Could you "rechamber" an Enfield for 7.62x54R?

[VirgilCaine]

10 rounds of the cheapest centerfire ammo money can buy...

 

[rbernie]

Since the 7.62x54R round is shorter and has a fatter rim, you'd technically have to remove the barrel, lathe it down a bit shorter, ream the new chamber, reinstall and headspace the barrel, and relieve the extractor.

There may be other ways to do it, but that'd be the *correct* way.

 

[kentucky_smith]

Wouldn't 8mm be better choice?

 

[VirgilCaine]

"Relieve the extractor"? What does that mean?

[Not that I would attempt this myself...]

8mm as in a better cartridge fit or better cost-wise?

 

[kentucky_smith]

both, if hand-loaded.

 

[Smokey Joe]

Rechambering Enfield

Virgil--Unless you are an expert gunsmith and machinist yourself, I suggest that any rechambering work on a .303 Br would cost you more than you'd ever save in ammo. Besides ruining whatever there is of the gun's original historic value.

Have you considered reloading the .303 Br ammo as a means of saving $$?A couple of hundred $$ invested, and your rounds drop to the price of the bullets, powder, and primers.

Or, heck, get an orginal Lee Loader kit in .303 Br (costs something like 20-25 bucks) and reload with that. It's more than a little crude, but it works. I used one myself, in .30-'06, for a number of years before upgrading.

If you shoot a lot, you save a lot.

Of course, if you then get "into" reloading, you'll spend more on more shiny toys with which to reload, but that is a whole nother question.

 

[cracked butt]

Just buy a mosin nagant and be done with it. I'm pretty sure that you would have to rebarrel the rifle completely to convert it to 54r because the base to shoulder dimension on the .303 is quite a bit longer than than the 54r. The rim on the 54r is quite a bit wider in dimension and the enfield has a skinny bolthead.

For comparison, the 4th cartridge from the left is a .303 and the 5th is a 7.62x54r

 

[rbernie]

Wouldn't 8mm be better choice?

7.62x54R and 303R use the same bullet size, relatively speaking - .311" in diameter. The 8mm Mauser/7.92x57JS round uses a .323" diameter bullet. Therefore, converting to 8mm Mauser would require a new barrel - rechambering to 7.62x54R would not.

"Relieve the extractor"? What does that mean?

Actually take some material out of the extractor so that it could slip over the larger rim of the Russian cartridge.

Virgil--Unless you are an expert gunsmith and machinist yourself, I suggest that any rechambering work on a .303 Br would cost you more than you'd ever save in ammo. Besides ruining whatever there is of the gun's original historic value.

And that's a fact.

There is an article on the JPFO web site that covers the results of one guy's rechambering of the Enfield to 7.62x54R. IIRC, in that effort they didn't actually bring the barrel in and then ream a new chamber as much as they simply enabled the Enfield action to chamber and fire the chubbier 7.62x54R round in the (overly long for the Russian round) 303R chamber - in effect 'fire-forming' the 7.62x54R to the bastardized 303R chamber. I suspect that the accuacy gains that they saw from their effort was related to the re-crown work that they did, but since I wasn't there I can't say for sure...