Picked up an Enfield Jungle carbine

[crowtalks]

I had an opportunity to grab a jungle carbine at a great price recently and I snatched it up...

My Dad always traded on guns and one of my chores growing up in the 1960s was to clean them. One of the rifles he had that I fell in love with the looks of was an Enfield jungle carbine and I traded for one in the 1980s and kept it for a few years before someone talked me out of it.

Last year I acquired a 2A1 Gibbs special pretty cheap (especially since I had heaps of 308 ammo) and it is a good looking weapon that shoots good...however all it did was make me want the real thing again.

It arrived via UPS a few weeks ago and it's a pretty solid 1945 BSA (BFxxxx) with about 50% of the rifling left in a shiny bore. The rifle has developed some character with a bit of the suncorite worn off the exposed part of the barrel (which is fine with me) and upon inspection, the stock has a BSA M47 stamp and the lower forearm is stamped with a matching serial as the receiver, so it appears to be wearing the same outfit it came out of the factory with.

However the bolt carries a different serial number but on inspection it locks up good.

I ran some lower powered handloads through it and it fires fine!

Jim

 

[44 AMP]

Looks to be in decent shape for what it is, and what it has probably been through.

The Jungle carbines were never produced in large numbers, and there are a lot more "faked" ones out there than real ones, or so I've heard.

Headspace in the SMLE family was controlled by using different length bolt heads, so keeping a specific rifle and its original bolt together wasn't a huge concern. There are, of course, tech specs for what the proper headspace should be, but in practical use, as long as the ammo chambered, fired and ejected properly, the rifle was "serviceable".

If you're going to reload for that rifle, I'd recommend neck sizing only and I wouldn't expect a very long case life, even doing that.

Also, I recommend investing in a stuck case extractor for the rifle. Odds are, if you have one, you'll never need it, but if you don't, at some point, you will wish you did. I've had "once fired" .303 brass fail on my first firing of it (complete head separation) and now only buy new brass or factory ammo.

 

[FrankenMauser]

If you do want to check headspace, do NOT use American-spec gauges.
Somehow, somewhere, long ago, the US defaulted to .30-40 Krag specs for headspacing .303B.
This is wrong and can (usually will) leave you with excessive headspace.*
Do some research and get your hands on proper gauges. Or, do some research and learn about alternate methods of checking headspace with home-made tools.

*I don't remember the exact situation, but it works out to something like a .30-40 "Go" gauge being beyond the (non-existent) equivalent of "Field" for .303B.



Of course, you can always just fire-form to your chamber and ignore all of the headspace talk. Being rimmed makes it even easier.
A common workaround for .303B is to add an O-ring in front of the rim, so the case head is held firmly against the bolt face when fired. Remove the O-ring. Neck size from then on, with a possible minor shoulder bump occasionally, and the brass and rifle won't know the difference.

 

[44 AMP]

The issue with the GI .303s is that while the headspace can be perfect (for the rim), the rest of the chamber may not be, and they have the reputation of being "overgenerous" (meaning too large), but that doesn't matter to the military. It only matters to the civilian reloader.

 

[FrankenMauser]

That's just military chambers, in general.
Not many countries cared about holding 'match' tolerances when a chamber hogged out by a rusty spoon was good enough.

 

[crowtalks]

Thanks

 

[crowtalks]

Looks to be in decent shape for what it is, and what it has probably been through.

The Jungle carbines were never produced in large numbers, and there are a lot more "faked" ones out there than real ones, or so I've heard.

Headspace in the SMLE family was controlled by using different length bolt heads, so keeping a specific rifle and its original bolt together wasn't a huge concern. There are, of course, tech specs for what the proper headspace should be, but in practical use, as long as the ammo chambered, fired and ejected properly, the rifle was "serviceable".

If you're going to reload for that rifle, I'd recommend neck sizing only and I wouldn't expect a very long case life, even doing that.

Also, I recommend investing in a stuck case extractor for the rifle. Odds are, if you have one, you'll never need it, but if you don't, at some point, you will wish you did. I've had "once fired" .303 brass fail on my first firing of it (complete head separation) and now only buy new brass or factory ammo.

Thanks for the advice about the case extractor...I'll look for one and I had already planned on neck sizing...

 

[crowtalks]

If you do want to check headspace, do NOT use American-spec gauges.
Somehow, somewhere, long ago, the US defaulted to .30-40 Krag specs for headspacing .303B.
This is wrong and can (usually will) leave you with excessive headspace.*
Do some research and get your hands on proper gauges. Or, do some research and learn about alternate methods of checking headspace with home-made tools.

*I don't remember the exact situation, but it works out to something like a .30-40 "Go" gauge being beyond the (non-existent) equivalent of "Field" for .303B.



Of course, you can always just fire-form to your chamber and ignore all of the headspace talk. Being rimmed makes it even easier.
A common workaround for .303B is to add an O-ring in front of the rim, so the case head is held firmly against the bolt face when fired. Remove the O-ring. Neck size from then on, with a possible minor shoulder bump occasionally, and the brass and rifle won't know the difference.

I compared the necks from the recently fired brass with some brass I had fired from one I owned three decades ago and they looked almost identical, so I will probably just run fire-formed brass, inspecting each one before reusing

 

[ernie8]

Neck sizing the cases helps , but does not cure the problem . The bolt locks in the middle of the receiver [ it is a bridge locker ] . With full power loads the bolt compresses and the receiver stretches about .012 . When it springs back is what causes the overworking of the case head and separations . This is made worse by US sized and type of bullets and nitro powder . The Enfield was a blackpowder design . The tried to overcome it's weakness with slick , lubed undersized [ .309 ish ] bullets to up the velocity with less pressure . US .311 - .312 non-lubed copper bullets and nitro powder will raise the pressure when loaded to the same specs .

 

[FrankenMauser]

Nonsense. The Lee-Metford used a black powder loading. (And only until Cordite, Ballistite, and Rifleite came into use.)
The rest of the lineage did not.
Even the next rifle in line, the MLE, was designed and manufactured for a Cordite loading.
SMLEs and the following No 1, No 4, and No 5 rifles all used Cordite or more modern propellants.
DuPont #16 nitrocellulose powder was in use in .303 British as early as 1916.
WWII production primarily used WC 846, which we know today as BL-C(2).

There is lore, and there is truth.
Lore rarely has more than a sliver of twisted, misplaced, anachronous truth to it.


I'd like to see the source of your data on receiver stretching. Seems pretty ridiculous to me. That is well into the realm of fatigue cracking and catastrophic failure after a low number of cycles. Every SMLE, No 1, No 4, and No 5 on the planet should have broken in half by now.

 

[bamaranger]

carbine

In one of my old "Gun Digest" issues (I think) there was an article written by a fellow entitiled "Five Good Guns" or something to that effect. This gent was a wildlife biologist out west and needed a rough and tumble carbine of ample power that could be acquired affordably and not lamented if damaged or lost. He ended up with a Jungle Carbine. His narrative on the old carbine was pretty colorful. Dropped from a snowmobile, rolled on by a horse, mud, rain, snow etc. But the carbine always performed when required and he never experienced any broken parts, including the stock. I recall clearly that his rifle did not display the wandering zero you read about in some JC's. His closing comment was something to the effect of "someone should still make something like it'". I've wanted one ever since.

 

[ernie8]

The action was based on the blackpowder design . It is a bridge locker . Look up metal compression based on length . I have measured it in my ballistics lab . Cordite was used to keep the pressures down , that is why nitro was listed as war emergency only in rifles but was fine in machine guns . That is why they use replacable boltheads to correct the lost headspace from the compression that slowly becomes permanent . The compression is why it is hard to have total catastrophic failures . Learn about the properties of metals before you call nonsense . ALL Enfields suffer from wondering zero . Most people do not shoot enough or well enough to notice it . It is built in to the design . That is why the Australian shooting team rifles changed the stock , bedding , the rifling , the mounting points .

 

[ernie8]

Another thing on the wandering zero . Before WWI the British professional soldiers knew they had an underpowered , not very accurate dated rifle . They wanted , and were going to get a Mauser with a modern cartridge . But the war stopped that and the military could not tell all the new recruits they had a 2nd rate rifle , so all the amazing stories were put forth . Pre WWII the military was broke and had a ton of leftover Enfields to issue . After the was the military did not want the JC as a primary weapon like the book keepers did . They wanted a semi-auto . So now the wandering zero came out .

 

[FrankenMauser]

I've seen this episode!
It's a classic.

I think they called it, "Inversely moving the goalposts with ad hominem's false authority."


.

I have measured it in my ballistics lab

Measured what?
I have measured the expansion and contraction of an AR-15 bolt and an AR-15 barrel extension from 0 F to 350 F in my "ballistics lab."
That doesn't mean the same data even remotely applies to an SMLE or No 5.

 

[jonnyc]

Just had my No.5 out a few weeks ago. I have a PH5 (?) target sight on it. Might be my favorite Enfield shooter, and no Wandering Zero.

 

[ernie8]

Just because you do not understand things does not mean they do not happen . I explained it very clearly , hopefully this info with make sense to the people that can understand it and be helpful . Try reading the machinist guide to working metal . One volume contains a lot of info on the type of steel , the compression rate per dia and length . You will not see a wandering zero on a pie plate at 50 yards . Our rifle club shot up to 8 matches a month with military rifles for about 15 years . Most all as issued military rifles with a good load and top shooter were good for back to back 1 inch or so 5-shot 100 yard groups . Except the Enfields . They were 3 to 4 inch rifles with a shot or two from the wandering zero opening up the group . Over 15 years and 100's of different shooters NObody could ever be competitive with an Enfield . The only way we could get people to bring them out after a while was to have Enfield only matches . Every now end then we would get big Enfield shooters to show up with their 1/2 inch Enfields , to shoot 4 inch groups and place near last .

 

[FrankenMauser]

Might be my favorite Enfield shooter, and no Wandering Zero.

Indeed.
A crazy thing happens when you're not artificially biased against the design, *and* understand that the stocks need to be fitted in a particular way. Somehow, they can shoot and don't have "wandering" zeroes.
My No 4 Mk I has no problems with its zero. It doesn't even have the correct stocks on it. But the stocks that it does wear are fitted correctly.

I think the bigger problems come from operation and observation.
Some people just don't know how to be consistent with iron sights, and blame the tool.
And some people take personal bias, pile it on top of a little thing they saw one time with one shooter, and blow it up into a massive problem in their mind, that, to them, impacts every example of that design that was ever made.

 

[tangolima]

I shoot milsurp rifles, Enfield included. 1moa is a pretty high bar. I'm afraid all my rifles have "wandering zero". I thought it was me.

-TL

Sent from my SM-N960U using Tapatalk

 

[eastbank]

i have seen a lot of loose nuts on the rear end of a lot of rifles and they were most of the cause of wandering zero,s.

 

[ernie8]

My point was , Yes most people do not shoot old military rifles that well because of several things . Iron sights , poor ammo , surplus ammo , worn bores . So they are not going to notice a wandering zero . After 1000's of military rifle matches at my range with me scoring all the targets , with countless different shooters , rifles and loads . NO person could win with an Enfield . That is not being biased ,it is just facts . If you knew anything about rifle design for accuracy , you would see the Enfield is wrong in every aspect . I build custom rifles and bench rest rifles from scratch , I know what it take to make a rifle shoot . I was 46th in the nation in benchrest a while back with one of my rifles .