Enfield chambered in.308 with a 303 barrel

desporterizer

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Why in the name of lord t'underin jebus would somebody do this? I just received what I thought was an enfield with a brit .308 barrel & found a 49 fazerkley instead. Was this a common conversion back in the day?
 
Huh! Did they cut off the chamber section and rethread? I'm trying to visualize a .308 bullet performing in a .310-312 barrel.....
 
It doesn't look like it has been apart in years with mucho dust in the barrel. I am waiting to see what the seller says about it but I doubt he knew. Too many folks don't give their guns a good once over before they shoot them & just let'er rip. I have always had the worst luck with enfields of all sorts.
 
I also have a couple .303's that shoot excellent with .308 diameter bullets. Then again I also shoot .308 projectiles out of a couple of Polish M-44's and .264 bullets out of my Carcano carbine. I have no problems at all with accuracy out of any of them, at least at the ranges I shoot. They all have like new bores though. I am sure if they were well worn I might have different results.
I also had a No4mk2 that was converted to .308 the same way as yours Desporterizer. The barrel was set back and rechambered to .7.62 X 51. I never fired it and it looked like it was brand new. I never could find out exactly who did the conversion, but I do know I have heard of a few others who have run into them as well.
 
This one is still tight but remember, this is set up as a target rifle with a parker hale sight & good groups with 308 bullets in an enfields are few a far between. I was hopping to shoot this at 600yrd.
 
In the old jouster forum a Canadian who shot on the national team and who was well known re-chambered a .303 to the wildcat .308-.303.

The reason was to get more reloading life from military made 7.62 and .308 cases verses regular .303 British cases. The Enfield ended up with a tighter chamber and less headspace but still shot .311 diameter bullets.
 
In the old jouster forum a Canadian who shot on the national team and who was well known re-chambered a .303 to the wildcat .308-.303.

The reason was to get more reloading life from military made 7.62 and .308 cases verses regular .303 British cases. The Enfield ended up with a tighter chamber and less headspace but still shot .311 diameter bullets.

if this was done right , i'd imagine it would shoot regular 308 win also , wouldn't it ?
 
barrel

The obvious thing here is to push a soft lead slug through the barrel, and measure the diameter of it, and see how the rifling looks.

What kind of groups are you getting? Try a different kind of ammo....some of the IVI stuff is pretty bad.
 
In the old jouster forum a Canadian who shot on the national team and who was well known re-chambered a .303 to the wildcat .308-.303.

The reason was to get more reloading life from military made 7.62 and .308 cases verses regular .303 British cases. The Enfield ended up with a tighter chamber and less headspace but still shot .311 diameter bullets.

Would have beesn easier to get a neck sizer.
 
I've shot a lot of .308" bullets in .3105" and .311" bores and haven't had any accuracy issues to date. We're talking 1.5 thousandths of an inch around the bullet or 0.0015", it really doesn't make much difference in most barrels and many bullets will upset that much to fill the bore anyhow. That said, a perfect fit is always best, especially for a target rifle, and I wouldn't shoot matches with .308" bullets.
 
I did today, 6" was the best I could get with either milsurp or some 168grn handloads. I shot way better with the other two enfields I brought along.I will load up some 303win rnds & see if it tightens up. Doesn't feed worth a damn either. I smell a new .308 barrel comming. At least I negotiated a more price drop for this thing.
Ardent, most enfields have a groove diameter around >313-315. I will load up some 303win rnds & see if it tightens up.
 
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