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techedtyler

techedtyler

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Hey does anybody have experience with BSA rifles? Today a friend gave me a BSA bolt action rifle chambered in 30-06 for doing some handy work. The mark BSA is faintly stamped on top of the receiver and the side is stamped NO. 41. Other than that all I see is an assortment of symbols stamped on the side of the rifle similar to a sporterized military rifle. I would like to learn the history and value of this rifle to help me determine if I should sell or keep this rifle as part of my arsenal : ) Any BSA experts out there?


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What you have, I think, is an Model 1917 Enfield customised by BSA. More pictures are needed of the various marking to be sure. It should be a good shooter.
 
This is one of BSA's entry level sporter conversions from the 1930s to 1950s. It should be an excellent and very accurate rifle.

The actions are one of the strongest and used as the base for many magnum conversions.

If you don't want it, someone else will.
 
RRCo. said:
This is one of BSA's entry level sporter conversions from the 1930s to 1950s. It should be an excellent and very accurate rifle.

The actions are one of the strongest and used as the base for many magnum conversions.

If you don't want it, someone else will.
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X2
bigbull
 
Most of the P-14/M-17 (qty of 14 000) were bought by BSA from the War Department in 1948. BSA made the "revamping" and P-H commercialized it. Quite a lot of these rifles were well worn or battlefield picjk ups.
Seems the BSA sporting rifles using these actions were produced between 1949 and 1953prior to the introduction of their own actions.

As said above, these actions (especially the P-14 for the bolt face) are commonly seen on custom magnum projects. I know someone who have one in 378 Weatherby.
 
Yep, got one that started out looking just like that! My first rifle, in fact, when I was 14. Dad bought it off the widow next door for $20 (seriously!).

He then sanded down the stock, taking the sharp edges off the those forearm inlets, put ebony caps up front and on the grip, and a recoil pad.

Can they shoot? Oh, yeah!

About 25 years ago a friend talked me into going to a turkey shoot in Lloydminster. He loaded up a couple boxes of ammo for me ahead of time, and the day before I went out and zeroed it 100 yds. Had a Bushnell Sportchief 3x9 on it at the time.

Entered a 100 yd, 3 shot competition along with 9 others, many of them packing some very serious looking shooters. All done, three of us scored 30...but I had the tightest group, and took home the bird.

Then I entered a 200 yd shoot, 3 rounds. Crosswind was horrible. Two guys using 22.250s didn't even hit the paper, that's how bad it was! I scored a 27 out of 30, and won again!

By then the guys with the fancy Sakos, Weatherbys, and the like seemed to be a tad somewhat curious about my old BSA Enfield! Naturally, I then put my two turkeys from my two events into the pickup and rode off into the sunset. Heh! Does it get any better than that!!!

Anyway, a couple things about 'em...

You may find that it doesn't feed reliably, as the bolt may slide by the next round without picking it up. I was told by one smith that this is because the magazine is designed for .303 Brits, which are a rimmed case, and therefore require a wider box. Consequently the 30.06 rounds stagger a tad bit too much, and don't always slide up enough for the bolt to catch the rim. To my knowledge there's no fix for this. If you cycle the bolt with some "authority", the cartridges always will snap up into place. But working the bolt quietly and softly, maybe not.

However, I came up with an idea of my own. I took a bleach jug, carved up a shim from it, and mated it to one of the inner walls of the magazine with a bit of glue, shiny and slippery side out. This did seem to help. I think doing both sides would have helped even more.

That's FWIW.

The other thing to watch for: Yours is drilled for scope mounts, too. That same Scopechief of mine turned out to have a problem. Point of impact shifted about 5" between 3x and 9x...??? Sent the scope to Bushnell, who called to tell me the tube was bent for some reason, check the drillings/bases on my rifle. (They repaired it no charge anyway!)

Yep, the rear of the action had been poorly machined by BSA, I assume to get rid of the military style rear sight set up, and was causing misalignment and torquing the scope.

The solution to prevent this problem even possibly happening (on any rifle, for that matter) is to use Burris Signature rings. Their unique design automatically compensates for alignment, and thus protects the scope. No lapping required. Or re-machining of the mounting surfaces.

Lastly, there are aftermarket triggers available for these, notably Dayton Traister for one. Eliminates the terrible two stage pull. Be sure to mention that yours is a BSA sporterized 30.06.

These are very good rifles, with lots of potential. IMHO, they're definitely keepers!

Mine, after full custom job by Wilcox Gun in Lumby, BC...

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They used both the M-17 and P-14. They used the M-17 to build mostly .30-06 and .270 Win and the P-14 were left with the .303 Brit. Unless the rifle you have was rebarreled / reworked, it should not have been built with a 303 Brit magazine. The feeding problems are common with a Mauser type staggered box magazine and usually depends on bad feeding / retaining lips configuration, wich is easily fixed by a good gunsmith.

Nice one you have there, though.
 
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Baribal said:
They used both the M-17 and P-14. They used the M-17 to build mostly .30-06 and .270 Win and the P-14 were left with the .303 Brit. Unless the rifle you have was rebarreled / reworked, it should not have been built with a 303 Brit magazine. The feeding problems are common with a Mauser type staggered box magazine and usually depends on bad feeding / retaining lips configuration, wich is easily fixed by a good gunsmith.
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Interesting. Thanks.

The barrel appears to have the standard military marking on it, "220 gr.", etc., so I assume it's original.

The magazine in these has straight sides with no retaining lips that nudge the shell towards the center for pick up. Pretty much just a box. Wilcox tried different followers, and shimming the magazine with no success. I even ordered a replacement follower/spring from Numrich, which didn't even fit.

The Dayton Traister trigger I ordered for the P-17...many years back...didn't work, either, much to Dayton's surprise. They modified it according to my suggested measurements...no charge...and it worked perfect. At that time the people at Dayton were not familiar with the BSA version of the Enfield that's so common up here in Canada. Indeed, they'd never heard of it.

Been a tad bit of a mystery rifle of sorts to me.

Sure shoots good, though!
 
What you describe i.e. 220 gr / 18.5 Tons) is not military marking, it's the Birmingham Proofhouse stamp for civilian firearms.. If the mag box was played with, your best bet to solve you feeding problems will be to get a replacement mag box. The feeding lips are the folded tabs each side of the box.
If you post a picture of the top view of the opened action with a round in it, we may be able to help.

Stang,
If you dig a bit on the forum, I posted on many occasions some '50s Parker-Hale catalog pages showing the various models from A to E.
The three leaf express sight may also been an aftermarket modification, "cos these rifles were really intended to be "workhorses". Post some pics of your rifle and we may help you.
 
Baribal said:
What you describe i.e. 220 gr / 18.5 Tons) is not military marking, it's the Birmingham Proofhouse stamp for civilian firearms.. If the mag box was played with, your best bet to solve you feeding problems will be to get a replacement mag box. The feeding lips are the folded tabs each side of the box.
If you post a picture of the top view of the opened action with a round in it, we may be able to help.
Click to expand...

Got me curious now...

The magazine, in which you can see my plastic modification. None of the attempted mods by Wilcox were permanent, and the box itself is as original. Note that there's no lips on the box itself. The actual retaining lips, about half the length of the magazine/cartridge are machined into both sides of the action itself, which hopefully you can see kinda overlapping the back half of cartridge in the second picture. Last is of the follower.

Will hold 6 rounds, plus one in the tube.

BSA001.jpg


BSA005.jpg


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You are correct on the receiver to mag fit, there must be something wrong with your rifle since I have and owned many without problems (somtimes it's tricky with the RN bullets, though, but I don't use them in a '06).
I'll pick one of mine in the bottom of the safe and post some pics for you.
 
I admit that it's not a real big problem. Just not spot on as it should be.

Did bother me a tad that one day I'd shove that bolt home when it really counted, and nothing would be there for me. (We have the odd griz around these parts, eh?)

But then I got my 300 WM Vanguard. I'm good!

;)

Might waste a couple bucks on the feed kit from Midway, just to see what happens...assuming they'll ship such an evil gun part up here to Kanuckistan.
 
Well - The Enfield, at least in 303 guise, was known to feed sub-optimally.The * modification was an attempt to improve feeding. BSA did further mods to attempt to improve feeding by grinding out the guide rails in the receiver. This looks to have been done by hand, with varying degrees of success...
I dont own one in 30-06, so I cant comment on it - who knows what BSA did, or any of the subsequent owners. FWIW - That doesnt look like an original magazine box.
Folks have to bear in mind that these were economy rifles back in the day. They do have a few warts - poorly ground receiver bridge, out of line D+T, erratic feeding, etc. However, I my first deer rifle was a BSA 303, and it took several deer. It'll retain a spot in my gun safe until I'm chewing my gums in an old folks home.
 
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Baribal said:
Most of the P-14/M-17 (qty of 14 000) were bought by BSA from the War Department in 1948. BSA made the "revamping" and P-H commercialized it. Quite a lot of these rifles were well worn or battlefield picjk ups.
Seems the BSA sporting rifles using these actions were produced between 1949 and 1953prior to the introduction of their own actions.

As said above, these actions (especially the P-14 for the bolt face) are commonly seen on custom magnum projects. I know someone who have one in 378 Weatherby.
Click to expand...

I doubt that most of the sporters we see were built on those actions. Parker Hale was offering sporters built on P14 and M17 rifles all through the 1930s, as their catalogues show.

There were a hell of a lot more P14 and M17 rifles floating around after WWII than 14,000.
 
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The 14 000 mixed M-17/P-14 bought and transformed by BSA are those (a lot of them) sold to Canada through Parker-Hale.

Parker-Hale also bought / modified ex-military rifles 'til late '70s.
 
Enfield rifling will hold it's accuracy better than either the Mauser's or the Springfield's,so it's no surprise about how well it shoots.

P-17 feeding problems are old hat. It was the old RN from between the wars.

Ejectors springs break, so it's must to replace them with a coil spring.

I have couple of the BSA sporters.
 
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sir_springer said:
"You may find that it doesn't feed reliably, as the bolt may slide by the next round without picking it up. I was told by one smith that this is because the magazine is designed for .303 Brits, which are a rimmed case, and therefore require a wider box. Consequently the 30.06 rounds stagger a tad bit too much, and don't always slide up enough for the bolt to catch the rim. To my knowledge there's no fix for this. If you cycle the bolt with some "authority", the cartridges always will snap up into place. But working the bolt quietly and softly, maybe not."
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sir_springer said:
I had a BSA 30-06 sporter that I foolishly sold several years ago, it was a real shooter. When I first bought it the bolt would not strip a cartridge from the left side of the magazine. I found that the bolt face was not open enough on the bottom left side to allow the case head to slide up under the extractor, in fact the bolt would just glide over top of the cartridge. I carefully opened the face up enough on the left side to allow the case head to come up. After this minor modification the rifle fed flawlessly from both sides of the mag.

The ejector had the crappy leaf spring that was broken so I ordered a replacement from Western Gun Parts, much to my surprise they sent a coil spring ejector. It dropped right in and worked wonderfully.
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