enfield No.4 and No.5 drilled bolt handles..

[enfieldman]

Hello;
Just wondering if it was common for a No.4 bolt to have a drilled bolt handle? I know the No.5
( jungle carbine ) bolt handle has a hole drilled in it. The reason i ask is that i have a nice
Savage No.4 Mk.1 with all matching #`s, but the bolt handle has a 3/8" drill hole in it.
Can someone shed some light on this for me? Was this a FTR`D practice? Are the bolts
interchangeable? I see a lot of surplus No. 4`s for sale that have the drilled bolt handles.
Hope you can help me on this..
Enfieldman

Information

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[Mk VII]

Reasonably common, later dropped as an unnecessary piece of machining.

[me2]

I also have a matching Savage #4 Mk1* with the handle drilled.

[Roger Payne]

I don't think BSA ever dropped it......although it was just a weight saving feature that probably didn't justify the extra manufacturing time.
ATB

[Peter Laidler]

It was one of these relaxations in standards that allowed manufacturers to make best use of their facilities without undue blah blah blah and so on. For example. If manufacturer X, such as BSA used the hole in the bolt to slip over a jig while the ZZZ was milled flat, then they'd keep that process.

We had zillions of No4's and 5's in Singapore/Malaya and it didn't matter one jot whether they were round, flat or bored to us. Now I come to think about it, I seem to remember that the actual bolts were standardised at Ordnance and codified to the same part number. But I could be wrong.......