Rechambering my 303 to 308

First your going to have to have the barrel taken off and set back because the 303 round is longer then the 308. Nest your going to find out that the 308 shoots poorly because the bore on an enfield is actaually .311 (or larger) not .308.

So if your going to go through all the trouble of taking the barrel off and messing about just get a new barrel in whatever caliber you want. within reason remember its a No4 so you have to watch the pressure.

OR if your interested you can epps the chamber and increase your case capacity and reload. IIRC Elwood Epps in ontario charge about $125 to ream out the chamber. the advantage is that you can still fire standard 303 rounds if you run out of reloads.
 
While this has been done historically (Actually only converted to 7.62 not 308). its more than a rechambering. It was only done on properly carefully examined/proofed receivers of the highest quality.

A conversion uses: a new barrel (The bore of a 303 is too loose to shoot .30 cal accurately. Hell some are too loose to shoot 303 accurately.), a modified bolt head/extractor, modified ejector, and either a platform or a modified mag (sterling) to feed the 7.62.

The stresses on the receiver are higher with 7.62 than originally designed for and many (most?) modern gunsmiths won't do the conversion.

Best advice if you want one in 7.62 is to buy one of the previously made DCRA conversions or if you have big bucks and can find one, the converted sniper rifles. Probably cheaper and less dangerous. I've seen them for less than $500.
 
You might want to review some Hodgdon load data using H335/ Benchmark powder. When I was shooting a No4, I used moly coated 150gr Hornady SP bullet over H335 and reached 2650fps. That is within spitting distance of the 7.62 so why bother going to the cost and trouble of converting.

Now you also have quality 174gr match bullets and other choices for hunting bullets. Little benefit to convert as you should not run 308 pressures for fear of kaboom at worse, increased wear at best.

Then you have a single shot or costs to find parts...

For that type of money, you could trick out a Savage/Stevens nicely and have a safe reliable and far more accurate rifle.

Jerry
 
That, and if your receiver can take 308 pressures, you could just load +P .303's

You might also want to look into the 303 Epps Improved
 
Sure seems like a lot of fuss for no gain. Case volume of the .303 British and 7.62 NATO are nearly idendical. Load either with the same powder charge and they give the same velocity and pressure, all else being equal. The 7.62 is normally loaded to higher pressure than the .303 simply because it's going into rifles designed for those pressures. Stuff it in a Lee and you have a choice of loading to the lower .303 pressure or pushing the safety margin with normal 7.62 pressure. But if you're willing to push the pressure up, you could just as easily do that in the .303 case.

If you really must re-chamber to a rimless cartridge, go to 7.65 Mauser, with a bit more volume to yield higher velocity at acceptable pressure (and it uses .311 bullets, too).
 
prosper said:
well, you COULD wildcat it to a .311-308. Chamber to 308, and handload .311's in the 308 shell
Click to expand...
That's a clever way of getting a new barrel. Bullets are available, brass and dies are no problem, and no case stretching .....

I wonder how much the barrel has to be cut back so the reamer will bite new metal? Inquiring minds want to know.
 
"...how to rechamber my 303 to a 308..." You can't. You need another barrel, have the bolt head altered to extract a rimmless case and alter or change the mag to feed .308's. Just finding a barrel can give you brain damage.
 
Barrels? No problem. Any Rem 700 take off can be rethreaded for the Lee action. Savages might be a bit small and you would need to make a different barrel nut.

But unless you can do the work yourself, why pay for all that gunsmithing and still have a soft action and not so good trigger?

Jerry
 
This is something I did with one of my Lee Enfields that had the barrell shot out. I just wanted to try this little project for something to do. I had a barrell sitting around that was 7.62 and thought I would see how much work it would take. Changing the barrell was easy and I knew someone who was good with a Lathe so rethreading the new barrell was easy too. The problems came when trying to get the 7.62 rounds to properly feed. It still doesn't feed properly and now sits in the cabinet until I get bored again. After it was all done I would strongly reccomend not doing it unless you have copious amount of time and the ability to do things yourself and were not using it as an everyday gun.
 
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