C&#111;ncidering the 7.62 posts recently

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Topic: Concidering the 7.62 posts recently
Posted: January 04 2023 at 12:58pm

You might find this interesting. I did.

Don't shoot till you see the whites of their thighs. (Unofficial motto of the Royal Air Force)

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Posted: January 04 2023 at 5:21pm

Interesting video.

I’ve never noted a significant rear sight elevation difference between .303 and 7.62. I was surprised to see how much the range index mark on the rear sight slide was moved for the L8 rifle. However, I’ve not shot my 7.62 conversions with the standard Mk 1 rear sight either, so I can’t say for certain. But, I have swapped the PH 5C rear sight between the .303 and 7.62 rifles and not noted much of a change in elevation zeros at 200 yards.

In the wide range of loads I’ve shot in the 7.62 with bullet weights from 150 to 175 grains, and various powder charges giving muzzle velocity changes on the order of 200 fps, the 200 yard zero setting hasn’t changed by more than a few Minutes. That rear sight he showed for the 7.62 looked as if the range index marks on the slide had moved by perhaps 8 to 10 minutes (increasing the elevation). Very surprising to me…

This all may be related to barrel packing/bearing position in the forend. My DCRA conversion is not a standard bedded forend with a bearing at the muzzle, it has a bearing at the middle band (sling swivel band) and barrel is free floated forward of this bearing. And for this rifle, faster bullets impact higher on the target at 200 yards, whereas the standard bedded forend is supposed to put faster bullets lower on the target at that range. I’ve yet to run an experiment on a standard bedded No. 4 .303 to confirm the so called “positive compensation” feature of this rifle.

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Posted: January 04 2023 at 6:43pm

From everything i've read the difference between .303 ball & 7.62 ball is "irrelevant below 300 yds".

An interesting side note,

(Dons asbestos fire suit)

"Positive compensation" worked perfectly with Mk VI, but didn't with Mk VII so its all kind of in the lap of the gods anyway!

Don't shoot till you see the whites of their thighs. (Unofficial motto of the Royal Air Force)

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Posted: January 04 2023 at 6:48pm

I have both a .303 and a 7.62x51mm chambered Enfield.

Both are scoped so, it's all a matter of, "Point and Squeeze" for me...

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Posted: January 05 2023 at 3:50am

E.G.B Reynolds wrote that the “Positive Compensation” feature of the No. 4 rifle was the reason the 7.62 conversions shot well at long range but not at the short ranges, the “compensating range” being somewhere around 900 yards.

I’ve never heard that there was a modified rear sight for the L8, I thought they all used the original Mk 1 rear sights. Gotta listen to that video again so see if he explains where that sight came from. Perhaps it was a “one off” for a rifle that had a problem?

Extract from a 1969 article written by Maj Reynolds on the 7.62 Conversions:

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Posted: January 05 2023 at 1:12pm

I think its just the indexes are scribed lower on the ladder.

Not sure if its a mod or done to an original sight.

By all accounts they're rare than unobtanium.

Don't shoot till you see the whites of their thighs. (Unofficial motto of the Royal Air Force)

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Posted: January 05 2023 at 2:32pm

Something not making sense here…to me, the position of the range marks looked the same on the leaf, but the slide (moving part) had the index marks much lower on each side of the slide, looked like by about 8 to 10 MOA worth…

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Posted: January 05 2023 at 7:01pm

Yep, that was the difference.

Don't shoot till you see the whites of their thighs. (Unofficial motto of the Royal Air Force)

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https://www.forgottenweapons.com/l8t-enfield-the-british-army-fails-to-make-a-sniper/

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Posted: January 06 2023 at 4:20am

This may have been posted before, Forgotten Weapons story on L8(T) trials that were not successful circa 1965. Bet they were using crappy 7.62 Ball service ammo to run the tests, so what do you expect?

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https://www.forgottenweapons.com/l8t-enfield-the-british-army-fails-to-make-a-sniper/

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Posted: January 06 2023 at 8:05am

britrifles wrote:

This may have been posted before, Forgotten Weapons story on L8(T) trials that were not successful circa 1965. Bet they were using crappy 7.62 Ball service ammo to run the tests, so what do you expect?

britrifles.

My personal opinion is that, besides the absolute possibility of them using crappy service ammo, they needed an alibi to drop the L8 to move forward with the L1A1 so they came to the general consensus to all agree that the rifle was just not worth fiddling with any longer due to the "Accuracy Issue" with the 7.62mm barrel. I am fortunate enough that I have a L8 barrel that is fitted to my No4Mk1* reciever. I even went so far as to cut the barrel down past the bayonet lugs. I do not use the 144, 147, 155, or 175grn bullets. I do use the 168grn TMK or SMK projectiles however and I can positively say that, the rifle can and will put ten round groups inside the X ring out to 200 yards all day long without fail. "I have not shot it out past 300 yards yet."

The diminished accuracy is an absolute farce...

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Posted: January 06 2023 at 12:51pm

Goosic wrote:

The diminished accuracy is an absolute farce...

Absolutely!

Also a very convenient excuse when sales had dried around the world; I think the last hope for sales abroad was probably the Indo/Pakistani conflict over Kashmir, and they had enough stocks of Ishapore 2a1's to last for years.

Couple all of the above with a divisive workforce at ROF Fazackerley which the government wanted to close.

Its been said that if you repeat a lie often enough it becomes the truth!

Mick

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Posted: January 06 2023 at 2:10pm

Agree with all the above, but perhaps a slight clarification is in order.

I don’t think the accuracy issue was fictitious or a farce. It was real. It’s the reason for the accuracy issue that has been clouded, and perhaps even known, but not brought to the light until it was too late for the L8. I believe it was because of the poor quality of the 7.62 service ammunition being made at that time. My guess is that 7.62 service ammunition was being made on worn out WWII ammunition loading machinery, both in Canada and in the UK. And perhaps with little attention or concern for accuracy.

The UK NRA and Canadian DCRA did document the struggle to get the 7.62 conversions to group “at least as well as the .303” and it went on for numerous years with numerous attempts to correct vertical stringing at the short ranges (out to 300 yds) and to some lesser extent the mid ranges (500 - 600 yds). Long ranges (800 to 1000 yds) did not suffer from this because of the positive compensation features of the No. 4 action that Reynolds has described.

Why it took so long to fully recognize the root cause was poor ammunition, I don’t know. Several of us here on this forum, and others on other forums, have demonstrated excellent accuracy out of our 7.62 conversions at short ranges, and indeed at all ranges out to 1000 yards, with rifles fitted with standard service weight barrels (not the L39/L42 heavy and longer barrel). I can only conclude that NRA and DCRA shooters at the time were not reloading, mainly because ammunition was supplied at service rifle matches, and military ammunition was likely “passed under the table” to members to use in practice, so they had no need to reload.

The Canadian 7.62 ball ammunition I have from that period strings groups pretty bad, 3 to 5 MOA, it’s a crap shoot literally, a decent group forms, then the 8th, 9th, or even 10th shot goes high, or goes low. When I pulled the bullets from a sample of 40 rounds, I weighed individual case powder charges and the max - min was 3 grains!!! No wonder it strung groups vertically! The dumped powder was re-metered thru my reading measure and the 147 gr Service bullet reseated in the case shot very well, under 2 MOA.

By 1969, right after the development of the 4 lb 7,62 barrel, a light seemed to have gone off and it was recognized that “something needed to be done” about ammunition quality for purposes of target rifle shooting. No kidding….

I have a notebook from my Dad’s late shooting friend, a very good DCRA competitive shooter, that documents the testing and modifications he made to the forend bedding of his DCRA 7,62 (which I now have) in the mid 1960’s. In his final iteration, out of frustration, he fully bedded the barrel in the forend, from chamber reinforce all the way to the muzzle! The rifle shoots exceptionally well with hand loads. Shoots crappy with service ammunition though…

So, we can conclude that the poor quality of 7.62 service ammunition played a role in the development of the L39/L42 (and commercial variants) and the adoption of the Target Rifle (TR) class for UK NRA competitive shooting.

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Posted: January 06 2023 at 2:30pm

britrifles. I totally understand the crappy ammunition point if view. But, my contention is with "The Powers That Be" just dropping the whole L8 series project because they put the blame directly on the rifle and not the ammunition. With that reasoning becoming the main reason of scrapping the project and focusing primarily on their new L1A1 project. With everybody agreeing that the 7.62mm ammunition at that time was not up to par and it showing accuracy issues across the board, it would have almost certainly showed up with the live fire testing of the L1A1 but, they proceeded anyways. Why? Because the L1A1 automatic rifle was and is the future whereas that clunky old bolt action is as old as Methusela and is no longer wanted or needed on today's battlefronts.

You want to look good at the dragstrip, bring a manual four speed car. You want to win at the dragstrip, bring an automatic...

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Posted: January 06 2023 at 2:39pm

britrifles wrote:

Agree with all the above, but perhaps a slight clarification is in order.

As mentioned elsewhere on this forum it was the gift of some Raufoss that alerted many Bisley shooters (and the NRA) to the shortcomings of RG ammunition at that time; it would be interesting to know what part the bedding of the L8 rifles played in this with regard to accuracy.

Mick

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Posted: January 06 2023 at 2:55pm

I also suspect that target rifle accuracy was of no concern to the military (with the exception of the sniper rifle of course). But it was most certainly the prime concern of the UK NRA Target shooting fraternity. No one wants a rifle that drops points from what they previously had.

The L8 was a dead end project from the get go. Clearly, the WWII experience showed the advantage of the self loading rifle, so the L8 was never going to be the next Service Rifle for the British Army. And, it became unnecessary to hold these in reserve as the L1 production ramped up.

The No. 4 did indeed live on for many more years after the L8, in the form of the L42. If anything, the L1 (FAL) was the rifle with “accuracy issues”, no matter what ammunition it was fed, it was no sniper rifle and no target rifle. I know, I’ve shot these rifles on the range.

Like many things in history, the facts seemed to have gotten in the way of a good story. Perhaps there was some pressure to hide the ammunition accuracy issues as the military didn’t want any bad press for the L1 project either. Easier to just declare the No. 4 as “unsuitable”, or that it had an inherent issue with accuracy in the 7.62 form. I’ve even heard it was because of the length of the barrel (25.3 inches) that caused the accuracy problem!

But, from what I know of E.G.B Reynolds and Dave Reynolds (no relation) of the DCRA, they were likely honest and very knowledgable engineers/armourers who were trying to get to the root cause of the issue and improve the accuracy of the No. 4 7. 62 conversions. And in the end, they succeeded.

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