The combination of worn components, "reconditioned" chambers and undersized brass is a recipe for excitement.

Headspace is the first thing to check; and the closer to minimum the better. The good-old .303 being a rimmed case means that this is simply the distance between the rear of the barrel and the front of the bolt face. This is much easier to establish than the relationship between known planes and imaginary lines on conical surfaces in rimless jobs.

Boltheads should not be able to be rotated more than 20 degrees past alignment with the main rib / RHS lug on the bolt. And so on. There are numerous references in the Knowledge Library and in tree-ware publications.

Very few of us own mint originals of these rifles. Using them causes wear, abusing them causes damage. I would like to continue using them for many years, however, as with vintage aircraft, there is a point beyond which one should not push one's luck.

[spinecracker]

Thanks to this excellent discussion, I feel that I will have to begin to reload in the very near future. I will be ransacking the local libraries for books on reloading, then putting together a very basic reloading kit (classic Lee Loader, good scales, etc). As I do not get to the range as often as I would wish (once or twice a month), there is no need for an expensive setup right now. I have just finished shimming and cork bedding my 1949 FTRed No.4 Mk.1 (as per the very clear instructions I gleaned from this forum), and it will be interesting to see how she handles with commercial ammo versus reloads.