No.4 Mk1 Savage

[bigedp51]

Military headspace is min .064 and max .074.

I then "WAS" going to say SAAMI is GO .064 and NO-GO .067



But the SAAMI made a liar out of me making my .067 gauge a orphan.

Below Min .064 and Max .071



Below is from the 1954 "Competitive Rifle Shooting by Jim Sweet the Australian national shooting champion.







And then we have the Canadian No.4 manual.



And if that wasn't confusing enough you have have the headspace found in dimly lit bars caused by unscrupulous bartenders.

[Merc]

I finally bought myself a .30 cal. Muzzle Wear Gauge and checked out muzzle of the .303 cal. 1944 Enfield No. 4 Mk 1* Savage rifle as shown in the pics. I expected to see the muzzle accept the .3030" ring but it's interesting that the last one it accepted was the .3025" ring. The rifle has about .250" throat jump gap but still shoots accurately. A tighter than usual muzzle/bore is the reason???

100_3409.jpg100_3823.jpg100_3825.jpg

[Merc]

JB,

I've been lucky in that all of my milsurp rifles have had decent head space. The general advice you often hear is to remove the striker and extractor from the bolt when testing with a gauge. I followed their advice and stripped the No. 4 bolt. Re-installing the striker was the most difficult part of the project. Getting the threads started was frustrating. The cut out portion at the back end of the striker that accommodates the set screw seemed to resist all of my efforts to engage the threads. I was finally successful and per your advice, will be happy to accept the test results as a one-time evaluation and move on.

Merc

Since I'll probably be looking to acquire another WW1 or WW2 era .303, I ordered an Okie coin style head .074" space field gauge. The gauge has a space for the extractor and a hole for the striker so the bolt doesn't need to be disassembled to check head space.