Thinking about a No.1 Mk.3 RFI...Need advice

You are doing a great job of making the old girl look happy again.

I have several of these and they all are happy to eat ammo which is $12 a box, tops. Because I am so nice to them, they shoot nice, tight groups. I know, that is surplus-ammo prices but the stuff shoots Match Grade because I cook it up in my own basement. This summer, they all are going to make the acquaintance of some of this $2 a box stuff I have been cooking up: cast bullets made from old wheelweights.

If you order from a website such as fsreloading, you are buying your equipment at US distributors' prices rather than Canadian retail prices. CBSA charges you $5 plus GST on the contents and you have your equipment for MUCH less than your local shop pays for it. And it's the SAME equipment. To set up for loading jacketed bullets AND cast bullets AND making and sizing your own cast slugs will set you back about the price of 5 or 6 boxes of ammo and the equipment will last you a lifetime. Get a press, scale, measure and so forth and a set of .303 dies, also a set of the Lee Collet Die equipment for match-grade homemade ammo.

Lots of guys on here with lots of expertise in loading this cartridge and they are all willing to help.

Get some pony-tail ties ($1 per 100) from your local dollar store and use them on the bases of your shells at first firing. You end up with cases fire-formed to YOUR chamber. For loading supplies, start with 1 box each of Hornady Spire Point 150-grain slugs and Sierra Pro-Hunter 180-grain. Those, plus your cast slugs, should do you forever. You stock ONE type of powder for jacketed slugs (I recommend 4895) and another for cast bullets..... and you store them APART so you don't get them mixed up.

MY rifles like the Sierra bullet (seated to the OAL of a Mark 7 Ball round) with 37 or 38 grains of the 4895 powder; this is NOT a nasty load, rather mild in fact, but it is very accurate. You can use 40 or 41 of the same powder with the 150s (seated the same way) for a good deer load.

If you don't want to buy too many more boxes of $27 ammo, get some Prvi Partizan brass; it is closest to the old military dimensions. You can get it in big bags from Trade-Ex: tab at 10 o'clock from the GN Beaver, top of this page.

You load your cast bullets with 13 grains of Red Dot shotgun powder. These are your plinking loads and they are 10 cents a shot, so you can shoot 100 shells in a range session and not have to sell the kids. Best of all, you have money left over to buy another rifle!

Give it a try. Your first efforts might not be perfect, but they won't be $27, either!

Hope this helps.
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I shot some more Federal 180 this week so I now have a slowly growing pile of brass. How exactly does this pony-tail tie thing work?


303-2.jpg


Before and after of the Federal. Now with steeper shoulders on the spent case and some stretch near the base I think?

Thanks
 
You slip the pony-tail tie onto the cartridge right own at the base, JUST ahead of the Rim.

The pony-tail tie will compress as you chamber the round and lock up the rifle, but while it is doing this, it is also pushing the round solidly back, against the bolt-face.

You have just said a permanent "good-bye" to primers backing out, as well as to cartridge-case "stretch" at the web, which is what gives you separated casings (at 65 cents apiece). Any expansion of your cartridge will be at the FRONT now, filling the chamber completely. You only need the pony-tail ties for first firing of any given casing. After that, you neck-size only and keep that ammo segregated for that rifle because not all rifles were chambered the same.

Nice thing is that even this first box of shells, on their first firing, will tend to be MORE accurate than previous shells have been. You now have more consistent ignition..... and consistency is likely the single-most-forgotten KEY to accuracy. So you reload your brass (now nicely fireformed as well) with the most consistent loads you can craft...... and you have Match-grade stuff.

NOW you can start playing, just a bit at a time, with precise OAL of your ammo, small adjustments to ogival position at firing, different primers, slightly-differing powders and all the rest.

But if you fire your brass with the pony-tail ties (to which the name "ED'S FAMOUS O-RINGS" has been given), you are already well on the road toward making your own ammo to a standard which makes you wonder why you EVER used factory stuff!

Plus, you are money in the pocket because, with relatively mild loads, it is costing you 60 to 65 cents a shot to produce extremely accurate ammunition: less than HALF the price of so-so factory ammo. OR you are producing accurate plinking loads at 10 cents each, for a saving of $1.25 a shell (taxes included here). At that rate, A DOZEN BOXES OF PLINKING AMMO WILL PAY FOR ANOTHER LEE-ENFIELD!!!!!!

And you don't have to sell the kids and your wife won't kill you!

Hey, bonus!

Have fun!
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Should work okay.

The idea is to have a buffer in FRONT of the rim of the cartridge. This pushes the cartridge BACK against the Bolt-face.

Personally, I find that generally I can get away with just slipping the thing on.

Friend ED (longtime proponent of these things) uses small O-rings that he gets at the auto wholesale. More expensive but very positive.

I use the pony-tail ties because (a) I'm a cheap Scotsman, and (b) I don't have a lot of $$$ to play with, so I m always looking for A Cheaper Way.

You are on the right track, friend.

DO have fun!
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