Enfield Barrel Drawings?

[Nailcreek]

Would anyone know where to find a copy of the factory drawings for the SMLE No.1 barrel, as well as the "Heavy' version and also the No.4 barrel?

Thanks much!

Kerry
nailcreek@hotmail.com

Information

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[paulseamus]

Karry

Can't help with drawings.

Heavy barrels were made by Lithgow. Every few months or so an unfired heavt barrel goes on sale in Australia. Probably because a family are having a cleanout of an old target shooters safe.

keep an eye on usedguns.com.au last one sold in minutes for $425 Aus dollars.

[Bruce_in_Oz]

Would anyone know where to find a copy of the factory drawings for the SMLE No.1 barrel, as well as the "Heavy' version and also the No.4 barrel?

Yep: Powerhouse Museum in Sydney: good luck!

That said, the basic profile of a SMLE barrel is pretty simple.

The "H" barrel is basically the profile of the earlier "long" Lee Enfield barrel grafted onto a standard SMLE Knox Form and with a short "step-down" at the muzzle to accept the standard SMLE front sight band and key.

The breech thread is an "Enfield Special". It is NEITHER Whitworth nor UN form, but its own special 49deg 40min form, with radiused roots and crests like a BA.

SMLEs (and Mauser 98s) breech on the INNER receiver ring, NOT the front face of the receiver. No 4s (and 5s), however, breech up on the front face of the receiver body.

[Peter Laidler]

From the simple engineering point of view, surely a CNC shadowgraph trace is all that is required to make the external drawings and thereafter, the actual turning should be a doddle or am I missing something? It just seems as though this is being made to be something complicated when it's really not.

We already know that rifling and chambering is another matter but.........

[Paul S.]

CNC shadowgraph --- nice thinking Peter. Do a cast of the chamber and you'd be almost there.

I have to wonder if something like this gets inordinately complicated from an over-exposure to modern engineering geometric dimensioning and tolerancing methods.

[enscien]

The drawing for the No.4 Rifle barrel, Mk 1 (5 groove rifling) DD(E) 450/3 should be available from the library at the Royal Armouries, Leeds.

[tbonesmith]

Fwiw I would not hesitate to contact Lithgow small arms factory museum in Lithgow Australia, and I would imaging that for a fair "donation", someone would look up the relevant drawing.

Just a thought...

[Bruce_in_Oz]

There is an interesting story there.

The museum is a sort-of "private" operation, and has been for quite a while. It was effectively run by local volunteers and enthusiasts, even when it was "semi-government".

The paper archives used to be stored in the top rooms of towers in the original rifle factory buildings. Pretty much everything had been microfilmed and this was all supposed to be filed on "aperture cards" with the engineering department.

The quality of the micro-filming photography left something to be desired. The original tracings (both waxed linen and paper "vellum"), old-style blueprints, paper prints etc were filed in the towers, in large, heavy card sleeves, bound with the classic Red Tape (actually pink). The ENTIRE collection of Lysaght's Owen drawings were reported to be mouldering away in a heap beside an old cabinet in one of these towers.

On top of this, an unknown number of folk had visited the towers and "borrowed" stuff. A classic example is the UNIQUE coloured rendering of a Vickers with tripod and water can. The microfilm record had a picture of it, but, in the archive room, all that remained was a dodgy print FROM THE MICROFILM.

The Museum folk had acquired some of the stuff for SMLE and Bren, but the collection was FAR from complete or coherently catalogued or stored.

And then there was the old BREN building, the one seen to the left of the front gate at the time. This housed a room full of the ORIGINAL card-files in their antique wooden drawer cabinets. These included a reference to EVERY factory drawing dating back to the survey of the site, through the structural plans, the signs for the canteen and EVERYTHING that the factory made or even proposed, including fittings for RAAF aircraft, components for various railways, electric sheep-shearing equipment and most intriguingly, major components for several US manufacturers of small-bore rifles.

When our French cousins bought the entire ADI operation, they cleaned out EVERY facility in ALL the various plants.

The remains of the Lithgow document collection were "donated" to the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney.

Given the olitics" involved, it is unlikely that they have been archived and catalogued correctly. It is even LESS likely that anything remotely useful there will EVER see public light of day.

[Paul S.]

Your not wrong there. There is probably a tonne of stuff there that hasn't been sorted through, classified, digitized and properly preserved and archived.

I tried doing an on-line search of the Powerhouse Museum for Pattern 1918 Telescopic Sight Drawings not once buty several times, and got bugger all for the effort. On-line searching the National Archives yielded the same result. I'm thinking the only way to get any real research results is doing it the old-fashioned way - go there, sit for hours (or days) and manually search through the document collection.

[ssj]

btw, is the idea to have a "genuine new barrel" or simply a new barrel? Given how hard it is to get barrels I wonder if any are available from POF? otherwise you can get an aftermarket MAB barrel.