Why do people cut the wood off Lee enfields for?

"...You could buy a large number of Lee-Enfields..." By the pound in the late 60's. Used to be barrels of 'em in the old Hercules surplus shop in downtown TO. Spike bayonets were sold as tent pegs too.
Nobody ever thought a Lee-Enfield would be worth anything. Same thing went on Stateside with 1903/1903A3's.
 
Back in the day, I used a '55 Chev V8 in a demolition derby. I donated a really nice '57 Buick to raise money by bashing it with a sledge. Do I regret those actions? :redface: You bet. I am a lot less wasteful now than I was when I was a smart-a$$ young fella. Nothing changes though, as I see semi loads of cars heading for a smelter, some still have good tailights, hub caps, and other good parts left on.

I must also confess that I did "bubba" a Czech Mauser that I bought for $35 in an Army and Navy store back in 1965. Thankfully, I bought two of them, and fortunately left the second one alone. As my luck would have it, they were both rather uncommon rifles, made up of captured parts. So, I ended up with one rifle worth hundreds of $$, and another bastardized one that I still use for hunting.

In my case, I knew pretty well everything worth knowing back then. Now, I find that there is an outside chance I may have missed a couple of rather important things.......:p
 
Forgive me if this is common knowledge (I'm still new to this site), but a large number of Lee Enfields were sporterized commercially. My father bought one from Canadian Tire way back in the early 70's.
 
Nothing wrong with a sporterized Lee Enfield, Love mine, no intention to return to her pass....

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Just like her the way she is....:D
 
I prefer the original full wood look...the more original, intact and complete, the better..
Some customized Enfields like the one above look nice, but most appear to be done with a rusty hacksaw.
 
this is so simple-people who wanted to collect military rifles left them untouched,people who wanted hunting rifles cut them down.Would I cut an old enfield or swede down today?-probably not-there's enough sporters around for less money than full wood models to work with.

But to understand WHY people did it to old bolt action milsurps-just look at what people are doing to SKS's right now,cutting ,drilling ,adding rails,new sighting systems , restocking-because the SKS of today is the Enfield of yesterday-cheap, readily available and lots of cheap ammo
 
There are lots of threads in the milsurp section talking about why it was done, and how to undo what Bubba did.
Lou the Pou is probably the expert on the site that has restored the most from what I can tell. He really gave me a lot of help in restoring one that I did not too long ago.
Lou also sells the ones he restored cheap on the EE if you're interested. Save yourself the work, and reap the rewards for less.
 
For about $100,sometimes less, ANYBODY can get into hunting,and you can thank BUBBA for that,and no deer, moose or bear is going to know the diferance
 
Panman said:
There are also some of the better conversions that can't shouldn't be put back into military dress. They can be somewhat rare and collectible in their own right. It is usually best to seek some advice from the guru's on what you have got before you start messing with them even more. I have observed that there are definitely a few around CGN.
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If I can get them I'll post pics and get feedback. Failing that someone here has to have one for sale.
 
Claven2 said:
I would suggest asking in the Milsurps forum a bit further down the page, but the short answer is that Bubba likes his formerly collectible rifles light for chasing whitetail because he's too cheap to go buy a Savage 110 or Remington 742 Jam-o-matic and too unskilled to make a fine sporting rifle out of an Enfield. He's also too dumb to realize that he could sell a collectible Enfield for enough money to buy that Savage 110 or used Remmy 742 he wishes he could afford.
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No. The people who altered those rifles weren't dumb, and they did not alter any collectible firearms at the time. Most of those enfields were altered 50-60 years ago. At that time they were almost worthless. People bought them and made hunting rifles out of them.

It's the equivalant of someone today throwing out a 10 year old broken cell phone, and in 50 years having their snotty grandchildren call them dumb for discarding it.
 
funny isn't it-when you call it ''recycling'' its good,unless its an old military rifle ,then its ''bubba'd''and something people turn their nose up at...not me!And when I look at the fine craftsmanship on my ''bubba'd swede[restocked and scoped]and compare that to some of the current sporting rifles,it holds its own
 
I have a sporterized mk4,it was my first rifle purchased way back when i was 18.I am fortunate that it was only a cut down stock and i have been looking to restore the glory of this piece.My questions are where to find the forestock and is colour match as big an issue as in the veritable palette of mismatched wood hues on m1 garands?Thank you for any assistance.
 
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