I would say that I'm officially finished with the SMLE Scout work and the rifle is ready for it's life here on the ranch!
There was a five day interruption in the project as I needed to stay a spell with my sister but I was chomping at the bit to get back to the ranch and this this project. A member on Shooter's Forum had offered to mill a Redfield Jr. 600 base and that we thought would fit and that base had arrived while I was gone. Once a few tasks where out of the way, I dove in.
Unfortunately, when going over specifics with the fellow on SF, I had failed to consider the distance between the rings of the 600 vs. 600IER mounts. The 600 mount I was sent had a greater ring spacing than the IER mount. Given that scout scopes are pretty short, the rings would have been right up against the eye & exit bell. I only have one solid anchor hole in SMLE metal and to use that with the 600 mount, coupled with the ring spacing issue, would place the scope completely out of position. Bummer! Seems every way I've turned I've met an obstacle with this rifle.
With no alternative, yesterday afternoon I took up the skeleton 63B mount and got busy. I had to recut the aft most hole to 8-40, that is the hole into the SMLE barrel, and then drill and tap 3 more holes. Of the four holes in the mount one half straddled one hole that had already been drilled in the rib so I went forward and drilled another in the pillar of the rib. The white arrows indicate the mount screws.
I went out and shot it with a 45.0K PSI load of BL-C(2) and the first shot hit the bullseye. The recoil was substantial, the primers were normal but the bolt was a bugger to open. I was shooting at 2 minute intervals but the barrel did got hot and started to produce vertical stringing. I took a paper target and it would not slip along the barrel.
This morning I went back to a 40.7K PSI load, this time with H4895. I also pulled the forward stock and really worked on the barrel channel to insure no contact. Then, I said "what the heck" and epoxied the mount to the rib.
Shortly after lunch a friend of mine showed up and I told him I had too many chores to catch up on and couldn't play. He said he wasn't going anywhere until I shot the SMLE with the big bullets. So, I stopped everything and we headed to the range. With a dwindling supply of bullets and two weeks before I can get more. I decided to lob a bullet out to 100 yards for starters.
Not bad! It was 5" low and 1" right with the crosshairs centered in the tube. Not bad at all! I made a small correction and the next three shot group at 100 was very good. Over corrected with the next three shot string but did dial it in with the last. The last shot of the last string was shot at a 6" gong I have at the 100 yard berm. I wanted to see how hard it hit that steel. It hit very hard, dead center, flipping it over the beam it hangs from. I'm very pleased and have 5 cartridges remaining should I run across a sounder of hogs.
In the picture above you can see that the bare metal has been reblued, it was easy to match perfectly in that the finish is so thin.