.303 British Lee Enfield accuracy

Outstanding~! Thanks very much for posting this.

It validates my perceptions of a favorite rifle. I posted some pictures of my cobbled up Cdn. Long Branch monstrosity. It has a shortened fore stock and keeps the rear handguard, but discards the upper handguard. The 22-inch Heym hammer forged 7.62 NATO barrel blank is of weight and contour similar to a Remington M40, but the NATO chamber was cut off and the blank rechambered using a .303 pressure barrel reamer.

This was built in Ontario for me when I worked at the NRA and imported through a US dealer. It has an offset side scope mount with rail which accepts Ruger rings. I use a Weaver 4X Classic for hunting, but the rifle can be stripper clip loaded with the scope attached, and I can also use the iron sights, a Pattern 14 front sight, with Mk.I battlesight. It used to have an A.J. Parker 8/53 backsight conversion on it, but I sent that to Italy so our mutual friend Giorgio could enjoy it. I use the rifle as a cast bullet plinker now, but having a barrel of normal 7.62/.30 cal dimensions I have a much wider choice of bullets. So it is sort of a 30-303.

No problem shooting normal .303 factory loads in the tight barrel. Bolt opening is easy with no pressure signs. Velocities are where they should be. When I was at Ruger we made some No.1 and No.3 single shots for the Canadian trade which used normal .30 cal. barrels and we shot pressure tests with test barrels of standard SAAMI .303 British and with tight-bore pressure barrels using .308 blanks. The pressure rise was in the order of +3,000 to +3,500 psi, which is well within the design limits of a sound action. Retired Cdn. Ordnance engineer told me that the sloppy throats in wartime “trench” chambers which permitted bullet bases to upset to over .318 and then having to be squeezed down again were a bigger problem. Having a throat only 0.0005 larger than maximum bullet diameter of the minimum dimensioned normal configuration works just fine with a .308 groove, even with MkVIIIz and AP!