Advice needed ... bolt opens on firing!

[spentprimer]

Good Morning,

It is 5:35 a.m. local time and it is time to get my English Springer Spaniels fed before I go put on the feedbag myself when I meet up with Scott and Tommy.

Peter, with the broad range of experiences of all you fellows here on the forum, and no one ever experiencing bolt handle movement to this extent, it is easy to understand the level of doubt about what I have reported. If I were in your shoes, I would doubt it as well given the background of all of you gentlemen. That back ground is the reason I stopped here first for some assistance, as there are numerous forums with varying degrees of knowledge on the internet. As I stated in my first post, I am new to Lee-Enfield rifles, this is my first I have owned, the first I have held and while I personally have not shot it yet, I like the rifle very much. While this thread can be difficult to follow, as there have been many inputs to solve my dilema going in several different directions, my responses have been truthful. It was a week ago today that the rifle was fired and the bolt handle moved to horizontal. I have never seen that happen on any bolt action in my lifetime. Having been an active outdoorsman and competitive shooter for many years and seeing many other people shooting their firearms in shooting events and hearing their stories, I think I can safely say all of these other people have never had an occurance such as this ever arise either.

So, after we meet for breakfast, Scott, Tommy and I are going to the range to shoot and with Scott's HD cellphone movie camera, we should have some visual evidence, assuming that the problem wasn't the position of the Moon in conjunction with Mars during the Autumnal Equinox or some d*** thing that I can't explain. Much like the problem with the rifle. I will be checking back in after the range session when I get home and I will take a few photos of the rifle/parts for visual inspection, perhaps they will shed some light.

Thanks for everone's input and patience with the rifle and me.

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[WarPig1976]

Umm,,yah forget the duct tape!! Even though I have no clue what's going on with this rifle,,, I just have to say Fatman is a animal.!!,,My man is fearless.

[srtolly1]

Umm,,yah forget the duct tape!! Even though I have no clue what's going on with this rifle,,, I just have to say Fatman is a animal.!!,,My man is fearless.

Not fearless, not real bright either. The Marine Corps sucks the fear out of you.

Almost forgot I was on this forum, lost all my bookmarks.

The bolt handle was most definitely all the way down. As stated in an earlier post, the pressure would have to be down before the handle could come up. The first round I fired on this rifle popped the bolt handle up.

[303Guy]

That's very interesting. May I suggest you get that rifle to a Lee Enfield qualified gunsmith or armourer?

So there was mention of flattened primers. Flattened primers are normal for factory rounds, even crimped ones that cannot back out without a tell tale. Uncrimped boxer primers can back out then get reseated which flattens them so in reality it doesn't mean much. It does mean something if the primers remain rounded though.

Have you checked the bolthead to see how much it lifts the striker?

What I noticed was when your rifle half opened the bolt, there was camming of the striker on fully opening. It would have been interesting to see what would've happened if the bolt was pushed down instead of up. Would the striker have lowered into the bolt? Looking at the photo of the bolt is looks as though the camming lug only engages the cam face about halfway along. You can check that simply enough by lifting the bolt handle until the cam engages and see how far it has lifted.

That separated case head is a concern. Were those reloaded cases? I thought I heard something to the effect that that case was about to separate in the back ground. Many folks say cases only last 3 to 4 firings in the 303 but I get indefinite case life (apart from neck splits if I neglect to anneal the necks). I do not usually get case elongation other than first time firing of a full body sized case (even then I'm not sure). I have my case trimmer set to spec and it doesn't take anything off normally.

If your bolt is turning close to 30° then there could very well be enough angular momentum for it to cam the striker into the short slot.

My rifle (the one at hand) draws the striker back some 4mm before the bolt is fully unlocked. It it drops back about 1mm into the short slot. The overall striker travel is just over 7mm on unlocking the bolt (bolt cam plus striker cam). My rifle starts to draw the striker back at about a sixth turn of the bolt from fully locked and on dry firing it lifts half that.
I've just taken a photo of a bolt lying next to me and by zooming in on can see a little wear on the cam face at the start. The wear is so small that the bolt still needs about a sixth of a turn to engage it and zooming is needed to actually see it.

[Ridolpho]

We all should have a friend like "fatman"! Super slo-mo would be good- there's a mind boggling super slo-mo of an SVT-40 on you-tube that kind of blew my mind. The magnitude of oscillation of pretty much everything is incredible. I think I'll be nervous next time I shoot one of mine. This Lee-Enfield makes me think of some historical efforts at semi-auto fire that relied on perfect angle of bolt lugs to lock at peak pressure but then allow the bolt to rotate and open with enough remaining pressure to blow it back and cycle the action. I believe even the great Ferdinand von Mannlicher experimented with such a design. Has someone screwed with the resistence shoulders on this rifle? Given Peter Laidler's comments about the collective Lee-Enfield "group mind" having never seen such a problem is enough for me to conclude this is a one-off problem. Let us know if you ever do resolve it!

Ridolpho

[spentprimer]

As far as the resistence shoulders go, this is my first Enfield Rifle and my knowledge on the rifle is very limited, so I have nothing to compare to, as a result, I have no basis for a yes or no answer.

---------- Post added at 07:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 07:12 PM ----------

Are those bullet holes in the overhead cover at the range in the video?

The club I shoot at is rather small and is really more geared towards ATA trapshooting. The four shooting benches are very old, but, the concrete and overhead roof are a few years old. Those are indeed holes and they were there within weeks of the shelter being put up. That little sunroof is only about 80 feet from a gravel county road and the number of times things get shot from vandals passing by from the road are uncountable.

There are berms out to 500 yards though. We had a very lovely morning to shoot. Enough of a breeze to keep the mosquitoes off and cool enough to not sweat too much!

[303Guy]

So the Head separation question has been answered. Mmm ... there is a rule to never fire someone else's reloads. These were from a commercial source? Wow.

Could someone explain how to upload photo's from my PC please? I have a photo of my rifle bolt I'd like to show.

[spentprimer]

Could someone explain how to upload photo's from my PC please? I have a photo of my rifle bolt I'd like to show.

I uploaded pictures to photobucket and then utilized their link info to copy the url and pasted it to the post via the picture icon at the top of the reply page on the forum. I think. Did I confuse you yet?

[Brian Dick]

Are those bullet holes in the overhead cover at the range in the video?

[David TS]

Are those bullet holes in the overhead cover at the range in the video?

LOL at Brian

Tell you what, there's no way you'd ever get me to fire that rifle............