A while back I tried to bed the action of my factory sporterized Enfield and what resulted was really bad accuracy. I was a little gutted because it shot very very well before idle hands went and f#€ed with it.
So from the advice given by several members here I determined that I had actually set the bedding thick enough to lift the action to the point where the draws weren't making good contact. This is where lee Enfield's are much different than regular bolt actions when bedding is concerned.
Yesterday I ground and chiseled away all the bedding and enough of the wood under the action to drop it enough to make good contact with the draws, and proceeded to re-bed the Knox only. The other advice I took was to install a hardwood dowel plug to the forend tip and tediously ground it down until it was determined to be giving an upward barrel pressure of 7 lbs.
Now here was the key, I bedded the Knox with the forend barrel shim in place and clamped the action down tight while the epoxy set. Pretty much the opposite of what I would do with a regular bedding job.
Finished Knox bedding
Hardwood barrel shim Contoured to the barrel
I used old bullet lube to build the dams
I then filled the area with steel epoxy around the plug
Re-assemble
Finished forend shim, you can see the tip of the dowel.
Back to normal. I'll take it out and shoot for groups and post the results. Yesterday it shot pretty promising groups with just the Knox bedding and dowel in place. And yes I know, it was a bit of a messy job, but I plan to refinish the wood once I have it shooting properly anyhow, otherwise I would have taped off the areas around the bedding.
So from the advice given by several members here I determined that I had actually set the bedding thick enough to lift the action to the point where the draws weren't making good contact. This is where lee Enfield's are much different than regular bolt actions when bedding is concerned.
Yesterday I ground and chiseled away all the bedding and enough of the wood under the action to drop it enough to make good contact with the draws, and proceeded to re-bed the Knox only. The other advice I took was to install a hardwood dowel plug to the forend tip and tediously ground it down until it was determined to be giving an upward barrel pressure of 7 lbs.
Now here was the key, I bedded the Knox with the forend barrel shim in place and clamped the action down tight while the epoxy set. Pretty much the opposite of what I would do with a regular bedding job.
Finished Knox bedding
Hardwood barrel shim Contoured to the barrel
I used old bullet lube to build the dams
I then filled the area with steel epoxy around the plug
Re-assemble
Finished forend shim, you can see the tip of the dowel.
Back to normal. I'll take it out and shoot for groups and post the results. Yesterday it shot pretty promising groups with just the Knox bedding and dowel in place. And yes I know, it was a bit of a messy job, but I plan to refinish the wood once I have it shooting properly anyhow, otherwise I would have taped off the areas around the bedding.
