Milsurp After Hours

... Enfield nutjob? First post here at this forum and I thought I'd found nearly all the Enfield forums on the net. I recognize a few names from other forums so it feels familiar already.

Welcome Tiki,

any and all enfield nutjobs welcome. If the disease branches over to other makes all the better. As you say, a few names will be familiar from other forums. However this is a much more refined and decorous place than some of the other forums .

So settle in and enjoy.

Hello Tiki, see you are still using Edward Woodward as a disguise Welcome!

Woftam,

Thanks for the welcome mate, nice to see a fellow Aussie with their finger on the button of an Enfield forum for once.

Duncan,

Now where did we last cross bayonets? Not ye olde Fullbore Bulletin Boards was it? And yes Edward is still doing a good job of leading the troupe ... I just happen to be slightly out of shot on a Donkey.

Oh ... and while I am at it I might as well throw up a few photographs of my latest restoration. I bought this little Faz way out western NSW minus it's butt stock and after needing to strip and match the wood ended up with this all matching result. No sand paper was used in the restoration of this rifle!!!

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h271/ ... Tiki10.jpg[/pic]

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h271/ ... Tiki12.jpg[/pic]

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h271/ ... Tiki14.jpg[/pic]

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h271/ ... Tiki11.jpg[/pic]

http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h271/ ... bTiki7.jpg[/pic]

Apols re the pic size, feel free to have at it.

Welcome nice pics you did a good job there how does it shoot.

Welcome to the show Tiki, quality looking No 5 you have there.

Joe

Nice looking stock. Must have been a little difficult finding the replacement butt stock.

Reminds me, I was surfing the outdoor channel the other night and there was Garry James, famous American C&R writer going on about the No. 5. Of course the major point he wanted to make was the "wandering zero". Of course the lightening cuts were to blame, according the official same old story. Amazing how some of these stories get passed around to the point of becoming doctrine.

Welcome to the mad house Tiki.

Good film Breaker Morant, lots of Long Lees.

"We shot them under rule 303".

There's some thinking now Robert that the wandering zero was a nasty rumour put around at the time when they were thinking of making the No5 the service rifle to replace the No4 by the semi auto lobby.

Who knows for certain?

Anyway all the ones I've had and shot have been accurate rifles that held zero far better than I did.

G'day gents!

Thanks for the warm welcome yet again - regarding the "Wandering Zero" I've never bought that old myth and perhaps by now you've heard the overwhelming evidence from fellow owners and shooters about this little story being a matter of political expediency back in the days when most other nations had already moved onto self loading rifles. Britain did not want to be left behind but essentially they had to go through the motions of looking as though there was something wrong with the No5 in order to justify a total shift in R&D and re-tooling to the government bean counters. Nobody I have ever met or spoken to has been able to confirm the wandering zero in their No5 Jungle Carbines and nor can I - it is widely known these days to have been an un-truth cooked up for political reasons.

It is true that various REME's and workshops did trials etc and they did find slightly better accuracy with the No5 with a standard No4 or No1 butt stock instead of the No5 but it was thought that the rubber butt pad was the issue and not the butt stock itself ... as you would know the rubber butt pad is slightly rounded and you see from this that direct pressure on the shoulder would not be symmetrical as they wear thus causing the holding position to shift upon recoil. Personally No5's are among my favourite Enfield rifles and I think they were a superb carbine marred only by a political will to move toward the SLR.

Even to this day I would choose my No5 as a bush/survival gun par excellence and trust my my safety to it without hesitation. It is as accurate as a No4 out to 800 yards, extremely light and yet rugged in design - ten round mag, smooth bolt action - what ,more could a man want?