De Lisle update
Posted by Standard_Act7948@reddit | GunnitRust | View on Reddit | 9 comments
I’ve gotten the Enfield torn down and have started work on turning into a De Lisle. I have the bolt cut down and I back bored the action for the barrel. The action has to be bored out to .750” to make room for the barrel to sit back in the action. To achieve this I made an expanding mandrel that went in the rear of the bolt channel and was mounted in a collet chuck. Then I made a hollow receiver extension that threads into the existing action threads and is supported by a steady rest. Boring the action took a lot less time than it took to make the fixtures and get it set up to cut. It does strike me as odd that they made this gun as complicated as it is considering they were under wartime manufacturing constraints. Guess that’s why they only made 136 of them.
K1RBY87@reddit
Man I appreciate your posts. I have been wondering how the heck to do this operation and this seems like the simplest way to do it.
Standard_Act7948@reddit (OP)
I can’t take credit for it, i got the idea from a old forum post I found. They didn’t do it exactly this way but same concept. I read about a guy that set it up in a mill and bored it with a boring head.
GunnitRust@reddit
https://old.reddit.com/r/GunnitRust/comments/1s6jgnb/winter_rust_2026/
Join us please
aCertainsmallCracker@reddit
Bro I really like the fixtures you made. You should go more in depth about them. What are the receiver threads btw? (i.e. size and tpi)
Standard_Act7948@reddit (OP)
They really aren’t that complicated, just a lot of setup to do a simple boring operation. For the expanding mandrel I drilled and tapped a 1/4-20 hole with a 45 degree chamfer in one end, then cut two slits through the hole to allow it to expand. The receiver extension is threaded 1”-14 with just enough exposed material for the steady rest to hold. Then it was bored out to .800” to allow clearance for a boring bar.
aCertainsmallCracker@reddit
Thanks for the explanation man. That's some good info. Have you ever messed with Arisaka type 38 receivers before?
Standard_Act7948@reddit (OP)
I haven’t. Actually I hadn’t touched an Enfield before this project either lol
aCertainsmallCracker@reddit
Lol respect to ya. It can be fun to learn new things. Sometimes terrifying haha
Content_Sky_2676@reddit
Agreed on the unnecessary complexity.
It's the difference between someone tinkering as a hobby and an engineer who designs for production. My guess is that if it went to full production, it would have become more like the sten in general design and no longer used the enfield action.