Let's Talk Lee-Enfield's

[u/Flat-Dark-Earth]

The Lee Enfield, a rifle that everyone is familiar with and many seem to own, yet somehow I never ended up adding one to the collection.

I'm playing catchup now and would like to pick up a Lee Enfield, the question is which one?

From my understanding there are 5-6 models of the rifle that evolved over it's ~60 years of military service.

For someone looking to buy their first, which examples should I be looking out for? Any to avoid? No.1? No.4? SMLE? Jungle carbine? Long Branch (Made in Canada?).

Also, there were a couple misconceptions surrounding this rifle that I had been told for years, the first was that these were $300-$400 rifles, that only appears to be the case for sporterized examples. Clean unbastardized examples seem to be going for $1,200-$1,800 at retailers today.

The second being that .303 ammo was "expensive" and hard to come by. Neither of these seem to be true as it’s priced comparable to 308 and I am seeing a ton in stock (PPU, S&B etc).

Edit: I think I have decided on a No.4 Mk 2 Long Branch.

[u/Flat-Dark-Earth]

The surplus may be gone but I'm seeing plenty of what I would consider cheap modern .303 from European brands. Not significantly different than 308, 6.5x55 etc.

[u/blogginsgod → u/Flat-Dark-Earth]

Cheapest I'm finding is about $2.50 a round for rifle line at a local sports store. Canadian tire has same listed for about $4 a round. I also live in northern ontario so shipping here is sometimes hard depending where I am. Got a set of reloders sent up though and trying to find someone to teach me!

[u/Flat-Dark-Earth → u/blogginsgod]

I’m seeing $1.76 a round at Tenda for S&B.

[u/Q-Ball7 → u/Flat-Dark-Earth]

As a benchmark, the bill of materials to reload 1 round of .303 (ignoring the cost of brass) is currently about $1.40.

This is about as good as it gets.