The M1917 Enfield Project

I’m no gunsmith by any stretch of the imagination.  I have a few hand tools and a simple Lee reloading press.  Do-it-yourself articles always interest me.  However, such articles often turn out to be either, “do-it-yourself – if you happen to own a machine shop,” or, “act as a general contractor sending out custom work”.  I asked around on several web forums about the practicality assembling a rifle from parts.  The replies I received seemed to concur that it was much easier and cheaper to just buy a rifle.  The trouble is, nobody I came into contact with seemed to have actually tried it recently.  Some people mentioned taking a stab at it 20 years ago, but that didn’t seem particularly relevant.  It seemed to me that the internet would make it a lot easier to track down parts and information that even 5 years ago would have required countless hours of gun show wandering.        

For various reasons, I wanted a M1917 Enfield.  The CMP sells M1917’s for $350, plus $20.95 shipping.  I understand that without actually going to pick one out in person, the chances of getting a nice one are not good.  Since I wanted a project anyway, and since building a kayak in the family room was likely to meet some resistance, I started looking around for parts.  To start with, I needed a receiver, preferably with a barrel attached.  I browsed the on-line auction sites for a while.  There are a lot of sporterized actions out there, not my cup of tea, but a testament to the versatility of the action, and sheer numbers built (about 2.5 million).  Sporterizing generally consists of at least grinding off the rear sight and tapping for a scope.  Plenty of other modifications are out there as well, such as reconfiguring the bolt handle or rechambering.  I happen to like peep sights, and was looking for a 30.06 anyway, so none of these modified versions appealed to me.  I found a gun shop within 50 miles that had a M1917 so I went to take a look since I had never handled one.  I liked the feel of it, but this particular one was more of a gun than a rifle; there didn’t seem to be any rifling to speak of in the forward one-third of the barrel.  (Price: $499, firm).  

I finally found not one, but two lightly sporterized M1917s up for auction at the same time.  One had a nicely cut down stock and was nickel plated.  The other had a real wood-butcher job for a stock, and what was left of the original finish.  Both were Eddystones.  I checked into unplating nickel, and it turns out that it’s not all that difficult, although I’m sure you wouldn’t want to breathe the fumes.  I emailed the sellers regarding details on the condition of the rifles.  The non-nickel one had what the seller described as “good rifling” and a “good tight muzzle”.  I asked the other seller about the muzzle and he told me “a round chambers just fine”.  I pointed him toward the muzzle and asked him specifically to check to see whether a bullet was a tight fit at that end.  He got back to me and assured me that he checked it with a mil-surplus round and “it fell right in”.  Maybe he meant, again, that the chamber would accept a round.  Then again, maybe he meant exactly what he said.  I’ve learned the hard way not to hear what I want to hear when dealing with sellers.  Since the seller of the non-nickel rifle seemed more reliable for evaluating condition, and since I didn’t detect any red flags, I assumed he was honest, and wound up paying $280, plus $14 shipping.  I had it shipped to my favorite local gun store, which cost another $25 at this end.  Not the cheapest place around, but the gunsmith happens to be an Enfield fan, so I figured he would be my plan B if I ran into any do-it-myself trouble I couldn’t get out of.

The sporterized stock would need to be replaced, along with the missing stock-related hardware.  I ordered the stock, bands, sling swivels, related screws, sling, and forward handguard from Numrich.  The only thing they didn’t have was the aft handguard.  The parts arrived in 6 days.  Upon inspection, I was pleased with the order.  Everything was accounted for, and all of the used parts were covered in an authentic mixture of oil and dust.  One of the two lower sling swivel mounting screws had obviously been cut down from a larger wood screw.  Probably a resourceful armorer dealing with an oversized hole.  I emailed Numrich and they offered to send a correct replacement screw free of charge.  They actually sent a pair, good service.

I cleaned the metal parts and stock with mineral spirits to remove the oil and grime.  The metal parts cleaned up right away.  All except the butt sling swivel and the aft handguard ring had what I considered to be an acceptable level of Parkerizing.  The ring and sling swivel required a little scrubbing to remove the rust.  I oiled them for the time being.  I would decide later whether to look into backyard parkerizing. 

The wood took several cleanings to get all the grime off of the surface.  I used a toothbrush to scrub out the nooks and crannies, and all the markings stamped here and there.  As one side of the stock was a bit darker than the other, several more cleanings were required to remove the embedded oil and make them look about the same.  When the weather gets hot, I’ll take it outside and see what else oozes out of the wood.

As for the markings, an “R” at the forward end indicated that it was a Remington stock.  No worries.  I know collectors like matching parts, but I am interested in shooting.  Also, I can’t help thinking that matching parts are less authentic for a service rifle.  Sure they matched when it left the factory, but a veteran rifle would have been rebuilt a time or three, with whatever parts were handy.  Moving down the stock, an “X” was located on the underside near the forend, “D6” at the upper band, then “339” with an eagle, then “300” and the eagle again.  On the butt, there were 3 squares with “4”, “55”, and something that looks like “11 ”.  The left side of the stock is clearly stamped “6K”.  Doing a bit of research, the “R” for Remington was the only thing that I knew anything about.  The inspector’s initials and armory marks described in typical gun collector sources were not present on my stock, and the collection of numbers and letters on my stock were not in their lists.  I’d like to decode all this stuff eventually.

When my rifle arrived at my friendly neighbor hood FFL, I was pleasantly surprised.  The barrel and receiver had much more finish than was apparent in the auction pictures.  The Parkerizing didn’t exactly look new, but it was pretty good for a rifle made in November 1918, the last month of the war.  I immediately checked the muzzle wear with a .308 bullet and found it tight.  A dummy round chambered and ejected without any problem, and shining a light down the barrel revealed a bright shiny surface with no dark spots or pitting.  Rifling was present, but I really couldn’t tell by looking at it whether it was up to snuff or not.  Plenty of flaming bombs and little eagle and number markings to look into.  The trigger guard had a little less finish than the barrel, and the butt plate less than that, plus a little surface rust, probably due to the rigors of “parade rest”.

After a thorough cleaning, and another thorough cleaning, I assembled my basket of parts on the  military stock.  I had never really thought about it, but I learned that I would need to take off the front sight in order to fit the aft handguard ring and the forward band.  I decided to test fire the rifle first, just in case some major changes to the front sight were needed.  After tearing down the bolt and reassembling it minus the grime, I found that the rifle functioned very smoothly.  One very pleasant surprise was that the trigger pull was reasonably light, smooth, and clean.  I tried measuring the pull with a postal scale and a little imagination; I found it to be about just shy of 4 pounds.  I admit I’m not sure how accurate this is, but the point is that the trigger pull feels quite acceptable.

Since everything looked sound, and since the M1917 has a reputation for having a very strong action, I decided to take the rifle to a local indoor range for test firing.  The range fee of five dollars seemed much more attractive than paying $40 or more to have a gunsmith gauge whether or not the thing was safe to fire.  Having no desire to earn a Darwin award, I chambered a round loaded with a 130 grainHornady JHP and 40 grains of IMR 4064, and set the rifle on a rest pointed down range.  I reached around the safety barrier and fired from the neighboring lane, on the theory that if something disastrous happened, I could bandage my arm and live to tell the tale.  Nothing did.  The spent brass looked normal.  I loaded three fresh rounds and fired a group just over an inch at 25 yards.  I fired another group of six shots about one and three quarter inches off-hand.  Now that I was warmed up, I settled down to fire a five shot group of 150 grain Hornady BTSP (behind 46.3 grains of Varget) from a rest.  This ammo was meant to approximate military ammo the rifle was designed for (2700 fps).  This group was about three quarter inches.  So far, she was shooting about a half inch to the right.  I was having fun, at least as much fun as I could at 25 yards, so I squeezed off a few more rounds after I remembered that the rear sight was flippable.  The previous groups had been fired with the battle sight, which is theoretically set for 400 yards.  With the sight set at 200 yards, the thing shot about eight inches lower.  I decided to defer further testing until I could shoot over a longer distance.

I was pretty happy that the rifle was shootable, and accuracy looked promising.  The rifle was satisfying to shoot; enough recoil to be interesting but not painful, and easy to hold on target.  Since the sights are only adjustable for elevation and not windage, I now knew to move the front sight a bit when I finished assembling the rifle.  Another trip to the computer and I had ordered the aft handguard, and a band pin and stacking swivel screw I had overlooked before.  Since the outfit I was ordering from (Sarco) had a $20 minimum, I ordered 10 stripper clips as well since they seemed like they might come in handy.  I also remembered to log onto Gunbroker and leave good feedback regarding the seller.

I drifted the front sight post to the left a bit without any trouble.  Removing the front sight took a few tries, and some time for oil to soak into the rust underneath.  It’s amazing how a tiny bit of rust between two parts can make them stick together so well.  After cleaning up the rust, I was ready for the final assembly.  While waiting for the rest of the parts to arrive, it occurred to me that I ought to be moving the front sight to the right in order to make it shoot further left.  Like I said, I’m no gunsmith.  After drawing myself a few diagrams to clear up my confusion, I knocked the front sight the other way.

Once the aft handguard arrived, I discovered that a little fitting was required.  The fore and aft handguards combined were about 1/32 of an inch too long.  I trimmed the new forward handguard to make them fit without altering the vintage aft handguard.  The aft handguard was a little darker than the stock, and the new forward handguard was quite a bit lighter.  Rubbing the forward handguard with a little artist’s charcoal before coating with boiled linseed oil darkened it up.  I expect to get more oil to soak out of the stock and aft handguard over time, so I will be making further adjustments to get them all to match. 

Total cost of the project was $456.  Out of that, $53.45 was for shipping the various parts.  If I could have somehow rounded up the parts and avoided shipping, I would have paid almost the same in sales tax anyway.  Sure, if a few things had gone differently, I might have been out the cost of returning defective parts or gunsmithing, but it didn’t.  In my experience, with the M1917, it’s worth assembling one from parts.  Now I find myself wondering if a guy could manage to throw together an old Winchester carbine…