- Location
- Somewhere on the Hudson Bay Coast
OK, I'll try to make some helpful suggestions because it is possible that your rifle is capable of much better. Accuracy of 1-1.5 MOA while still not precision as the word relates to this forum is better than 3 MOA. Have the action professionally bedded to the stock, both the contact surface of the butt section and the bedding area under the action and first few inches of barrel under the chamber. You may want to build up the comb of the stock so that you can see through he scope without loosing a solid cheek weld, if that condition presently exists, your scope by necessity is mounted pretty high. If the rifle is sent to a gunsmith for the bedding work, get him to examine the bore with a bore-scope to determine the condition of the barrel, particularly the throat. This will tell you how much money and effort you wish to put into this project. If the barrel is barely shootable, I wouldn't bother, but if it is in good shape continue. If the muzzle appears to be in poor shape, get him to cut a new crown.
When the rifle returns home, go over all of the screws to ensure everything is tight. Begin shooting with the barrel free floating, to determine an accuracy baseline with your factory Winchester ammo. Then, loosen the fore-end screw and place shims of paper to the barrel channel 2"-3" behind the fore-end tip to increase fore-end pressure on the barrel, retighten the screws, and then shoot and see if accuracy improves. If improvement is shown, you might need to do some experimenting to find the sweet spot. If the shimmed fore-end proves to be beneficial, you could build up a permanent pressure point in the fore-end of the same thickness. The paper will compress over time and the benefit of the shims will be lost. But if there is no improvement, or if accuracy actually drops off with fore-end pressure on the barrel, then keep the barrel free floating.
Often these Lee Enfield rifles have decent triggers, but installing a screw type stop behind the trigger to limit over-travel might benefit you. You will have to back it out to remove the bolt, and when you replace the stop, be sure not to advance it so far that the trigger cannot engage the sear. Practice your trigger pull by dry firing. Begin by balancing a coin on top of the barrel near the muzzle, with the aim of not knocking the coin off the barrel when dry firing. Start with a quarter and when you can manage that, switch to a dime. You might find that the heavy firing pin drop of the Lee Enfield is more disruptive than when conducting this exercise with a Mauser style bolt, so you might never be successful with a dime.
When shooting from a bipod, put a soft barrier material like a pair of gloves or a folded piece of denim between the feet of the bipod and any hard shooting surface. If you are shooting from a soft granular material like beach sand, this material will prevent the legs from sinking into the sand from the recoil of live fire. Lean into the bipod, to put load on the legs when live or dry firing.
Begin handloading. Factory ammo and mil-spec ammo does not the best accuracy make, although decent shooting can be done with 180 gr factory Winchester. Choose good quality commercial brass like Winchester, standard primers, and a propellant with a moderate burn rate like 4895, without going faster than 3031 or slower than 4350. Use magnum primers with ball powder like Winchester 748. Load match bullets for accuracy work, Sierra's 174 gr MK is a good choice. When you resize fired brass, set the shoulder back only enough to allow easy chambering. You might even get a couple of reloads without having to set the shoulder back at all. Lee Enfields are notoriously hard on brass due to excessive stretch, and you want to extend the life of the brass as much as possible. Seat you bullet long, for minimum jump to the lands. If the throat of that barrel is rough, the bullets might have to be set out so long that you cannot load from the magazine, which for casual target shooting is only a minor inconvenience. Determine, the seating depth of the bullet first, then work up your load. The way I progress is to first determine the maximum load with the bullet seated into the lands, then adjust the powder charge downwards to see if I can see any improvement in accuracy. Finally, play with the seating depth of the bullet to see if any improvement can be seen. As you can see, with this system, once the maximum load has been determined, any adjustment to the load or seating depth of the bullet reduces pressure. If the best accuracy is realized with the most pressure, that will be quickly realized. Use the accuracy baseline you got from shooting factory ammo to determine the quality of your handloads. Once your handloads surpass the accuracy possible with the factory ammo, then your handload becomes the baseline and any changes you make, need to be compared to that baseline. Keep good records of all information that relates to your loads, and of your observations when shooting.
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