Now I have picked out one of my bubba No4's for this conversion.
Starting with digging into my stockpile of ssporterized stocks I picked 2 that were closely matching in both wood and grain, (birch) one was a mk1 stock while the other was off a mk2. By cutting the end of the Mk1 stock square and then salvageing a chunk of the mk2 stock and gluing it with construction adhesive I ended up with a mid lenght stock.
However the part I glued on was from near the reciever so it needed extensive thinning to match the standard contour of the stock. so a lot of work with a chisel and then the belt sander followed by a final go with a sanding block.
Still to do:
cut and crown the barrel to an appropriate lenght, its looking like that will be about 21 1/2".
bore out a front sight base to fit the thicker barrel,
making of the top wood, which I've been thinking that I can use an original rear top wood cut back, but that would ruin original wood. The other option is to take one of the many bubba sanded and recontoured butstocks (with matching wood of course) I have and try to salvage enough material to make my own top wood.
If this picture works you will see a No5, EAL, Project tanker, and a No4
First I decided to do it the hard way and not chop up any more un-bubba'ed wood, so I selected a butstock that had been sanded and re-contoured in a nice bubba rounded fasion. I then split it down the middle horizontally, using a large hand saw as it provided me more control. With some more wood working I got rid of a whole lot of wood that I did not need, using the saw and a wood plane.
You can't see the inside because I forgot to take photos but it was widened out very carefully with a router and then a lot of chisel work and sanding.
Very sharp chisels are important,
and bandaids,
can't bleed on the wood
then trimmed them up to lenght to match my spliced foreend
and with a whole lot of cutting and sanding, thank god for a belt sander, which by the way I clamped in the vice and moved the wood bits, you get a lot more control this way. A table or bench sander would be better but I don't have one.
you end up whith this, you need to have some original wood to measure to get the ends close enough to fit the barrel bands, then just remove all the other wood
easy
compared to some original lenght wood uppers.
Ok lets take a step back, Splicing the foreend... you see how by carefully cutting to match up the lighting groves in the stock, and some more chisel work allow for a nice hardwood block to get glued in. Keeps everything straight and gives a much larger gluing surface.
Now with the wood cut I measured how far a normal enfield barrel sticks out past the wood, then I chucked up my enfield in the metal lathe and with a little cutting ended up with this. Oh I blued it as well with cold blue.
The beveled contour on the outsied is close to the original enfield and the corwn is only 2deg negative, I could of put a big counter sunk crown like a normal enfield but I like the nearly flat crowns. Personel preference and since I'm running the lathe I can do whatever I like
I aldo bored out teh front sight base to match the barel thickness, but took off a little too much .010" or so. So I pinned it sitting high and will use some JB wele to fill in the spaces around the sight and where the lugs would be on an original sight base.
Ok now all stocked up with barrel bands, and a few comparisons to another enfield I have. I still need metal nose caps to go under the front barrel band. I dont have a source that sells them seperately from the wood so I may give-er a go on making them.
Well I decided to make the metal caps for the forestock... Well lets just say If I was going to set up to do a few of these I would make a jig.
3/4" round rod and 1" round rod worked but there was a lot of fitting and hammering, and more fitting and hammering and squeezing in the vise. Then a bit of belt sander to finish up the exterior. So 4 beers later I had someting that looked reasonable and I cold blued it.
Then I thought I was done I thought I should check to see if I would be able to get a normal front barel band over my work. Well you guessed it no way. So back to trimming the stock a bit more to match the original profile.
So back to fitting and hammering for a while then another turn on the belt sander.
But I had a stock problem, my splice worked loose so its getting reglued with a stronger glue. And I need to find a few more metal bits as I seem to have run out of foresite protectors and sling swivels.
here are the metal endcaps just before the second round of beltsandering, they have been fitted and hammered into the correct profile. It took about 4 hours total time to make them look like this.
I shoud mention the wood has about 8 coats of BLO rubbed in with a cotton rag
then a little work to cut the hole out of the to guard and some cold blue. You might also notice that the ones I made are slightly shorter then the standard caps. Well thats because I eas eyeballing the wood when I did the cuts and thought to myself.... self... lets make this a little shorter and trim it to the proper lenght after... well I forgot to trim it
but its my project and I can do what I want. The caps are at the proportional lenght to the total lenght
I still have to decide how I'm going to pin/rivit them to the wood, I'll need some pins to keep the forward barrel band in place.
And finally here it is next to a normal enfield and an SKS
the barrel is 21 1/2" on my shortered enfield about 3 1/4" shorter then the standard enfield
