enfield marking question

uchi

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couple things, is there a guide to the markings on these guns? mine has a bunch of them and i cant make heads or tails on them, and also what do i feed this thing? all my guns are stamped with what ammo they take but i cant find it on this thing anywhere. i know dumb question but i figured id add it in here with my markings question :)
 
Enfields were stamped with proof marks, and a variety of other stamps. Either get good lighting and a camera with a macro lens, do tracings and scan them into a computer so we can see them, or check Google for Lee Enfields stamps and see what comes up.
 
If it's British made it will have the ammunition information on the upper-left-side of the chamber. I'm looking at one right now which is marked
.303" 2.222" 18.5 tons/" square
which tells me that you use standrd .303 British ammunition in the critter, that the cartridge casings should be no longer than 2.222" (good to know when you are reloading) and that the Service pressure, that is, the safe operating pressure of the rifle shuld be about 41,440 pounds per square inch: 18.5 Imperial Long Tons per square inch, an Imperial Long Ton being 2240 pounds.

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good to know thanks for the help guys. with .303 rounds are they all the same or are there different variations? ill check when i get home, broke my leg on thursday and im still in the hospital so i cant look at the markings right now
 
As far as COMMERCIAL ammunition is concerned, if it is marked ".303BRITISH" it will be okay.

There is ALSO the old .303" Savage, but they are more than a bit scarce these days. Cartridge was about the size and power of a .30-30. Your rifle uses ammunition which is about 50% more powerful. Firing a .303 Savage in a Lee-Enfield will give you a bulged, split casing and possibly gas splitting out the back of the rifle and into your face. :eek:Be careful.

As far as MILITARY ammunition is concerned, if you happen onto some of the stuff, get back to us here and ell us what's written on the bottoms of the cartridges, with photos if they look the least bit unusual. There were more than THIRTY-SIX HUNDRED variations on the .303 cartridge produced for military use between 1888 and the late 1990s. Some of these are rare and very expensive and you would be an idiot to shoot them off (commercial ammo is fresh and about $1 a shot; Cordite Mark III Dum-dums go for better than $100 a shot). Others are dangerous to use (Explosive type), some are illegal even to possess (Buckingham incendiaries are one example). And there are some very interesting ones out there, too: I once ran into a bag of B Mark IV Z: very special stuff for torching the armoured gas tanks on the ME-109. w:h:Real, honest-to-goodness Battle of Britain stuff. Fortunately, I had got rid of them before they were made illegal...... 50 years after they had been dumped on the civilian market by the same Government that later banned them.

Oh, it's fun!:bangHead::bangHead::bangHead::bangHead:

But somebody here will help with the military stuff. Commercial is hunting ammo and you can get it anywhere. You might think about loading your own. It's fun, your ammo costs half as much AND it's very often more accurate.

Hope this helps.
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great info thanks bud. ive wanted to get into reloading and my wife has talked baout buying me a loading set for x mas but with the severity of my broken leg i dont think its gonna happen this year, so box ammo it is. :) i cant even clean the damn thing so i doubt ill be shooting it in the next couple months. oh wait, forgot ive got a new .22 i havent shot yet. i can pop that thing off without worrying about hurting my leg and recoil and stuff, lol.

what weight .303 do you guys find these guns shoot the best?
 
I get the best SHOOTING with 37 to 38 grains of IMR-4895 behind a Sierra 180 Pro-Hunter bullet. This is a FLATBASE bullet; Enfield rifling likes flatbase bullets a lot more than it does boat-tails. I seat to the OAL of a military round, which crowds the leade just a bit. This is a slightly-mild loading: 2250 ft-sec MV and it is VERY accurate. I am using DIZ brass (Canadian, WW2, Boxer primed).

Another good load is a Hornady 150, seated so the cannelure shows, with 40 grains of 4064. This is a hotter load, rather zippy and a definite Bambi-buster. It also shoots half an inch in a good rifle. The Hornady slug is .312", which is what your rifle really wants.

Don`t bother with .308 or .310 bullets: waste of money.

Hope this helps.
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