Take a resized cartridge, and try and close the bolt on 4-5 pieces of the paper between the bolt face and the cartridge head. If the bolt cloese, you have a head space problem.

You can try one piece first till you cannot close the bolt any further. On my one enfield, I battle to close on one piece, and the other 3 pieces, so it can vary.

This is the quick at home DIY method. You realy need go-nogo guages.

 

 

Do you think you might have a problem & if so please give details, we can help sort out fact from fiction.

I dont believe that excessive headspace would cause a noticeable difference in recoil.

I have not used the SA ammo but believe that it is good stuff.

Bear in mind that the old rifle shooters used to say the if a standard military rifle with military ammo would group 3 inches at 100 yds, then it was a good rifle.

You don't mention the bore condition.  Bore condition can have a huge impact on accuracy but hand loading can make even a worn bore shoot well.  A rough bore may need some cleaning and de-roughing.  A rust damaged bore is not the end of the world.  A bit of fire-lapping and they can shoot as good as new.

And no, the head-space will not have any effect on recoil.  Lee Enfield's do have a stern recoil,  The target rifle would be heavier and have a better fitting stock so the recoil will feel much less.  The propellant burn rate will have an impact on felt recoil.  Faster powder gives a sharper 'kick' which is felt more.

I have a head-space gauge which I broke by placing a piece of paper on the rear.  The rifle had a tight head-space and also has a strong camming action plus the gauge is hard and brittle!  Oh well.  Anyway, it was a go gauge.  One needs a no-go gauge

 

Again, I urge all posters on here to remember that emember that with a rimmed case headspace is determined exclusively by the case rim, there may be other chamber dimensions that can vary & have an effect on case life but they are 100% emphatically NOT headspace. Making adjustments to fix any issues with the chamber in front of the case rim will absolutely not fix any headspace problems, it will, however mask them until there is a possibly catastrophic incident. I'd suggest being wary of any information that suggests or implies anything different.

 

 

But I stand by what I say regarding head-spacing on the shoulder.  The normal head-space must be correct, then convert to shoulder head-spacing.  One can head-space on the shoulder with an excess head-spaced gun but that should not be the accepted cure because someone else could get hold of the gun.  Excess head-space damages the gun and will eventually ruin it.

By the way, a cartridge that requires some force to close the bolt actually reduces the loading on firing.  It's called pre-loading and it reduces the shock load.  Think of this, if the wheel nuts on your car are not tight enough the studs will eventually break and the wheels fall off.  Don't ask me how I know.

No sir it is not. It is a safe maximum. Not ideal, but in no way dangerous as long as it is not exceeded.

 

Anything over 0.074 is excessive.

Remember that the Lee Enfield was not designed to be used with reloaded ammo and all military ammo was made to certain tolerances. Modern commercial ammo is made with thinner rims and so headspace if anything should be reduced and if that was the ammo I was using, I would use SAAMMI spec guages.

Central, who made gauges and tools for the target shooters, made an .062 guage so that shooters could close their headspace up below spec.

 

This is worth repeating. I only know of 2 military rounds designed from the start to be reloaded. 20mm PAK from Germany in WW2 & the Gau-8 cannon in the A-10 Warthog!

 

Nothing else was designed to be reloaded by the military so every time we reload we're actually making the case & action do spmething it wasn't designed to do. Worth remembering when we complain about dimensioning or case life expectancy. The military life expectancy of a case was 1 firing!

Ah, but .... !  Of course you are quite correct.  But, I was only saying it was excessive from a reloaders point of view.  I did specify but should have said it differently.   It is indeed safe.  Actually, it doesn't have to be a problem for reloading either but that takes us to a more advanced level (like centering the case on first firing - which is not a case life factor, and starting out with lower level loads and so on).  But without any fancy tricks, as long as one only neck sizes and keeps loads moderate, case life should be good anyway.