MoA wrote:I quite dont get the mystique behind the Lee Enflied. Manufactured to varying tolerances, with varying quality, other than being the primary weapon for the Brits for about 50 years... what is the point.
The worst K31 is better in quality than the best SMLE, lets not get started on the crappy Mosins..
Ok, you don't hold the Lee Enfield in the high regard that others do , that's a personal preference thing obviously. However , the Lee Enfield served from the late 1800's through to the 1950's as a first line weapon of the British empire and later the commonwealth . In those 70 years that it served ,the quality of manufacture was consistently good ,even in war time manufacture. The tolerances that the rifles were built to were quite adequate for reliability and accuracy . I would bet that I can take a bolt from the last production in Australia ( about 1954 ) and fit it to a turn of the century receiver made by Sparkbrook , BSA, Enfield or LSA and be 95% certain that it would be safe to shoot without using headspace gauges ,I could also do the same with an Indian produced receiver or bolt that was produced under British supervision before independence .After the Brit's left I'm not so sure .
The worst K31 might look prettier and more sexy than a LE but has it been proven in 2 world wars and god knows how many minor ones...I think not
The Canadians learned the hard way that finely crafted straight pull rifles did not perform well when they were covered in mud and grime from the trenches just as the Yanks have found out their M16's don't work to well when they're full of Iraqi sand. The only straight pulls that really proved themselves in battle were the M1895 rifles used by the Austro Hungarian empire in WW1. As for the Mosin Nagants ...there battle history and indestructibility are legendary ,they also made a pretty good sniper rifle out of it.
