P14 Headspace Question

mkrainc

mkrainc

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Until last fall, I had never heard of the Enfield Pattern 14. As luck would have it, a family aquaintence brought one up to me, wondering what it was. A little research was done and I had the answer for him.

He isn't a shooter and wanted to get rid of it, a long story short, I am now the owner.

That brings up the question in the title of this thread. Can anyone tell me if the P14 has the same type of issues with headspace as do the Lee Enfields?

I have watched the CGN and Military Surplus Collectors forums, and have never seen anyone comment on the P14 and any problems with headspace. Or am I just being paranoid after dealing with my LE's?

Thankyou in advance.
 
There is nothing at all to be paranoid about as regards the Lee-Enfield rifle and headspace.

The REAL issue is a general lack of understanding regarding what "headspace" actually IS.

The American gun magazines ascribe sloppy headspace to anything not "Made in USA" or Germany. British, Japanese, Italian, Russian: NONE of them are up to snuff by their standards. The biggest problem is not the rifles, but the American gun magazines, which my long-time shooting partner (one of the finest handloaders and riflemen I have ever known) referred to as "the funny papers".

HEADSPACE IS THE DISTANCE BETWEEN A CHAMBERED ROUND, AS FAR FORWARD AS IT CAN GO, AND THE FACE OF THE BOLT IN LOCKED POSITION.

RIMMED cartridges headspace on the Rim of the chambered cartridge; extra space in the front of the chamber can be a nuisance but also is a great feature under battlefield conditions. It is NOT a weakness and it is NOT dangerous.

SEMI-RIMMED cartridges headspace on the small Rim of the casing which, as with Rimmed ammunition, prevents the cartridge from going too far into the chamber. Again, free space in front of the round is not an "issue" although it can be either a nuisance or a lifesaver, depending on your point of view..... and if you are in a mud-filled shell crater with somebody nasty shooting at you.

RIMLESS ammunition headspaces on some theoretical slope of the shoulder of the casing and depends on careful chambering and precise fitting of the Bolt to the barreled Action. There must be ZERO room, ideally, in front of the chambered round and the Bolt must close solidly against the cartridge. Because this was nearly impossible to achieve before CNC machine-tools were developed in the 1950s, the Americans allowed .003" of extra space and looked mightily askance at anything more than that.

Considering these points, I have NO idea why anyone would want to make a rifle to handle Rimless ammunition at all! It is just too much trouble! CLEARLY, the best compromise as far as rifle effectiveness is concerned, must be the Semi-rimmed cartridge...... which was used by the Japanese Arisaka and by the British P-13 which was developed as a wartime expedient into your P-14 and chambered for the regular rimmed .303 cartridge.

Headspace with the .303" cartridge is simple: .064" is Minimum, .074" is Maximum. Cartridges were made with a maximum Rim thickness of .063", so a well-fitted rifle would have exactly ONE thousandth of an inch of "headspace". If this were more than TEN thousandths, the bolt-head (on a Lee-Enfield) or the Bolt (on the P-14) would be changed-out to a better fit.

You CAN experience "headspace issues" with some modern ammunition, even with a perfectly-fitted rifle. Manufacturers do not always stick with the miltary-spec RIM thickness (.060" Minimum, .063" Maximum), either out of sloppiness or misunderstanding of the criticality of rim thickness with Rimmed ammunition. I have seen commercial ammunition on the Canadian market (many years ago, mind you) which had Rims as thin as .040", which meant that every single round would give .023" of headspace OVER and ABOVE what the Rifle gauged. A rifle with .010" of actual headspace would be running .033" when using this ammunition: about FIVE TIMES what the Americans consider dangerous...... and there were no serious accidents, although much of the brass wasn't worth picking up.

As to the P-14 rifle, it is one of the finest rifles ever built. That massive action will handle literally any cartridge which can be fed into it. They are immensely solid, smooth and lock up like a bank vault. The ONLY weak part on the rifle is the little spring which powers the Ejector; if it breaks, it can be replaced with half of a spring from a ballpoint pen and it will run the next century without a bobble. It has a pure Mauser action and feeds FROM THE MAGAZINE, so don't toss single rounds into the chamber and try to slap the bolt shut.... unless you really like buying Extractors..... which are very nearly non-existant. Once the Bolt grabs the cartridge, chambering is quick and slick and most ammunition problems disappear, even with that horrid rimless .30-06 used in the P-17.

But if it happens to have a chamber which is a bit deep, that is no "issue", nor is it dangerous unless your ammunition is the worst kind of garbage. It is simply the way the rifle was designed and built. To compensate for a deep chamber, as with a deep chamber on a Lee-Enfield, all you do is neck-size your cases once they are fireformed to your rifle.

NO problem.

GOOD rifles..... all of them.
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Smellie,

have you ever consider making a skicky with all your knowlagable replies and call it Smelliepidia. You are a mine of information. :D


I think I'll start a word document for myself and copy/ paste all your post.
 
Thank you Smellie for your post. I've always read your past posts with great interest. Yours and a couple of others advice, is how I solved the problems I was having with my .303 cases seperating in my LE actions. Now, I have no problems.

For instance in my Parker Hale with the No1 action, I found a longer bolthead, plus now I use Privi brass which I o-ring for the first firing, and neck size for the next loads.

After tearing down the P14 to clean and inspect it, I was very impressed with the construction of this rifle. I was glad to read your comments on it. Confirms my initial impression of it.

With my original question, I was also fishing for hidden problems, as I have no experience with the P14. I took carefull note on your advice of loading single rounds. That is how I usually shoot. I will be sure to load a single into the magazine, not into the chamber.

Thanks again.
 
Its not the headspace that causes the problems, it is the air space between the bolt face and the rear of the case that causes the problem which is called "head clearance". The second problem is American SAAMI commercial ammunition is not made to military standards and our .303 cases are made a little on the wimpy side.

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Below in the top photo is a South African 1982 surplus ammunition in a Wilson case gauge and as it should be level with the top of the gauge. In the bottom photo is a new Remington case that has the shoulder located 1/4 shorter than normal. What this means is Remington doesn't even know where to put the shoulder of the case on the British .303 case.

twocases.jpg
 
Thankyou too bigedp51. I am aware of what "headspace" is and the terminology used when it pertains to the Lee Enfield.

Interesting info on the Remington cases. Thanks for the pics.
 
I liked kohr varik's idea. Hey mods... can we have a sticky for all of smellie's posts? I learn so much every time he posts.

Btw... doing some online research today, and I think I know where he got the nickname 'smellie'... Apparently the Short Mag Lee Enfield (SMLE) is sometimes spoken as 'Smelly'. Maybe I'm way off, but it seemed appropriate considering how much he knows about the British firearms.

His enthusiasm for the P14 has me planning for a P14 pickup soon.
 
I have an M1917 iunbound to replace the P14 MkI* non-refurb I never should have sold - lol.

FANTASTIC rifles and a great action for .375H&H projects given all the already-butchered Winchesters out there without the swimming pool in the rear bridge.

As for headspace, consider that the yanks did not even bother to serialize the bolts in the .30-06 M17 action because within the same manufacture runs (Winchester, Remington and Eddystone) the rifles were built with parts interchangeability.

Use with confidence.
 
The P14 and the American M1917 have "LESS" headspace issues than the No.1 and No.4 Enfield rifles. The P14 and M1917 have a claw extractor that holds the case against the bolt face when fired. The No.1 and No.4 have an extractor that leaves the rim unsupported when the bolt is closed.

Now think about headspace and extractors that firmly grip the rim of the case. Now also think about Hatcher's Notebook and Hatcher reaming the chamber headspace longer and longer on a M1917 and not having a single issue or problem with excess headspace. ;)

image006e.jpg


If you look at the center case in the photo please notice the primer protruding from the base of the case. The distance the primer backed out is the actual head clearance or "air space" between the bolt face and the rear of the case. And yet the case had one half inch of actual headspace clearance theoretically. :eek:
 
Claven2 said:
As for headspace, consider that the yanks did not even bother to serialize the bolts in the .30-06 M17 action because within the same manufacture runs (Winchester, Remington and Eddystone) the rifles were built with parts interchangeability.
Click to expand...

I was reading that there were some interchangeability issues between the three manufacturers during P14 production, mainly with Winchester. Does anyone know what parts this might apply to? It is a wiki however, so the info is as good as the person who wrote it.

The need for additional small arms combined with a shortage of spare industrial capacity led the British government to contract with U.S. commercial arms manufacturers, Winchester, Remington and Eddystone (a subsidiary of Remington set up principally to manufacture the P14) to produce the P14 for the British before the US entered the war in 1917. However, each factory produced parts from their own designs, leading to interchangeability issues; Winchester was particularly troublesome in this regard, going so far as to refuse for months to change to the new Mk I* standard. Therefore, the official designation of the rifle was dependent upon its manufacturer: e.g., the Pattern 1914 Mk I W is a Mk I of Winchester manufacture, R would be Remington, or E for Eddystone.
Click to expand...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_1914_Enfield
 
The Skennerton and Stratton books are good references for both the Pattern1914 and Model 1917 Enfields, and both summarize parts which were deemed to be non-interchangeable among manufacturers. In reality many of these parts did prove to be interchangeable.

It is interesting that the P14 was planned as a replacement for the Lee-Enfield prior to WW1, however the press of wartime needs precluded any changeover to either the new rifle or the .276 rimless ctg which was originally developed for it. As it was the P14 became an auxiliary weapon in WW1 in spite of it's many fine features. Other than prototypes, all P14s were made under contract in the 3 US factories as British facilities were completely involved in LE production.

Some of the advantages over the LE which were incorporated into the P14, and it's prototype, the P13, were:
- a 1 piece stock
- a Mauser type action with forward locking lugs on the bolt and a non-detachable bolt head
- an aperture rear sight
- a trigger mounted on the receiver
- a rimless ctg
- a heavier barrel

Had the rifle been developed earlier and produced in quantity it it likely that it would have been the standard Brit infantry rifle in WW1. The rifle has certainly stood the test of time. It was made of good quality steels and was immensely strong as evidenced by the fact that many have been used as the basis for various magnum chambered sporters.
 
Basically, all winChester parts interchange with all other winchester parts and so on.

If memory serves, non-interchangability is mostly in the botl group between the three makers. Evidently they all produced the rifle to different revisions of the drawings.

Also, MkI bolts don't interchange with MkI* bolts as the extractors are different. This should only apply to the P14, the M1917 learned from those lessons and more M1917's served overseas with the AEF than M1903 Springfields which were harder and more expensive to produce in a hurry.
 
Mark I and Mark I* bolts don't interchange because of the differences in the left-hand locking lugs.

Nearly all Mark Is were reworked to Mark I*. Even s/n W305 has been reworked, so they were pretty thorough: it was one of the pre-production rifles delivered early from the Winchester factory before Remington and Eddystone even were making rifles.

But there ARE still a (very) few Mark Is out there. I have seen exactly ONE. It was on a dealer friend's rack and it had him completely "beat" because the rifle WOULD NOT ACCEPT A BOLT. Checked it very carefully and..... no Star. Went through his available Bolts and..... there it was: a Winchester-made Mark I Bolt. Worked fine.
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Winchester was the Primary Contractor for the P-14 production and did the original tooling for all three factories.

As well, Winchester were "in charge" of adapting this British design to American production methods..... under the supervision of the Board of Ordnance, which was an ocean away and had not thought about the meaning of the word "hurry" since the Charge of the Light Brigade.

Winchester knew what they were doing, but the Board kept demanding tiny changes and the production of pilot models and samples and......

..... and precisely the same procedure as Sir Charles Ross was under with our Standing Small Arms Committee, the same idiots who insisted on 82 mechanical, cosmetic and dimensional changes in the 1905 Ross in less than 7 years of production!

So now, 100 years on, Ross gets slagged for "never making the same rifle twice in a row" and Winchester gets slagged for "non-interchangeable parts" while the truth is that if the Factories had been allowed to MAKE RIFLES, there would have been a lot less problems.

But the Boards and Committees, none of which understand how a rifle is produced, set the specifications, demand the alterations (after due consideration, mind you: we must not rush, simply because men are dying for want of rifles), examine things slowly and repeatedly, criticise the manufacturers for not having the rifles built before Official Approval was given (and thus having a million ready for delivery the following day)..... then they claim their medals and Orders and Knighthoods and pensions and go home and tell everyone how hard they worked in the War, keeping those stupid mechanics in line and making them produce ACCEPTABLE rifles.

It is all quite absurd.

And yet, from this utter MESS came 4 million of the finest military bolt rifles ever made!

And THAT is the Miracle!
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I got to take my P14 to the range last Saturday. I love that rifle. No issues whatsoever. Took my calipers with me and next to no case expansion. Put around 60 rounds through it. Accuracy suffered due to my lousy eyesight and shooting off hand, but I was still hitting targets out at one hundred yards.

I would still like to add optics, but I want to do it without drilling and tapping. I have seen mounts from a company in the U.S. that use the existing holes in the rear sight mount.
 
S and K make no gunsmith mounts for the P14. I believe brownells carries them or you could try directly from S and K. I don't know if they ship to Canada
 
There are Canadian dealers who handle the S&K mounts. When I as working in the gun shop in Wainwright, I sold quite a few S&K mounts for the Number 4 and for the P-14/17.

They are extremely solid mounts, in either case replacing the rear aperture sight and anchoring to the underside of the Charger Guide by means of a cam-shaped Nut which is clamped into position by a very stout Allen screw.

We obtained these mounts from Mil-Arm in Edmonchuk, so that should be a good place to start looking. The mounts are expensive but they are WORTH every penny (which costs 1.8 cents to make).

Hope this helps.
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