I'm just starting to load for an old Enfield would appreciate some powder option suggestions. Thank yall in advance
.303 powder?
- Thread starter Foxsquirrel
- Start date
I don't shoot one, however I have a friend that does. He loves Varget. I shall ask him what load works in his gun. Tommy Mc.
I use the cheapest medium speed rifle power in my inventory, which is some BL-C(2) I bought many years ago from Pat McDonald (now Pat's Reloading) for about $3/lb.
And what @Twicepop says is right. The chambers on most Enfields are very "generous" to accommodate the vagaries of wartime ammo. if you anneal and only neck size your brass will last a lot longer.
And what @Twicepop says is right. The chambers on most Enfields are very "generous" to accommodate the vagaries of wartime ammo. if you anneal and only neck size your brass will last a lot longer.
All of these work well in a .308 and probably just as well in a .303:
AR-Comp
Varget
H4895
IMR 4064
Accurate 4064
Benchmark
Power Pro 2000
IMR 8208XBR
Reloader 15
CFE 223
Murray Brook
Silver $$ Contributor
I shoot my Ishapore Enfield quite a bit. The best powder will depend on what bullet weight and type you are shooting. I shoot both cast and jacketed from 123 grains up to 180 grains and each bullet has a preferred powder. I use light loads as I only kill paper with it and my brass can last a very long time. I only neck size the cases.
4895 for 150's. 4350 or 4451 for everything else. 4831 will work for 215's. WH
Foxsquirrel
Is your rifle a No.1 or No.4 Enfield rifle, if the forestock wood has dried out it can affect bedding and accuracy. The older No.1 Enfield rifles have a more complicated bedding system on the forestock.
Flat base bullets will work best if the barrel has cordite throat erosion. And the Australians like H-4895 known as 2206H in Oz.
I used Hornady 100 grain .312 pistol bullets and SR-4759 and Trail Boss with light loads to form the cases. The lower pressure reduced loads will keep the cases from stretching and help prevent case head separations. Thereafter just neck size only and let the cases headspace on their shoulders.
Is your rifle a No.1 or No.4 Enfield rifle, if the forestock wood has dried out it can affect bedding and accuracy. The older No.1 Enfield rifles have a more complicated bedding system on the forestock.
Flat base bullets will work best if the barrel has cordite throat erosion. And the Australians like H-4895 known as 2206H in Oz.
I used Hornady 100 grain .312 pistol bullets and SR-4759 and Trail Boss with light loads to form the cases. The lower pressure reduced loads will keep the cases from stretching and help prevent case head separations. Thereafter just neck size only and let the cases headspace on their shoulders.
Mine is a No. 1 1917 model barrel has minimal erosion and other than that the rifling and all other parts seem to be in pretty dang good conditionFoxsquirrel
Is your rifle a No.1 or No.4 Enfield rifle, if the forestock wood has dried out it can affect bedding and accuracy. The older No.1 Enfield rifles have a more complicated bedding system on the forestock.
Flat base bullets will work best if the barrel has cordite throat erosion. And the Australians like H-4895 known as 2206H in Oz.
I used Hornady 100 grain .312 pistol bullets and SR-4759 and Trail Boss with light loads to form the cases. The lower pressure reduced loads will keep the cases from stretching and help prevent case head separations. Thereafter just neck size only and let the cases headspace on their shoulders.
I've never had the privilege or opportunity to use any SR 4759 although I've heard nothing but the highest praises about it just got into the loading game to late. But now I sure do love me some trailboss, makes some fine small game loads for a 30-30 and really fun plinkers in 45-70
Not headspace (which is done on the case-rim remember, not the shoulder) but in case-body to chamber fit. The Enfields were deliberately made with over-long and slack chambers so that well out of spec, dirty, or slightly damaged rounds will still chamber. As such it works very well and the designers hardly had to worry about handloading, not that they would have given a toss if anybody had foreseen that. The similar rimmed 7.62X54R + Mosin military set-up is the same.
The answer is as per belted magnums. Set any FL die to only push the shoulder back just enough to chamber easily. I once measured shoulder 'bump' on 7.62X54R brass with an FL die set as per the default in the press and it ran around 25 thou'.
Then on top of that, the Lee action is rear locked with several inches of rather small diameter bolt ahead of the lugs. Under full pressures, bolts bend - always the same way because one bolt doubles as a guide-rib and gives much more support to the bolt in the action body than the other. Load to 45,000 psi and cases don't last long even with shoulders matching the chamber. Separation in the lower body occurs and unlike in front locked actions isn't even around the body, one side of the crack being higher than the other. This has nothing to do with case-fit directly as it occurs in mild-loaded 308 Win headspacing on the shoulders when used in the No.4 action which was common in the early days of the 7.62 cartridge. The answer there is mild loads, below the 303's 45,000 psi even. The nominal 174gn FMJ's 2,440 fps MV, never mind higher MV loads in reloading manuals, is too heavy for good brass life.
Use of very mild loads (which also allows neck-sizing) and decent brass will last into double figure numbers of firings especially if starting with new unfired cases, so no heavy pressure first firing from a factory round. I used the LCD on 303 brass happily for years and only ever FL sized cases when changing rifles.
So far as powders go, @Twicepop has it exactly right. If it works in the 308 with a given bullet weight, it works just fine in 303. In the UK, where we handload this cartridge a fair bit as you can imagine, 174-180gn bullets over 38-42gn Viht N140 is very popular. Keep the charge to 39-40gn, plus neck-size or match the shoulder to chamber, and results are good plus brass has a good life.
Is it a 1917 manufactured British Enfield or an Eddystone, these are based on a Mauser design. They made two different models, the P-14 Enfield chambered for the 303 British round and the P-17 originally manufactured at the Eddystone Arsenal chambered for 30-06. The Eddystone was originally a British design that was to replace the Enfield rifles but it never came to fruition. It was adapted to the 30-06 round and supplemented for the '03 Springfield as well as the Enfield in it's original design.
I know these head space on a rim and not on a datum line on the shoulder. I also know about the "large " chambers that you mentioned as well as the rear locking bolts that combined will drastically shorten brass life. But my point was that the bolt head is changeable and can correct the issue of excessive head space. Big chambers, compressible bolt due to the rear lock up and excessive head space will destroy brass life, changing that bolt head should eliminate one of those factors.
1917 #1 mklll smle .303
So I'm not the only one alive with SR-4759 in stock.
I think manufacture of the P14 had finished by 1917. SMLE (later renamed as no I mk III) production had ramped up enough that P14s weren't essential. Other than the late-war P14-based sniper, most P14s didn't see front line service.
There was never a serious attempt to replace the SMLE with the P14. You may be thinking of the the P13 rifle. Before the war, an influential group in the army had wanted to replace the 0.303 SMLE with the 0.280in P13. They wanted a hotter flatter-shooting Mauser based rifle. They had enough clout to get enough rifles made for troop trials. However the P13 was not well recieved; recoil, muzzle flash, barrel heat and wear were all thought excessive. However, once the war kicked off in earnest, the UK and empire wanted a lot rifles NOW. All the other major combatants were opening up storerooms of obsolete rifles, or buying from abroad too. The P13 plans were redrawn as the P14 in 0.303. But there wasn't enough manufacturing capacity in the UK. The P14 was a newer design and more suitable for mass manufacture than the SMLE, so that went to America. However, production took longer than anticipated to start, and when it did there were enough SMLEs for front line service.
Postwar although there were large numbers of P14s in stock, the army decided it rather liked the SMLE. They developed an aperture sight (no I Mk V) and updated and simplified the manufacturing (no 1, Mk VI then No 4). A number of P14s were given away to the newly independent Baltic States.
Wasn't the US 30-06 version the M1917?
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Just so. To understand the background, there was a powerful cabal of people, mostly civilians who'd never seen combat, who were great believers in long-range precision shooting on the battlefield and created a quite spurious case for the 'military-match rifle' concept for general issue. Sir Charles Ross Bt, one of the UK's largest landowners and richest men was one such with the military versions of his straight-pull design allied to the powerful 280 Ross cartridge. It was serially rejected by the British Smallarms school and ordnance experts for being unsuitable for battle use and for issue to marginally trained wartime conscripts, so he eventually persuaded the Canadian government to bankroll him and provide a manufacturing plant, hence the Canadians initially participating in the WW1 western front with the Ross Mk III albeit in 303 form for logistical reasons. Not a happy outcome to that story for various reasons.
On the British side there was a powerful group of the 'great and the good' who'd decided that the Long Lee's and 303 cartridge's performance were poor v the 7mm Mauser M1895s they faced in the Boer War (1899 - 1902) and that Britain needed a Mauser system rifle using a powerful 7mm cartridge - hence the development work that eventually produced the Pattern 1913 (P'13) and its 0.276 Enfield (7mm) cartridge, the latter based on the 280 Ross design.
If the Long Lee was 'inferior' in these people's minds, the SMLE introduced in its earliest version in 1903, was 'an abomination' (a phrase regularly used in print about it), too short to be accurate; too long for cavalry. These men hated the SMLE so much that after WW1 when target shooting resumed (all Service Rifle at serious levels in those days), they refused to use civilian copies of the SMLE and BSA made a match quality copy of the 'Territorial Rifle' model Long Lee for them. (In service use these were pre-war LME/LLE long rifles refurbished and upgraded c. 1912 with new sights and a charger (clip loading) bridge brazed onto the action for the part-time 'Territorial battalions' use to give them a reasonable rifle but without the cost of producing new SMLEs.)
The P'13's problems were more ammunition centred than on the rifles which worked well enough by 1913. The War Office wanted such impressive ballistics, this was an attempt to create 7mm magnum performance, or at the least modern 280 Rem's several generations before the propellants were available. It kicked hard, was noisy and heated barrels up to stock charring levels in rapid fire. The charge was a high nitroglycerin level 'Cordite' and was highly erosive as well a creating a fearsome muzzle flash. This would have been sorted no doubt over time through reducing its performance and it was almost certain that the P'13 would have been adopted as a 7mm sometime between 1914 and 16, except that war broke out in summer 1914. In the event, the 303 SMLE was found to be adequate, in fact far better than merely 'adequate', in actual combat conditions, so the P'13 concept died and was never revived.
As a rifle, its P'14 wartime variant is still much loved here from its use in the pre 1968 Service Rifle discipline in 303 form (although far more participants shot the No.4 Rifle which was superior with most 303 Mk VII ammunition lots at 600 yards and further distances because of the Lee action's 'positive compensation' tendency). Handle the P'14 alongside an SMLE, try bayonet practice with it, carry it for miles when you're exhausted, and it was a poorly balanced, clumsy, heavy brute by comparison. I'd imagine most doughboys and their regular NCOs who were in a position to compare the M1917 to the shorter, handier M1903 Springfield came to the same conclusion!
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