Long Branch No.4 Mark 1* Project

[PJS]

I stumbled into your lovely haven looking for information on the current 1945 Long Branch Lee Enfield No.4 Mk1* I'm attempting to restore to stock. Everything has been pretty straightforward thus far, but the damned rear sight has me confounded. The rifle was sporterized by the previous owner who removed the hand guards and forearm and replaced it with a sport stock, tapping the barrel to add a rear V sight and cutting the butt stock down to youth size (What child can handle a .303?). My biggest concern at this point is that they machined a portion of the receiver off, because I'm not finding pictures that match accordingly. I have the standard flip up rear peep sight to mount, but the mount is not there. So I ask the more knowledgeable here for help, can you tell me what type of rear sight fits this rifle, am I just missing a bracket piece or has it been hacked down?

Top view, I see the hole and I'm hoping that someone just filled in the mount for a rear sight.



I apologize if they are rotated, Photobucket keeps rotating them vertically sometimes. I'm hoping it just fits some different type of rear sight, as it looks similar to the .22 trainer receiver, but it's definitely a .303 1945 Long Branch No4Mk1

Information

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[Peter Laidler]

To be perfectly honest, open and frank PJ, the amount of work that you have got to undertake to bring that rifle back to anywhere like standard is just uneconomic, even if you were prepared to put many hundreds and hundreds into the project. And even when you HAVE finished, there's no saying that it will even be shootable for various engineering reasons that are beyond the scope of this forum.

Here's what I'd suggest............ as a real Armourer of many years......... If that particular rifle is of some sentimental value and you'd like to keep it, then keep it, as-is. Then, with the £500+ plenty (or the US $ equivalent) that you have saved, then go and buy another good looking 1945 Long Branch rifle. And with the change, go and get a load of ammo and have fun.

If you have a lot of money and are desperate to spend some, then my bank account details are.....................

Just my 2c's worth

[PJS]

Thank you sir, pretty much what I feared. The rifle shoots fine, it's just been sporterized to death. All when they could have had some class and just used a drop in stock and a mount for the same effect without hacking the thing. I already have the parts, but I'm not going to go through the whole process of a new receiver just to be able to mount the rear sight. The current V sight is where the rear hand guard should be. At this point I'll probably just sell it to partially fund purchasing a different Lee. I just needed some confirmation that someone had really hacked the rear of that receiver just to get a better view of their ugly V sight. What had me confused was that they blued the steel again where they had cut and did a nice job of machining it, so it doesn't look as altered as it does under the camera flash, but I have since read of other people doing exactly that.

[JerryEAL]

Looks bit like an EAL receiver now.They also had milled the rear sight off and turned the rifle into a Royal Canadian Air force lightweight survival rifle. That was a nice 45.