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Are you ready for something eye-wateringly boring? I was directed to share my summer project here in the Scale Models thread. In the winter, I build wooden models of sailing ships. In the spring, summer and fall, I repair, restore and shoot old firearms. This summer I was able to get my hands on a demilitarized 1918 Lee Enfield No. 1, Mk. III* rifle (also known as the SMLE) and decided that it was a prime donor for parts for a restoration project. "Demilitarized" in this context means a rifle that has been made entirely safe, usually for drill or display purposes, by welding up parts of the receiver, removing or grinding down important parts of the action and generally ensuring that it cannot easily be returned to use.  This is the rifle in question. Not immediately visible in the picture are welds that secure the magazine to the trigger guard, two welds securing the bolt to the receiver, a ground down cocking knob (  ) and a cut off firing pin. Even if one was to carefully grind out all of those welds, the heat that went into the receiver and bolt body from the process have altered the crystalline structure of the steel and made it far more hard and brittle than it was ever intended to be. The Lee Enfield design involves a semi-flexible bolt that locks up when closed at the back rather than the front like Mauser-derived rifle actions. While at first glance this appears to be a weaker action, the reality is that the flex built into the system allows it to cope remarkably well with a catastrophic overpressure event stemming from bad ammunition. And in the early days of the design, there was plenty of that-- the .303 British cartridge predates modern international ammunition standard organizations like SAAMI, but yet was manufactured and used across the length and breadth of the British Empire, for decades .303 British could be better described as a "theme" rather than a specification. All that said, the welding done to make this rifle safe has meant that the receiver and bolt body are now unusable, and so I must look elsewhere for parts.This is where sporters come in. Sporters are former military rifles that have been cut down or had parts removed to make them easier to handle and more suitable as a hunting rifle. In Canada, there are a genuine shitload of Lee Enfield sporters, particularly Great War era No. 1 Mk IIIs as huge numbers of these were sold to the public and converted to hunting rifles with varying degrees of skill. What this usually meant was cutting down the wood fore stock, removing the upper hand guards and removing the rear sight protector as well. Here is a picture of a sportered No. 1 Mk. III*:  And here is a sportered Ross Mk III, which has had its barrel bobbed and is no longer a candidate for a full restoration (it is instead being turned slowly into an interbellum era target rifle):  Compare that to the rifle at the top of the post and you can see that quite a bit of material and components have been removed. The thing is, for No. 1 Mk. IIIs of all variants, the process of cutting down the stock has a tremendously detrimental effect on the accuracy of the rifle-- the stock is not just a frame in which the metal parts of the rifle sit, but rather a means by which the barrel is supported and stabilized while firing to improve its accuracy. The reason for this stretches back to the Boer War, when the British Army went into battle with the first models of Lee Enfields, the Magazine Lee Enfield (MLE) Mk 1 and its variants. At that time, the infantry, cavalry and artillery were all armed with different kinds of rifle-- longer models for the infantry (for accuracy, and also as a platform with reach for a bayonet for fending off cavalry) and various types of shorter carbines for the cavalry and artillery. One of the many lessons learned during the Boer War was that the standard infantry rifle was longer and more awkward than it needed to be and keeping spares handy for three different patterns of rifle was an unnecessary headache. And so development began on the Short Magazine Lee Enfield (SMLE) which was produced in one length for all branches of the army. To keep weight down, the barrel was shockingly thin for the time. This reduces the weight of the rifle, but it also means that the barrel flexes a lot more when the rifle fires, and this reduces accuracy. To counteract this, the forestock is designed to provide support and tension at different points along the barrel. This means that the fit between wood and metal in the front half of the rifle is incredibly finicky and downright arcane in comparison to its contemporaries, and this can also complicate restoration projects as well. Lee Enfields of the period, while mass produced, were still hand-fit to a shocking degree and one really has to take special care when restoring such a rifle to make sure what you finish up with shoots straight. Back to the restoration. With the demilitarized rifle in hand, I started looking around for a rifle of a similar pattern to use as a parts donor to restore a rifle to a military specification. I was able to find a 1917 Birmingham Small Arms example in excellent shape, with the desirable pre-war Mk. 1 rear sight and matching serial numbers (meaning the numbers stamped on the barrel, receiver and bolt all match one another) at an auction and eventually bring it home. While I was waiting for that to arrive, I took apart the demilled rifle to get an idea of what parts were available. I knew the rifle had been packed with a lot of thick grease at one point (it was visible around the barrel in certain places, and the thing reeked of old grease), so I was sure that rust would not be an issue but I was concerned about grease rotting out the wood, especially near spots with end-grain. After a great deal of cursing, I got the rifle apart, only for very important chunks of the forestock to remain completely stuck to the receiver, and get torn free of the forestock itself. This is what the affected area of the forestock is supposed to look like:  And this is what it actually looked like:  These were torn completely free:  The two torn out chunks are referred to as the draws and their role is to act as surfaces that cam into mating surfaces on the receiver to ensure a snug fit between the two. They are absolutely integral to accuracy in a No. 1 Mk. III rifle. Something had cracked them very badly in the distant past, and grease had slowly wicked its way into the cracks and further weakened the wood. How the christ did this happen?  This badly warped little fellow gave me an immediate hint. This is the stock plate, which sits in a socket at the very end of the forestock. Its role is to help reinforce this area of the stock, and to help locate it against the stock bolt that secures the buttstock to the receiver. The stock bolt has a squared off tip that locates into the square notch on the stock plate in the picture. If the stock bolt is tightened while the forestock is still attached to the rifle, you can bend and warp the stock plate and crack your forestock, which is exactly what happened here. Decades ago, the buttstock on the demilled rifle was loose, so someone decided to "fix" it by cranking down on the stock bolt. This tightened up the butt stock, but badly cracked the forestock. And so now I had a major repair on my hands! The first step of this involved de-greasing the wood to ensure that whatever adhesives I used would have something decent to grab onto. This involved a mix of chemical degreasers like Goo Gone and heat from a hairdryer to help coax all that nasty grease out of the wood. After several days of repeated treatments, I had it to a point where repairs could proceed. I opted for a product called acraglas for the job, as it is something of an industry standard for firearms repairs. Acraglas is a two-part epoxy resin that has a long hang-time, is very thick but also smooth and is incredibly strong. It accepts dies well, and can be further reinforced with aluminum or steel powder if one so desires. I also chose to use brass rod to help further reinforce the different fragments and the buttstock itself.  Here is the first stage of repairing the draws. You can see the brass rods sitting proud of the top of the left draw-- the right one is only in there for the sake of alignment. Acraglas, like other epoxies, does not require heavy clamping.  Here is the second draw being repaired. You can also see a slot that I cut into the stock at the bottom where a threaded brass rod was added with acraglas to help reinforce that area. When working with acraglas, if you wind up with squeeze out just let it harden and chip it off later with a chisel or hobby knife rather than attempt to wipe it away and smear it everywhere. Also visible is the stock plate in its slot: I bent it back to its original shape with a vise and then bedded it in there permanently with acraglas. It was later filed down so that it did not sit proud of the rest of the butt stock.  This brass rod was a reinforcement added by many armourers during the Great War. I pulled out the old brass rod, which had been bent and mangled by the aforementioned stock bolt turning and replaced it with fresh rod and acraglas. Brass blackener has made it indistinguishable from other brass reinforcements elsewhere on the stock.  Here you can see the left draw, with the excess brass rod and acraglass removed, and its right counterpart as the 'glas cures. The brass pads on the face of the draws are also an historic repair done by many armourers. These were retained in the repair, but also filed down somewhat as a part of fitting the new receiver and barrel to the forestock.  And here is the finished product. I have since fully bedded the receiver and trigger plate with acraglas to further strengthen the stock. These modifications are not outwardly visible and were done with acraglas dyed black.  And a family photo. At the top is a sportered No. 1 Mk III* assembled out of leftover parts from this restoration. The next one down is the first No. 1 Mk. III* restoration I did (a non-matching 1916 RSAF Enfield example), using reproduction wood stocks. Third is the newest restoration (matching 1917 BSA Co) and the fourth is a WW2 Lee Enfield No. 4 Mk. 1 made at ROF Fazakerley in 1943. I intend to get the newest restoration out to the range on Monday or Tuesday to test the strength of the repairs and to see how well it shoots.
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Oct 15, 2021 21:32
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ephori posted:This is really cool, and a nostalgia trip for me; when I was a teenager, I was in air cadets up in Canada and we fired modified Lee Enfields for our range team that had been converted to .22, and carried demilitarized ‘parade’ versions for our marching drill team. Very cool project! Thanks! I'm still up in Canada so there is no shortage of Lee Enfields kicking around for projects like these, and most of them haven't suffered irreversible damage. The .22s are/were No. 7s, which were basically single shot .22LR trainers made at Long Branch. I used 'em too as a sea cadet, as well as the demilled No. 4s for rifle drill training and live No. 4s for ceremonies like the Sunset Ceremony and whatnot. The program as a whole switched over to .177 pellet rifles in the late 90s for marksmanship practice; the closure of so many CF bases and stations made it near impossible for most cadet units to keep practising with the No. 7s, plus smaller kids always found them hard to handle. And these big buggers too: 
Fearless fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Oct 16, 2021 |
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Oct 16, 2021 01:24
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It looks lovely as it is, and if it is functional too, I'd say it's just about perfect.
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Feb 6, 2022 09:41
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I do a lot of writing by hand in various notebooks and journals both professionally and in support of various hobbies that I engage in. Back during my undergrad, a good friend introduced me to fountain pens and eventually I wound up coming into possession of a selection of vintage Parker, Waterman's and Esterbrook fountain pens that belonged to some relatives that had a really huge impact on my life and from there I chose to focus my fountain pen collection on older pens. The trouble is that most older pens that survive to the present day are usually not in a usable state (with some very notable exceptions-- seventy year old Parker 51 Aerometrics and Esterbrook J series pens can often be found only needing a cleaning and a cosmetic restoration) and so I wound up getting pulled into the hive of angst and snobbery that is fountain pen restoration! Here are some of the restorations that I have handled personally: A note about how I approach restoration, especially the cosmetic aspects: I look at the pens I am restoring as objects with their own history-- fountain pen nibs do conform to the hand that writes with them over time, leaving in the world a very tangible trace of a person who is long gone. I think it is important to retain the "story" of the pen as an object, but also balance that with trying to also bring the pen closer to the vision that the original designers had when it was created. In essence, I do not eradicate damage entirely, but rather to obscure it so that it is less prominent. It's still there, and visible if you really look, but it no longer immediately draws the eye. This also reduces material and detail loss from aggressive sanding meant to entirely hide damage but is fundamentally a conscious choice made and not the result of an inattentive or slapdash restoration. The first pen I restored, a 1927-29 (I think) Parker Duofold. This is effectively the beginning of the Duofold line, which is one of Parker's most enduring products. This pen, in this colour, was the pen that positioned Parker as a market leader-- it was huge and vibrant at a time where most fountain pens were black or ostentatiously embellished with gold or silver. This is the Senior model, and it is very large indeed, coming in at 140mm in length capped. Despite the huge size, it is surprisingly well balanced! The black end caps are ebonite-- a hard rubber that will oxidize over time and turn brown. Mine was no exception and while some people like the bronzed/turd look of oxidized ebonite, I personally do not like writing with something that smells like farts when it gets warmed by my hand. The most surefire way to remove the oxides is by sanding, but this will destroy any chasing, knurling or other engraved details and also result in material loss. I did some research and learned that the black colouring came from dye in the first place and more research revealed that a lot of leather dyes work exceedingly well for the purpose. I also do leatherworking, so I have some high quality black dye that I used on the caps-- and lo, they darkened greatly. The dye does not come off on the hand once it is dry, does not interfere with future de-oxidation treatments and is also reversible. I needed to install a new pressure bar (the internal mechanism that allows the pen to draw ink into its internal reservoir) and a new ink sac (the internal reservoir). It came with a massive 14k gold nib that seems to be something like a broad or even a stub and it is quite wet.  Here's restoration number 2, a mid-late 1940s Canadian Waterman's Dauntless 302. You can get a rough approximation of the age by the markings and the shape of the lever-- the big, silly canoe paddle levers that are missing a box seem to be a later cost-cutting measure and I suspect a reaction to the end of Sheaffer's original patent on the lever fill system that Waterman sidestepped by putting its levers into little boxes. By this point, Waterman's had lost its dominant position in the market but was still producing quality pens with fantastic nibs. This pen is no exception-- it required a new ink sack but the nib was in stellar shape and is the usual buttery smooth and flexible nib you would expect from a Waterman, even a relatively late and lower end model like this one. I have another version of this same pen, albeit in a slightly darker blue (which may be just a result of a fossilized ink sac staining the barrel) that belonged to a great uncle and which is far and away the best nib in my collection-- handily beating the brakes off of the likes of Montblanc. Both have wet, flexible medium nibs and both are lovely writers.   Next up is a Wahl Oxford, a pen marketed at university students in the 20s-early 1940s. Getting a firm date on this thing is tricky because it seems to be a non-standard variation on the Special version of the pen-- it has features like the gold cap band that do not mesh with the nickel plated clip and lever. It also has a steel nib. During this time period, steel nibs could vary dramatically in quality-- a lot of makers hadn't figured out the right alloys to make very smooth nibs so steel versions, especially cheap ones, could be downright terrible to write with. This pen is an exception to that trend and its nib is excellent. While not overly long, it is a pretty chunky pen and fits my hand well. I bought this pen in a big job lot of various mangled and neglected fountain pens and a bunch of higher end ballpoints. One of the latter was a Sheaffer ballpoint pen and pencil set that I gave to a client that I was doing some other restoration work for-- he is now retired but used to do photography for advertising and by a fluke he shot the original photos used in advertising that very pen and pencil set-- I wouldn't have believed it, but he had the original photographs from his portfolio as proof! Anyways, this Oxford and a grey Esterbrook J were the only fountain pen survivors from that lot. The others provided an array of recoverable parts, but were otherwise junked. The Oxford alone is worth the price that I paid and as far as I am concerned is one of the hidden gems in my collection.    Here is an early 1940s Waterman's Starlet 352V, the smaller version of the larger Stalwart 352. The Starlet/Stalwart were the up-market companions to the Dauntless 302-- distinguished mainly by having gold plated components but using the same excellent nibs. This pen was previously owned by someone who made a habit of gnawing on the end of their pen like a beaver with an oral fixation. I wound up filling in the various pits and gnaw marks with super glue, letting it fully cure and then sanding and polishing it down smooth. I was very careful on this restoration to keep aggressive abrasives away from the gold plated components-- these I buffed with extremely fine polishing cloth to restore their shine, but otherwise preserved the plating. The pen is pretty, but fairly small. Despite this, it is comfortable to write with even with my big hands. The grey colour works surprisingly well with the gold components-- it kind of reminds me of veins of gold in stone.   This is a small WASP-- the depression-era, economy sub-brand produced by Sheaffer. I suspect this pen is a victim of a previous restoration attempt-- it came to me highly polished and with absolutely no trace of branding or stamping on the barrel or cap other than some decorative elements in the clip and the nib-- which was a Sheaffer. This pen needed a new ink sac and the 14k nib still needs some work-- it is a stub, but also far too wet and also prone to leaking. At the moment, I swapped out the feed and nib for a modern Jinhao replacement. It's not ideal, but it works. Despite being aimed at thrift-minded buyers, the WASP pens are built to a very high standard and give no ground in terms of overall feel or quality to regular Sheaffers.  Despite what the picture says, this is a 1934 Parker Parkette with its matching pencil. The Parkette was Parker's economy line that was in production alongside the much higher end Duofold and Vacumatic models. Fairly unusually for a Parker, these are lever-fillers. Much like the WASPs, they give no ground in terms of overall quality to the main Parker models-- they are well built, attractive and despite being an economy model could come equipped with splendid little 14k gold nibs. This was another pen that only required replacing the ink sac and some polishing.  I don't know if it is by accident or perhaps some kind of subconscious bias but my collection has a lot of Parkers in it. In particular I've picked up several Parker 51s (though all of them have been either previously restored or are still functional and only needed cosmetic restoration) and a bunch of Vacumatics. I have restored three of the latter, though have had an assist from a fellow collector as I lack the specialized tools needed to restore them. Anyways, the Parker Vacumatic was the flagship offering from the company from 1932 to the debut of the Aerometric Parker 51s in 1948 (though some Vac production persisted to the mid-50s in Canada). These were expensive pens-- if memory serves, the price for one in the first couple of years was around $10 though this dropped to around $5 by the start of the Second World War. Regardless, that's a lot of money during the Depression and even during the War-- your average able seaman in the Royal Canadian Navy earned around $1.25 a day through most of the first half of the 1940s. The Vacumatic replaced the Duofold and Challenger lines and exists in a staggering array of variants, sizes and colours. Juniors are the smaller framed versions of the pen, and in Canada a unique version of the junior was produced that has the length of the larger Standard or Senior models but the thinner width of the juniors. Vacumatics were also produced with a number of technical innovations. First is the Vacumatic fill system. Cynics might argue that it is a essentially a convoluted bulb filler. There is some truth to it in that any pen with a rubber ink sac that is somehow squeezed to fill itself by means of an artificially produced vacuum is a bulb filler. The big difference is that the Vacumatic uses a rubber diaphragm that snugs into the inside of the barre of the pen to generate the vacuum that fills the pen rather than a bulb that fits over one end of the pen's section and is protected by a removable barrel. The fill system is also designed the way it is to take advantage of new materials being used in making pen barrels: Parker had partnered with Dupont in coming up with celluloid pen bodies that had alternating layers of coloured and transparent plastic. In the Vacumatics, this meant that one could look at the barrel of the pen and instantly see how much ink was in it. Finally, the feed system is designed in such a way that it is less prone to leaking at altitude or when laid on its side-- the pen's feed has a long breather tube that serves as a mechanism by which the pressure in the ink reservoir can equalize as altitude changes. Parker didn't really nail this until the 51, but the Vacumatic is still a big step in the right direction.  Anyways, here are the Vacs that I have restored. The first image is a pair of juniors-- the shorter one is a mid-30s Shadow Wave and the longer is a Canadian Junior, probably from the mid 40s. The colour of both is Gold Pearl. The Canadian Junior needed a new diaphragm, feed and nib-- it had been a victim of a previous restoration attempt that obliterated a lot of the markings and broke the feed off while probably trying to pull the nib out. It also required some clean up work in terms of polish. The Shadow Wave was also a victim of a previous restoration attempt-- someone tried to remove the section from the barrel and applied so much heat that it actually damaged both-- I had to fill in the damaged areas with CA glue and then carefully polish them. It also required a new diaphragm and assembly. Both have smooth medium nibs and while the Canadian Junior has a fairly stiff nib (as is common with Vacs), the Shadow Wave has one of the relatively rare flexible Vacumatic nibs and is consequently much wetter. I was recently given a rare Vacumatic Senior Maxima-- the largest of the Vacumatic models. These pens were not made in huge numbers and are highly sought after-- mine is from the late 1930s and they can command prices between $500 and $1000 CAD. It was a gift from a client who knew that I wanted one of these monsters for my collection but there was a twist: though it was complete the pen was also a victim of a previous restoration attempt (I sense a trend here...) and someone had applied too many ooga-doogas to the barrel while trying to disassemble the pen and broke the barrel cleanly in half. The good news is that the separation occurred along the lines between layers in the barrel (more or less). The transparency of Vacumatic barrels will also diminish over time and use-- celluloid is quite porous and will absorb residue from dark inks, slowly rendering the barrels very dark or near opaque. I tried polishing this barrel as best as I could but it made no difference to the transparency. I knew that to repair the pen I was going to have to glue the barrel halves together somehow (using acetone or MEK to fuse the plastic, or epoxy). I also knew that for the repair to be worth a drat, it was going to have to be reinforced from the inside via a sleeve in the barrel. Clear acrylic tube could be used but to get any meaningful strength, you lose a lot of capacity in the ink reservoir. The other option, which is far stronger, is aluminum tube. You lose whatever ability you had to see your ink level in the pen, but the repair will be utterly bomb proof. I also figured that if I polished the tube to a mirror shine, the tube will reflect light that would be otherwise absorbed by the barrel and make it even more brilliant. So naturally, I chose the aluminum and used epoxy to seal the rod into the halves of the barrel, a shitload of filling and sanding and polishing and then reassembly... and here we go:  It's got a really nice, smooth medium nib that's not too wet and is just a joy to write with. The aluminum reinforcement has added a warm amber/red glow to the barrel in places that really goes well with the overall colour of the pen and if I get more Vacs damaged in this way this is how I will be repairing them going forward. The repair to the broken barrel is no longer visible, but one can feel it-- again, I left that scar as a reminder of this pen's story just as I have on other pens that I have worked on. Fearless fucked around with this message at 04:27 on Apr 12, 2024 |
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Apr 12, 2024 02:55
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Thank you for sharing that thread with me and thank you for your kind words! I came very close to getting a Mabie Todd myself a little while ago but got outbid at the last minute. I hope that whomever wound up with it is treating it right and using it regularly. My first Vacumatic is also a personal favourite-- it belonged to one of my great uncles. It, too, is the Emerald Pearl but it's a Canadian long Junior. The man who owned it died well before I was born but stories of his life had a huge impact on me and on my eventual career. I work in mental health (I'm a social worker) and take client notes with his pen.  The other vintage fountain pen I got restored with it is a Parker Challenger that belonged to another great uncle, who also died before I was born and yet who became one of my first childhood heroes from all of the stories people told about him. This pen also has the most beautifully smooth nib in my entire collection. The pen literally flies across the page. He got it while heading to college in the US in the late 1930s. 
Fearless fucked around with this message at 04:14 on Apr 12, 2024 |
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Apr 12, 2024 04:11
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