Greetings and Salutations!
Any day working on restoring a classic World War One/Two British Rifle is an OUTSTANDING Day! It’s like oh my God my ‘Zen’ Happy-Place to be just sitting there, working my way over the metal, using various tools and grades of sandpaper…
Got the YouTube up and running, just playing my ‘usual stuff’ Demo Ranch, Brandon Herrera, Atozy, Drinker, Az, Nerdrotic… Throw in some historical ‘stuff’ and you pretty much have my regular watch list…
Spent about 4 hours just sanding the Hell out of the Lee Enfield.
The receiver is a stone bitch with allll the nooks and crannies, and the pitting was pretty bad on the interior as well, as it was a “stored without a bolt in the fucking deserts of Ethernopeia” which cause a fair about of full-on rust as opposed to ‘minor scaling’.
That Lil Bastard and his relatives should be flogged for that sort of infraction… Jes’ Sayin’… I’ll let the pix speak for themselves:
Front of the Barrel, 2x coatings. BOTH done with Perma-Bloo and the barrel in the area of the blooing was heated with Ye Olde Flammenwerfer Ignition Device to hot-not-hot-but-warm-enough. There’s some spots that it looks rough and patchy, and that’s because of the severe rusting that it had.
But since that part of the barrel is going to be ‘under the wood’ I figured to experiment, so I could see what the rest of the rifle, such as the mating point of the receiver/barrel might look like:
Now, I focused a LOT of the sanding and work on the rear sight. I did NOT tear it down ‘all the way’ as the screws are pretty worn, the pin that retains the ladder ramp for the sight is beat to Hell, so I figure ‘Fuck It’ and I’ll work around it. You can’t really tell as the lighting is bad (as it seems to always be in my pix) but that metal under ‘normal circumstances’ is damned near gleaming w/out any scaling or rust.
It does have a metric fuckton of pitting.
The pitting is so bad that I’m not even sure if bead-blasting would help… I mean it might but then I’d lose some of the personality of the Old Boy, never mind the Armorer’s marks under the chamber area of the barrel (pix to follow). There’s a LOT of those by the way… Every time His Royal Majesty’s Rifle was serviced, his Armorer stamped the rifle, usually around the chamber area of the barrel, with his Royal Armorer Cartouche.
Mine has about 10 of them… I don’t know what the frequency of a Depot Level Servicing was for a SMLE back then, but ALL of the cartouche marks are identical. This (to my eyes) tells me this particular rifle, as well as the pristine condition of the Bore and Rifling, that he spent his time is a Depot/Deep storage rather than ‘going off to war’.
The receiver, well here it is (bad lighting and all):
LOTS of ‘deep pitting’.
BUT: I did get a great pic of what I found out is called the “Wrist” of the rifle, which is that rear section of the receiver where the buttstock screws into the receiver, and the markings tell who was in charge at the time, which Company made it, the year it was made, and the model and mark number.
‘GR’=Georgius Rex, i.e. King George VI, Queen Elizabeth’s Da.
‘BSA Co‘=Birmingham Small Arms (the ‘C’ is poor)
Made in 1939
‘Sht. L.E.’=Short Magazine Lee Enfield (of course)
III and a Star=Model 3, but I didn’t find out what the star means… any ideas?
So last thing to do is Bloo it… Because it’s soooo large and has a lot of nooks to do, I was wondering if any of you folks out there have any experience with Duracoat?
It was mentioned on one of the boards I was researching on… seems this company makes some -seriously tough- spray on/Paint on weapons coatings, and a LOT of folks out on various boards swear by it… It seems they make a spray-on parkerizing replication kit that’s been well received, both on their site (which IO immediately discount) but also on other boards and reviews… to include some YouTube/GunTubers who said it’s really good for a finish that I think I want…
Let me know.
Should I bloo it with the Birchwood-Casey, of go with a chance and try this Duracoat stuff? I know Duracoat from truck bed liners, but had no idea they did weapons coatings…
Otherwise, again another late night.
More Later
Big Country
I do alot of parkerizing, both zinc and manganese. The lions share of the prep is accomplished with muriatic acid, removes all old blue and rust quick. It is however really sketchy to be around if you like to breathe.
There is like NO rust left. ALL of that is gone. All tat’s left is the pitting really, and the stains in the pitting. I appreciate the POV however.
Depending on how it shoots, if it’s awesome, I might think about going full retard and getting the ‘stuff’ to do a hot blooing
If I am not mistaken, the star indicates that your particular SMLE Mark III* is a variant model.
Mk III* was a simplification. Magazine cutoff and volley sights were deleted. Please show us the left side of the receiver including the safety, and the left side of the barrel band; those areas will show whether this was a rifle reworked to III* standard or born that way. The slightly wonky 39 in the year of manufacture suggests this rifle was a very late build from legacy parts. They were already building Rifle No. 4 but tempus was fugiting, Adie over the channel was clearly getting frisky, and Winnie was drooling at the imminent success of his warmongering; more brandy, cigars and moulah. How is the stock inside the magwell, where the recoil hits the wood….no cracking?