The Final End to this Sad Saga of the 1913 BSA SMLE!

Sly Old Fox

Sly Old Fox

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In lalaland, that is Ottawa.
This rifle was given to me, badly bubbaed by some guy who thought that he was imroving it. I can not dump on him too hard as I did much the same in the late 1950s with about 20 WW2 rifles.

Anyway, this 1913 BSA has a walnut stock, matching numbered rifle and bolt, BUT the fore stock was cut off & all the top of the fore stock. The rear sight ladder was discarded and a rail put on top of the action for a scope. The barrel was left intact. LouthePou has seen it and says that it would be a real challenge to bring it back.

So, I have decided to finish the bubba job.

I cut the barrel back about 2.5 ", cleaned up the cut and have crowned the muzzle, just need to do the bluing.

BUT, the base for the rear sight is still in place and bothers me. I tried to take the lower fore stock off and failed, not wishing to force anything, did not go any further. My objective is to try and get the rear sight base off the barrel. Is this possible???

Lou has been on vacation but I am here at the cottage and have the time and tools to do it. I hate to reblue the muzzle if I will be rebluing where the rear sight base now sits.

Anyone have any comments?

Thanks
 
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I havent seen a lee enfield in a while but it should be a matter of simply removing a retaining pin with a punch and then whacking the sight base off. Might be hard to get it off tho.
 
Steppenwolf said:
With all respect to Lou, just because he says doesn't necessarily mean it's so.

"LouthePou has seen it and says that it would be a real challenge to bring it back."
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I agree, Steppenwolf. I certainly would never dare to think that I know it all, even that I know much for that matter. Now if I mentioned that it would be a "challenge", that didn't mean it would be impossible, that's a subtle difference.

And I sure admit that what I consider a challenge some others could see as a walk in the park!

Lou (back from vacation :) )
 
My BSA 1913 .303BR

I have very good reasons for what I am doing to the rifle, Lou knows what they are and when I discussed the possibility of restoring it, because of the sources drying up for the stocks and missing parts, he used the word "challenge." I therefore made the decision do go the rest of the way and cut the barrel.

When I first received the rifle from a friend who wanted to rid himself of it, I described the rifle in this forum. I do not recall anyone saying that it was a nice "find" or coming forward and asking is I wanted to sell it. I also had it with the uncut barrel and a 1.75 X 5 vintage Burris scope on it at the Vankleek Gun show on July 4th last, priced at $175 and never had an offer even when I said the price was not firm and indeed dropped it to $150.

Lou is very modest and his post above verifies this when he says that for him what would be a "challenge" would not be for others.

And skirsons said that getting the sight base off is straight forward. BUT, my problem / question remains, why can I not get the fore stock free. Is it pinned as well?

Thanks to all for your interest.
 
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Without judging anyone's decisions wrt their own property, yes - the rear sight base is removable. You drift out a pin and then beat it forward using a hammer with a brass or aluminum punch. There will be a fixing pin hole left in the barrel afterward that you could plug with a pin, dress the ends, and cold-blue over the area.
 
Claven2 said:
Without judging anyone's decisions wrt their own property, yes - the rear sight base is removable. You drift out a pin and then beat it forward using a hammer with a brass or aluminum punch. There will be a fixing pin hole left in the barrel afterward that you could plug with a pin, dress the ends, and cold-blue over the area.
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Thanks Claven for your post. All my experience in the late '50s was on WW2 rifles being sold at the time by, was it Globe? in Montreal. So I am really unfamiliar with this 1913 rifle.

All of Claven's quote above I understand, but I can not get the wood off to get at the pin, sorry for the shout.

Unfortunately when we left Ottawa on Friday, I forgot to bring a a camera or the thread would have started with some images showing my problem.

And thinking about it, when I received this rifle, I posted here because I could not get the bolt out, not realizing that all that was needed was to give the release a sharp pull up, having only had experience with the later model rifles.

It is a dreary day here and I am really feeling like the Silly Old Fool.:redface:
 
1913 smle

Perhaps why all the Collectors are baying at the moon about is the fact that only about 3% of all the SMLE rifles made were during a time of Peace, and the other 97% were made during Wartime. The Peacetime ones tend to be better fitted and more care taken in their manufacture, thus are a lot more rare and difficult to find.

This one is not as horrible as one that occured to me.

Over 10 years ago, I had a table at an Edmonton Gun Show with some Lee Enfields on it. A guy came by and remarked that he had one at home but he had cut it down for a Sporter. However, it was now not as accurate as it had been.

I told him about the proper bedding of the No.1 Mark III SMLE. He then asked me if they all had CORK inside the stock.

So I asked him if, when he had it apart, did he see anything on the bottom of the barrel such as "Regulated by ........." He said "Yes, Regulated by Fulton," and what did that mean.

I told him it meant he had just taken a $600 target rifle and made a $50 Sporter out of it.

To get the wood off, remove the front guard screw that is under the rifle in front of the magazine opening, and the cross screw that holds the rear of the trigger guard ....it is located on the butt socket back of the trigger. Remove the trigger guard. Sometimes a GENTLE tap with a soft faced hammer is needed.

.
 
Sly Old Fox, I wonder if the rear butt is still in place? Could be that the stock bolt is putting pressure on the inletted "key", or whatever it's called, the metal bracket that's on the rear face of the forend. the front tip of the butt stock is square and it could be biting into that key, making it difficult to free the forarm. Just a thought.

Lou
 
Lou,

I apologize if my post was a bit harsh, I meant no disrespect. You, Claven and Desporterizer have eaned your good reputations for restoring military surplus firearms.

Sly Old Fox. I am sorry for the barb in my reply to your original post. It is your property to do with as you will.

In my defense I freely admit that I suffer from SMLEitis and an delicate where SMLEs are concerened


louthepou said:
I agree, Steppenwolf. I certainly would never dare to think that I know it all, even that I know much for that matter. Now if I mentioned that it would be a "challenge", that didn't mean it would be impossible, that's a subtle difference.

And I sure admit that what I consider a challenge some others could see as a walk in the park!

Lou (back from vacation :) )
Click to expand...
 
Git er dun!

Wait one!

Lou's suggestion of taking the butt bolt out.... On early models this would work, the butt bolt is just a big honking screw that holds the butt into the metal socket, the internal threads go right though the forging into the receiver area. Sometimes if the butt gets wobbly nin its socket, tightening the screw will fix it, but if done often, the tip of the bolt will advance into the back face of the forearm and jam it in there making it almost impossible to remove the forearm without brute force. So backing the bolt out a bit would release it, yes. HOWEVER, a loose butt stock became such a prevalent problem that the design was changed to stop the bolt coming undone. The fix was to lengthen the bolt 1/4 inch and form a square end on it. This square end fits into a slot in a plate inlet into the back face of the forearm.

Problem now is, if your gun has this feature, cranking the butt bolt undone will cam the square peg in the square hole, munch the plate and split the forearm. NOT GOOD.

So be careful.

The forearm should just drive off the action vertical downwards. It is gripped at the back between the "recoil lug" and the butt socket. It is literaly wedged in there, the faces are angled to each other to produce a taper. Tightening the trigger guard pulls the wood up into place and makes it rock solid. So to get it off, reverse the direction and drive it downwards from the back, don't yank on the wood at the front or you will crush "the draws' or the area of wood that wedges into the taper. I use a piece of wood as a drift around right at the very back either side of the receiver body. Gentle, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. It only needs to move 1/8 inch then you are on your way.
 
I talked by phone with Lou last night and I am gradually with his advice, (the but stock and bolt were removed before the phone call) getting some where.

This morning, with Lou's suggestion of how to get the wood off, I have carefully, with hard wood wedges, I have 2 thin wedges at the rear of the fore stock and the ring. I have also added some Gunzilla between the sides of the stock and the receiver. I am not there yet.

BUT, get this - with a good view of the barrel channel in the fore stock, I am seeing some kind of glue! Perhaps an epoxy of some type. :eek:


I know that heat will loosen such a bond but want to go carefully.

Who ever did this original bubba job was a real ............... a*****e :slap:

Keep watching as this sad saga continues.

BTW, I feel better about the situation than yesterday and the sun is shinning.

I am feeling like Sly again. :cool:
 
John Sukey said:
Perhaps Accraglass, and bubba did not use enough releasing agent?
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John, your comment is certainly valid but who ever did this job, probably did not even know what Accraglass is!

What I see in the fore stock barrel channel is only a strip about 3/4" wide and it was not even touching the barrel as I can pull the barrel away from the channel easily, actually free floated. The glue here served no useful purpose. I have seen enough expert bedding jobs using Accraglass to know it when I see it.

I have the barrel and fore stock separated enough to work on the pin for the sight base and will not separate the two.

I still do not have the pin out and am trying to drill it out.

The saga continuses ....... and the sun was with us all day:D
 
The Smellie 1913 BSA not Bubbaed to Death!

The latest news from L-E Bubba Central. You will need this :popCorn: and maybe even :cheers: to enjoy this story.

Well, as Englishman said, just get a biger hammer and git'r done. Well I PMed him back and asked if meant a H-D wrench/spanner.

So, I have the rear sight base off the barrel, finally, and the fore stock still adamantly refuses to come free. I really believe that the last bubba that was into this rifle did use some type of epoxy, anticipating that he would not be the one with the trouble later.

To give you some idea of the stupidity of what had already been done to this rifle before I received it, the family of the friend who gave me the rifle bought it with the front sight intact, and I believe the correct rear sight ladder in place. Wanting to please dad, they had some one mount a very cheap one piece scope base mount, 2 holes drilled & tapped into the receiver, the rear hole center being within about 0.130" of the rear of the ring. The single rear hole was made in the middle of rear ring, effectively blocking the use of the L-E 5 round clip! Furthermore, as the magazine was too tight to release and pull out, it made charging the magazine extremely slow and difficult.

When I clean up the barrel where the rear sight base was for 97 years, I will cold blue this area and and use a bit of JB Weld to fill in the pin notch.

When that is done, I will take out the hardwood wedge sitting just under where the barrell slims down and resting on the sides of the stock, thereby permitting the stock and barrel to come back together, free floated.

Now when I get this all done, remounting the crappy scope base using Loc Tite, remount the vintage Burris 1.75 X 5 scope give the walnut a nice shine, what could have sold on July 4th at Vankleek Hill show for $150, using my modest per hour rate as an accomplished Bubba, about 25 hours at $20 per, I will put the rifle uo on the EE sporting rifle section with a price of $650 (neg. of course) or BO.

ha: ha: ha: ha: ha: ha: ha:

Thank you, one and all.
 
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