Yes, I AM aware that I have a problem,

thank you very much(It's a sickness, I can't help myself!). Just ignore that part.

The week before the big gun show in Tulsa I posted this on AIM and their constant efforts to ruin my financial standing. Biggest gun show in the world a few days away, all kinds of stuff to look for... yes, dammit, I ordered one. Set aside some of the show funds and made a call. And a couple of days later the Brown Truck of Happiness people delivered it










I've read a couple of model designations, I'll just us 2A1 here: it's the #1 MkIII Lee Enfield, reengineered to fire the 7.62x51mm Nato cartridge(.308 for short). 12-round magazine, otherwise externally it's pretty much identical to the original. Different steel in the bolt, receiver & barrel, different bolt head for the rimless cartridge.

I just clicked on the link in my previous post, and it's no good anymore, looks like they sold out of these fast. They'd advertised these as 'shooter specials', the wood being more beat-up and/or more repairs than the stuff they'd previously had but the metal being in the same condition. For a hundred bucks, I figured worth a try: I've dealt with AIM before.

The 'more beat-up' consisted of lots of little dings- hardly unusual in a milsurp rifle- and two repairs. See the two lighter-colored vertical pieces on the left?















A very well-done repair. There's one more like this on the right, done with darker wood; you have to look for it to find it. And that's it. The metal has that painted finish the Indians kept from the Brits, only this looks like something done with a spray can by a kid in a hurry to finish a model airplane. But the action is tight- I don't think it was fired much- and the bore is spotless. It came with what I call a 'halfway' grease job: it was greased for storage but not the 'block of grease with a gun inside' you see from a lot of Brit firearms, so not a big problem cleaning it up enough to try out.

I mentioned the action was tight, the trigger was also a touch, not 'rough' but not polished either. Again, I think it was carried a lot and shot very little. And the sights were WAY off to the right. I discovered and corrected that at the indoor range, and when went to the outdoor range the other day tweaked the sights to dead-on and tried it at 100 yards with some South African ball I had. I forgot my rests(always something, dammit) and this thing didn't do its best off one of the sandbags I borrowed. All shots in the black, but not good grouping. So I looped-up using the sling I'd stuck on(a 1907 model) and fired with it, elbows on the bench and left forearm against the bag and got this for five rounds:






















The one centered in the bull was a called flyer(ignore the .22 holes), the other four went into less than 2". It did about as well on another before I gave up on shooting for best groups, the wind was gusting and those little sights were starting to give my eyes problems.

That's better accuracy than I was hoping for out of this. I think a little polishing to smooth the trigger(it broke cleanly if a touch heavy) would help a bit, but hardly necessary for a shooter(no, I won't leave it alone). Got to say, a good deal for the price.