Take off No4MkI barrels sighted in Vancouver

[Hal O'Peridol]

Stopped in at an army surplus store today and found some Enfield parts. He has three No4 barrels, and a new birch short length LB marked buttstock.

He HAD some new LB marked foreends, but I bought those. If anyone is looking for an original length barrel for restoring a rifle thats been cut down, he has them. It's Westley's down in New Westminster BC.

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[Alfred]

A friend who has rebarreled many older military rifles gave me a useful tip.

If a takeoff barrel won't clock in properly, over clocking, theres asuper thin washer made for the purpose of taking up any slack. He'd used one of these on an Arisaka restroration years before.
He showed me where to find these, but its been many years, best I remember Brownells carried tham at the time, but it may have been another supplier.

Several visitors to other boards have posted about receiving their No. Savage rifles back from their dealer after sending it back because the barrel was no good. That supplier used excellent condition two groove Savage take off barrels in rebarreling and in those cases at least the barrels were significantly overclocked.

I would expect that the torque shoulder could be upset enough to take up slack but it would take some careful work and probably require that it be trued up on a lathe


The front sight base of an overclocked barrel can be straighten up by triming a bit of the underside of the left sight lug on the barrel and an equal amount off the top of the right hand lug, then using shims, on top of the left and under the right lug, to take up the slack.

[Surpmil]

Otherwise known as a "breeching(-up) washer" I believe.

[Alan de Enfield]

The front sight base of an overclocked barrel can be straighten up by triming a bit of the underside of the left sight lug on the barrel and an equal amount off the top of the right hand lug, then using shims, on top of the left and under the right lug, to take up the slack.

Alfred - you might have other problems. If its 'over-clocked' then the extractor slot won't line up either.
Why not do it correctly in the first place by using the breeching washer.

[Peter Laidler]

Never but NEVER use shims to breech up. If your rifle needs a, say, .010" shim to get it to breech up correctly, then machine the breeching-up face back .10" and use a .110" breeching-up spacer. L1A1 breeching up spacers are a good source of such things. Shims are not made for this purpose and to do so is p---poor engineering practice in any case.

That's the difference between time served Armourers and enthusiastic amateurs

[Amatikulu]

Peter, can you elaborate a bit more on the shim/ breeching washer.

I'm assuming the material of construction for a shim is different from that of a breeching washer and hence your point - or am I misunderstanding?

Or is it nothing to do with the material but rather to do with the installation practice of one requiring a bit of machining to present an exact surface for the washer?

[Peter Laidler]

Ah, yes...., glad you asked that. I'd call a shim anything less that .060" or so. Others will have other ideas. But a shim is really not supposed to be subject to a rotary loading (this is being very simple now..........). An example is if you were rebuilding your MG gearbox and needed say, .008" endfloat and had, say .024" end float, then you'd back the endfloat thrust washer with a .016 shim. Perfect. But you wouldn't put the .016" shim where it's subject to the rotary forces of the gear train.

In much the same as breeching up a rifle, the shim is not made for this purpose. Better to machine back and insert a proper medium carbon steel (but good mild steel will do) spacer/breeching up washer....., call it what you will and then breech up on this, properly.

I know that someone out there is going to mention Bren guns but that's exactly a point in question. We do use .003 and .005 shims there but the barrel step is being pulled directly down on the shim in this case. They're not subject to rotary forces.

It's bad practice. Even worse are those butchers that 'gently swage' the breeching up face of the barrel to get it to breech up tight. Ok, I realise that it was easy for us to simply go to the machine shop and get a spacer made or even jusy scrap a rifle if need be BUT, shims. NO

This brings me to a point that was raised on the CSP forum many moons ago when the little D within a circle often seen on a barrel was mentioned. The indexing of the barrel thread was a very wasteful process and eventually barrels were finished AFTER the thread was cut. Alas, the indexing was also critical to the rifle body too. During the run-up to the L39/42 conversion programme, several hundred rifles were found to be slightly under or over cut in the body and THIS is why the L39 and 42 use breeching up washers (as opposed to shims...ugh or the old breeching face to breeching face method)

Steel helmets on here. I bet this will bring in some flak from the shimmers and barrel swagers!