303 british enfield to 308 win

mwester89

is there any way to rebarrel/convert a no.4 303 britsh enfield to 308 winchester, can it be done for a reasonable price
thanks

Wehrmacht_45

It can be done, but it is neither cheap, nor practical, nor safe.

1. The 303 is Rimmed and the 308 is rimless. That means a new bolt head and/ or extractor would have to be fabricated in addition to adding a new barrel. You would also need a new magazine.

2. The 303 is a good and solid round that is not too expensive to shoot if you buy ammo wisely from Seller and Belloit or Prvi Partisan.

3. It is not a safe conversion. The Enfield you are looking at converting was not meant to fire the 308. The 308 Winchester operates at a much higher pressure than the 303 does.


If you want a 308 Enfield there are Indian made Enfields that were purposely designed and built stronger to fire 7.62 NATO cartridges. However, even with those you should stick to the lighter loaded 7.62 NATO ammo.

Hawk Carse

Well, the British did it to produce the L8 series of rifles and the L42 sniper rifle, as well as the Envoy target rifle. But they had the entire resources of Enfield Lock armory behind them. It is not something a hobbyist could do at a "reasonable" (read cheap) price.

dfletcher

Instead, and for probably less money, you could buy an Ishapore SMLE. They are relatively new manufacture and originally chambered in 7.62 NATO - believe they are Mk III No 1s though. I have one for general plinking and it's pretty much as SMLE standard as you can find.