SMLE mounted troop rifle

[superbee]

Has anybody seen one of these before??

EFD Rifles - The Enfield Specialists

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[BC1]

That's a first time for me, quite interesting and most definately rare!

[browningautorifle]

Very neat rifle. Hope it turns out to be real...we've not had one of those appear around here before.

[Maxwell Smart]

I'd suggest that the magazine is not original, and is considerably younger than the rifle action.

[Bruce_in_Oz]

The magazine looks like one from a No4.

Muzzle end oddities:

1. Very odd "crown" on the barrel,

2. Something odd about the seating of the "Screw, Front",

3. There appears to be something like a tiny "Lithgow" star in the front of the left sight-protector "ear". What is that about?

4. The surface finish on the "different" front-end is quite at odds with the rest of the nose-cap: it looks to be ground, but not blasted / "pickled".

5. As far as I know, all early nose-caps had a "lightening" hole bored into the rear of the bayonet boss; grind off the boss and you expose that hole.

6. Is that an "Ishy" screw I see?

7.Steel butt-disc?

8. The timber damage around said butt-disc indicates that it or a previous butt-disc had been removed at some time, and possibly not had one fitted for a while.

The butt looks a lot like one for a Lee Metford Mk1 Carbine. These should have a disc, but in a slightly lower position.

Shouldn't the buttplate on a LEC butt be the same as the 1* rifle? As I understand, the long "tang at the top of the "delta metal" butt plate was to provide a space to put inspection / "ownership" etc. stamps in the days before butt discs.

The "U" on the bolt head indicates a "variation" in specification, (heat-treatment etc.); NOT always a good thing.

The fore-end "grasping grooves" are a bit like Lee Metford Mks 1 and 1*, but if this were an "upgrade" conversion of one of those, what happened to the elliptical clearance cut in the wood, just below the "handle" of the cut-off plate?

This rifle could re-write the books or it could be a complete lemon.

Just my 3 Lira worth.

[bigduke6]

Very neat rifle. Hope it turns out to be real...we've not had one of those appear around here before.

It has been here before Jim, when I had it a few years back, but I returned it ( was another dealer back then), as it was sale or return.......

[browningautorifle]

I must have missed that. I guess. It's one of those one shouldn't forget if he saw it.

[Maxwell Smart]

Bruce in Oz

No 4 magazine was what I was thinking.

The hole you would expect to see after removing the bayonet boss seems to me to be covered by a thin plate fixed over the whole of the front of the nosecap.

Certainly looks like an "Ishy screw" in the fore-end - so if this conversion was for mounted troops it would probably have been for service in the subcontinent rather than the Home Counties.

[Son]

Have I slept in? Is it the 1st of April already?

Honestly, the W^D had only just completed standardising their front line rifle manufacture across all arms of all services... "Cavalry" and Artillery" length carbines were traded off with the Long Lee to create the 25.2" barrel of Sht LE Mk1, to be closely followed by the MkIII, so they could issue one rifle to all troops. Anyone honestly think they would sanction modifying a bunch for a purpose they had already taken into account with the original design?

Sorry, it would take a lot more than what looks to me like a mish-mash of poorly fitted parts with a Beverly Hills pricetag to make the story even conceivable, let alone believable.

May be corrected here yet, but please make the evidence conclusive......

[Craig Eberhardt]

Any mention in Skennerton's book?