I Finally Got It!!!

[Ovidio]

Hi everybody,


After years of searching, I finally bought myself a wonderful Enfield no.1 in .22LR in the Terni modified version.
These rifles were equipped in Terni with the M1 Garand sights for training purposes, and are a pretty unique type of Enfields.
The original front and rear sights were removed, the front sight protections were cut off and a dovetail was made to accommodate the Garand front sight.
At the rear, the bridge was ground to a much smaller and flat top one, a hinge was welded to the side and on the bolt handle side a latch with retention spring was applied to allow tilting the rear sight to the side to reach the bolt head for removing the bolt.
A frigging lot of work.
Was it necessary or sensible? I have some doubts, but it sure looks great and these rifles are known for being really great shooters, because of those excellent sights and the much longer sight radius achieved with this mod.
This rifle is a 1917 one, modified at FAT in 1969. One of the earliest ones.

Do you like it?

[Low & Slow]

How cool is that? How many were converted?

[Ovidio]

I really don’t know, but I’ll try to find out.

[FlightRN]

Great find. When I purchased Pettinelli's book, I saw this enfield variant was included in the book likley because of the M1 cross over and admired it. I am surprised it wasn't designed with a feed ramp for easy loading. Congratulations on a unique rifle.

[browningautorifle]

Do you like it?

Interesting, interesting rifle. Very scarce and never seen in the real...good catch Alpini...

[Ovidio]

Great find. When I purchased Pettinelli's book, I saw this enfield variant was included in the book likley because of the M1 cross over and admired it. I am surprised it wasn't designed with a feed ramp for easy loading. Congratulations on a unique rifle.

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo.../c9zDZtK-1.jpg

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...IwTfwebp-1.jpg

Hi, does Pettinelli give any estimate of the numbers? On the net I can’t find anything. It seems there are no figures.
We all had a few in the Battalion or Regiment armories, but not a lot, so there are estimates that they might be just a few thousand.

[Ovidio]

I took the “Garfield” To the range.
Very very nice.
Only problem, at 25 metres, the four targets on the corner are too far out and it is difficult to aim with the peephole, since you miss two sides as reference, landing in the black with part of your sights. Worst were the two lower targets, where I missed the side and the lower reference.
Next time, if again at 25, I’ll shoot the central target only and keep replacing the splatterburst.
Today I started from the central one and gave 15 clicks up and 6 to the right. Between 5 and 6 you land a tad left or a tad right of the bullseye. I’ll check at 50.

All other shooters today admired the rifle. My friend commanding the Bersaglieri here confirmed all battalions had 8 in the armory. So, there can’t be that many around, although you can find them here fairly often.

[Sapper740]

Lance covers this rifle in detail in his book but no mention of numbers, just serial number ranges.

[Ovidio]

Gotta look. I didn’t remember. Thanks Sapper

[Lance]

Congrats!! Glad you got one! When writing my .22 book I became obsessed with owning one. Buying one was not a problem, getting out of the country turned out to be next to impossible. Enjoy!