JDinFbg
Member
This is a fairly length post, but I hope the readers of this forum find it useful. Although officially named the "United States Rifle, cal .30, Model of 1917", a rifle based on the British Pattern 1914 Service Rifle, I refer to it as the 1917 Enfield for brevity. I acquired my 1917 Enfield when in high school in the 1960's, and as I can best recall, I paid $50 for the rifle and about 300 rounds of Korean War vintage military surplus ammo. When I acquired the 1917 Enfield, it had been sporterized with the upper wood and barrel bands removed and had the original barrel with 5-grove, left-hand twist rifling shortened to about 22". The rear sight 'ears' were unaltered, and it still had the original peep sight. It looked like a well done job, but there was no external evidence that it had been glass or epoxy bedded.
I had not shot the rifle very much over the ensuing years, but last summer broke it out of hibernation and started work to develop some light bullet (115 gr. to 125 gr.) loads for shooting large varmints. The best I could achieve was about 1.75", 5-shot groups at 100 yds., with most groups running closer to 3-4". Postings on this and other forums indicated that 2" groups might be as good as one could expect from an original WW-I era barrel. However, in cleaning the rifle, I blew some graphite-looking, black dust out from between the receiver and the stock with an air nozzle, so I suspected there had been some metal movement in the stock. Thus, I thought I'd see if I could improve the shooting results by doing a Devcon epoxy steel bedding job on it.
Before starting the bedding job, I did some research and found a lot of useful information on this and other forums. Several folks noted that bedding was best done as a 2-step process due to the design of the receiver. It was noted that the rear tang screw had a slight forward angle where it screwed into the receiver. Some theorized that the angle of the tang screw could pull the receiver forward and pull the recoil lug off its bedding contact point. I had never seen a good picture of this, so have attached one (Fig.1) of my receiver with all the parts stripped off and only the magazine box and trigger guard loosely attached that clearly shows the screw angle. Taking the rifle apart revealed that no bedding work had been done as part of the sporterizing. The steel sleeve at the tang was still present, but no sleeve remained at the front of the receiver. This also revealed that the bottom of the receiver tang has an upward sloping portion ahead of where the screw attaches.
With all the information from the forums and my observations after disassembling the rifle, I laid out a plan for how I would proceed, and I'm presenting my process in this post. I actually did the bedding in 3 steps, with the first step being to Devcon bed the area under the rear trigger guard screw point. I carved out the wood around the steel sleeve so I'd get at least an 1/8" Devcon pad under the trigger guard and embed the steel sleeve. The before (Fig.2) and after (Fig. 3) pictures are shown.
The second step was to bed the rear tang area of the receiver. I first pencil marked the area of the wood to be removed and carved out a large enough area such that the tang would be fully surrounded by at least an 1/8" of Devcon. I allowed the Devcon to form a solid block ahead of the tang screw which would engage the sloped portion of the tang and to establish a firm 'wedge' which would prevent any forward movement of the receiver as the tang screw was tightened. In bedding the tang, I used a 1/4" x 4" brass rod screwed into the receiver and wrapped it with tape such that it would just slide through the steel sleeve in the stock. This was to assure that the tang screw would end up centered in the steel sleeve without touching. The result is shown in Fig. 4. Just as a side, the 1917 Enfield receiver uses 1/4"-30 screws. Not having a 1/4"-30 die, I threaded the brass rod using a 1/4"-28 die which was close enough, given that the brass is much softer than the receiver steel, and screwed it into the receiver. After all, that's only 2 threads difference in a whole inch, so not much for the quarter inch or so of thread length in the receiver.
The third step in my process was to bed the front of the receiver. I chose to bed the front part of the receiver and the first inch or so of the barrel, so carved out the wood in this area accordingly (Fig. 5). I also bored out the front receiver screw hole in the stock with a 5/8" Forstner bit so that the Devcon would form a bedding pillar between the receiver and trigger guard. One dilemma I had was how to deal with the recoil lug of the 1917 Enfield which is odd shaped on the front and only perfectly flat and rectangular on the back side. The front, sides, and bottom of the lug did not owe themselves to being fit up with masking tape to assure clearance of the Devcon on these surfaces. My dilemma was resolved when I spotted a tube of Kwik Seal kitchen & bath adhesive caulk laying on my workbench. I reasoned the caulk would be easily removed from the receiver after bedding, so built up the front, sides, and bottom of the recoil lug with the caulk. It took 3 applications, curing in between, then judicially trimming with a sharp utility knife to form a rectangular block that would provide the needed clearances when set in the Devcon bedding (Fig. 6). The finished front bedding is shown in Fig. 7.
The merit of all this work is shown by the results obtained at the range. Although it took several test shoots to find the powder/bullet combination that worked, I finally got to a 1" group using 55 gr. of W-748 powder with CCI large rifle primers driving a Sierra 125 gr. spitzer, .311 diameter bullet (Fig. 8). Some could argue with my bedding procedure, but I believe it would be hard to argue with the performance results.
I had not shot the rifle very much over the ensuing years, but last summer broke it out of hibernation and started work to develop some light bullet (115 gr. to 125 gr.) loads for shooting large varmints. The best I could achieve was about 1.75", 5-shot groups at 100 yds., with most groups running closer to 3-4". Postings on this and other forums indicated that 2" groups might be as good as one could expect from an original WW-I era barrel. However, in cleaning the rifle, I blew some graphite-looking, black dust out from between the receiver and the stock with an air nozzle, so I suspected there had been some metal movement in the stock. Thus, I thought I'd see if I could improve the shooting results by doing a Devcon epoxy steel bedding job on it.
Before starting the bedding job, I did some research and found a lot of useful information on this and other forums. Several folks noted that bedding was best done as a 2-step process due to the design of the receiver. It was noted that the rear tang screw had a slight forward angle where it screwed into the receiver. Some theorized that the angle of the tang screw could pull the receiver forward and pull the recoil lug off its bedding contact point. I had never seen a good picture of this, so have attached one (Fig.1) of my receiver with all the parts stripped off and only the magazine box and trigger guard loosely attached that clearly shows the screw angle. Taking the rifle apart revealed that no bedding work had been done as part of the sporterizing. The steel sleeve at the tang was still present, but no sleeve remained at the front of the receiver. This also revealed that the bottom of the receiver tang has an upward sloping portion ahead of where the screw attaches.
With all the information from the forums and my observations after disassembling the rifle, I laid out a plan for how I would proceed, and I'm presenting my process in this post. I actually did the bedding in 3 steps, with the first step being to Devcon bed the area under the rear trigger guard screw point. I carved out the wood around the steel sleeve so I'd get at least an 1/8" Devcon pad under the trigger guard and embed the steel sleeve. The before (Fig.2) and after (Fig. 3) pictures are shown.
The second step was to bed the rear tang area of the receiver. I first pencil marked the area of the wood to be removed and carved out a large enough area such that the tang would be fully surrounded by at least an 1/8" of Devcon. I allowed the Devcon to form a solid block ahead of the tang screw which would engage the sloped portion of the tang and to establish a firm 'wedge' which would prevent any forward movement of the receiver as the tang screw was tightened. In bedding the tang, I used a 1/4" x 4" brass rod screwed into the receiver and wrapped it with tape such that it would just slide through the steel sleeve in the stock. This was to assure that the tang screw would end up centered in the steel sleeve without touching. The result is shown in Fig. 4. Just as a side, the 1917 Enfield receiver uses 1/4"-30 screws. Not having a 1/4"-30 die, I threaded the brass rod using a 1/4"-28 die which was close enough, given that the brass is much softer than the receiver steel, and screwed it into the receiver. After all, that's only 2 threads difference in a whole inch, so not much for the quarter inch or so of thread length in the receiver.
The third step in my process was to bed the front of the receiver. I chose to bed the front part of the receiver and the first inch or so of the barrel, so carved out the wood in this area accordingly (Fig. 5). I also bored out the front receiver screw hole in the stock with a 5/8" Forstner bit so that the Devcon would form a bedding pillar between the receiver and trigger guard. One dilemma I had was how to deal with the recoil lug of the 1917 Enfield which is odd shaped on the front and only perfectly flat and rectangular on the back side. The front, sides, and bottom of the lug did not owe themselves to being fit up with masking tape to assure clearance of the Devcon on these surfaces. My dilemma was resolved when I spotted a tube of Kwik Seal kitchen & bath adhesive caulk laying on my workbench. I reasoned the caulk would be easily removed from the receiver after bedding, so built up the front, sides, and bottom of the recoil lug with the caulk. It took 3 applications, curing in between, then judicially trimming with a sharp utility knife to form a rectangular block that would provide the needed clearances when set in the Devcon bedding (Fig. 6). The finished front bedding is shown in Fig. 7.
The merit of all this work is shown by the results obtained at the range. Although it took several test shoots to find the powder/bullet combination that worked, I finally got to a 1" group using 55 gr. of W-748 powder with CCI large rifle primers driving a Sierra 125 gr. spitzer, .311 diameter bullet (Fig. 8). Some could argue with my bedding procedure, but I believe it would be hard to argue with the performance results.
