A sporterized Enfied No4 Mk1 for my collection of crap

Another weary traveler washed up on shores of The Island of Misfit Firearms this afternoon. This deer season I had a long think about my habit of buying crappy old deer rifles faster than I can shoot deer with them and decided I definitely do not need any more deer rifles. Putting my foot down, don't need or want any more. Well that was 2 weeks ago and since then I've bought 4. I took my daughter to the pawn shop this afternoon for her to pick out a couple kids DVD's and this enfield was staring at me from the gun rack.

It is a 1942 No4 Mk1 made in the US by Savage for the lend lease program. It is marked U.S. property on the left side. Serial number on the bolt and receiver match. I don't know if its the original barrel just cut down or a replacement, but the barrel hardware is all missing and new sights added. It is also drilled and tapped for a scope mount on top as well as looks to be drilled and tap for a side scope mount also. The sporter stock is pretty well done and actually has some nice figure in the forend and a nice schnabel tip. I am steaming the dents out of the stock right now. I plan to reblue it and modify the stock just a bit to fit my shooting hand a bit better and replace the scope and rings. Should be a nice little rifle to put in the deer hunting rotation. I will post my progress here.

On a side note, I know almost nothing about these and have not started researching yet, how hard and expensive would it be to put the rear sights back on this. I don't see anything obviously cut where they took the rear sights off. No4 Mk1 had peep sights right?

wiscoaster said:

It's a really nice looking rifle and I'll bet it shoots pretty good, too.

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The bore looks fantastic. Its the goofy 2 groove rifling thing.

There is always horror hiding under the forend

I got the buttstock filed into the shape I want today. The original did not fit my hand well so I added a right handed palm relief. I also reshaped and reprofiled the rollover cheek piece. I don’t like sharp angles on walnut stocks because they get dented to easily so I blended it out into generous radius’s.

Forend properly rebedded

Archie said:

Nice bit of wood for the butt stock. Nice bit of forming as well.
As a collection, 'sporting' - aka 'hunting' rifles - is a genuine field of interest. How about 'sporting rifles made (well) from military? Yes, some will bawl about ruining a collector's item, but as you bear witness, often the collector value is gone by the time one owns it.

And .303 British is a fine general game round.

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I wish I had gotten a good collection of millsurps going when they were a dime a dozen but fine original examples now are a little to much for my expendable income and I don't have much practical use for them. A scoped sporter on the other hand is practically useful for me and still comes with the history. People often say of cut down sporters that someone ruined the history of it and its worthless now. Well I don't see it that way I guess. This is still a rifle that served in WW2, and afterwards found its way back here and someone cared enough about to make a nice stock for and used it to feed their family. Based on the level of wear on the front sight band this rifle was used for many many years. So to me rather than erasing its history, its added several more decades to its history. My guess would be the old owner passed and the kids or grandkids didn't have any use for it and to the pawn shop it went. I have a small collection of sporterised ww2 rifles and I plan to keep building that collection. I would like to expand that to have a nice sporter from every major country in the war.

That should be the final coat of oil on the butt. I did 3 coats of truoil, then buffed with steel wool, another coat, another buff with steel wool, and finally the last coat of oil. I don’t want it to be too glossy so I didn’t completely fill the grain. I’ll have to see how it looks tomorrow but it might need one more buff to match the sheen of the forend.

Here are the results of the stock work. I haven’t decided what to do with the metal. I’m thinking of plugging the unused scope mount holes and having it cerakoted in midnight blue. I think I will see how it shoots first.