Educational Zone #28 - Refinishing a US Savage Enfield Mk1 #4 SMLE

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Educational Zone #28 - Refinishing a US Savage Enfield Mk1 #4 SMLE - Page 4

The British designed the rifle to have a large over-sized chamber. This was so it would easily chamber rounds that had mud and corrosion on them. It worked as designed, and it is no big problem with military ammo that is only shot once.

But for us reloaders, it presents a big problem. If you full-length resize the fired brass, it stretches it a lot.

After only one or two loadings, you will start having head separations, which means the case breaks into two pieces, usually about 1/2 inch from the base. The front part will get stuck in the chamber and requires a tool called a "split case extractor" to pull it out.

I keep one in the butt stock oiler hole in my rifle, just in case.

The solution is to only particially neck-size the brass. I neck-size mine about 1/3 of the way down the neck. This is enough to hold the bullet on the reloaded round, but leaves the body of the case expanded to its maximum size.

By doing this, I have gotten many reloads on some brass. Others get incipient case separation indications after a few reloadings and must be discarded.

A fascinating hobby.

Refinishing a US Savage Enfield Mk1 #4 SMLE

But, as we mentioned, there is always a chance of a case separation with reloaded brass in a .303.

I had one this morning.

I was prepared by having a broken shell extractor on hand.

Here it is.

You just place it in the chamber and close the bolt.

Then, when you open the bolt, it will pull out the broken case.

You can see the case head on the bench.

This is very typical of the types of head separations you see with .303s.

But, when I shot a couple of 5 shot groups at 50 yards, I was pleased with the potential accuracy.

Here's a couple of groups with 180 and 150 grain bullets.

They are high, but that is normal with a battle sighted rifle.

They are also to the right a bit, but we will drift the sight and fix that problem.

All in all, I'm very happy with this "new" old rifle.

Conclusions:
Refinishing these old rifles is a great hobby.

It makes shooting them even more enjoyable if they also look nice.

Thanks to Tman for doing his magic on this project.