SMLE Magazine Issues?

[Grendl]

Hey gang, I just got a beautiful 1915 BSA SMLE Enfield from another Calgunner. It came with two magazines; the original and a modern replacement. The later doesn't fit - too wide. The original fits nicely, but doesn't feed.

The bolt cannot peel a round out of the magazine. It seems like the tabs (feed lips?) near the front are bent down too far for a round to clear, but they don't look deformed. Usually, I'd just take a pair of pliers to the tabs, but I don't know anything about Enfields and this is an otherwise beautiful old girl.

Any ideas?

[Noonanda]

thats exactly what you need to do, carefull bend the feedlips till it will feed rounds from the magazine. even then there will be times due to the rotation of the earth, the barometric pressure, nuclear weapons testing in north korea that the round will still not feed from the magazine. usually a good tap on the bottom then will fix it LOL

[emcon5]

This helped me:

http://www.surplusrifleforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=120&t=78093

[Grendl]

Thanks guys!

[Haggar85]

new magazines like off of sportsmans guide that say compatible with III and 4 kind of sort of work in each but not really well. just fine tune it. bent, smack and grind if need be till it fits, but i caution on gringing, there is a high margin to *(&^ up.

[knucklehead0202]

ever owned a british car? yeah. if you put oil in enfields it'll leak out too, lol. haven't had any trouble with mine but i've only had it like 5 months and only taken it out once. by the way, jungle carbines have that rubber recoil pad for a reason, and they still beat the crap out of you.

[dfletcher]

Brownells sells a tool for bending feed lips - basically a screwdriver like tool with a slot milled in the stem, costs about $7.00 and worth it.

Having fiddled with a few Enfield mags (to include a 45/70 version) I'd suggest slowly running some dummy rounds through it, watching exactly what happens. Sometimes the obvious fix isn't correct, watching may help you learn whether the front tabs should be tweaked higher or the rear top of the mag tweaked up. If you do to much lifting on the rear top of the mag the top rounds won't be securely held in place. And tweak once, then check feeding - don't tweak here & there and try.

In general, I've not found the aftermarket mags to work well at all. I guess that's kind of to be expected given the many variations and manufacturers of rifles.

[eighteenninetytwo]

The rubber recoil pad on the No.5 wasn't there for recoil reduction - It was there to protect the butt of the rifle. They actually make the felt recoil worse, because the whole of the recoil is concentrated into a smaller area than the previous (and larger) buttplate design.