When it comes to firearms, I enjoy bringing back to life old school curio and relic rifles where others might have given up. This is a Maltby Enfield No4 Mk1 from 1944 that I ordered from Royal Tiger Imports when they had a one day warehouse sale. It is always a gamble when you order from RTI - you never know what you are going to get and a lot of the time it’s not good. This gun cost me $150 and when it arrived at my door, it looked pretty hopeless. It had a loose butt stock, was missing the rear top wood, also missing the middle barrel band, and the bolt was absolutely stuck closed from rust. After banging open the bolt with a dead blow hammer, I looked down the barrel and it looked pretty rusty. Honestly everything was rusty and most people would have probably given up.
But then I noticed something - this was a numbers matching gun, including the magazine which is almost unheard of for No4 Enfields. So I persevered. I disassembled it and it turned out that almost all the rust was just surface rust. With a lot of elbow grease, I was able to get most of it off and surprisingly there was not a lot of pitting. And I deeply cleaned the barrel which revealed it was a five groove barrel and the rifling was basically intact under the surface rust. From my parts bin, I found a spare rear top wood and barrel band, tightened up the butt stock, and reassembled the gun.
The result is what you see above - the gun won’t win any beauty contests but it will more than likely be a good shooter. The stock fits well and has the appropriate level of barrel down pressure that Enfields require. I’ll try and get to the range soon to see how well she shoots.
