19 minute read
ARMOURY: G&G No.4 Mk.I SMLE
IN THE LAST ISSUE STEWBACCA ASSESSED THE MOST RECENT BRITISH SERVICE WEAPON IN THE FORM OF THE WE L85A2 GBBR AND HOW IT STACKED UP TO HIS FORMATIVE EXPERIENCES OF WEAPONS HANDLING TRAINING MANY YEARS PRIOR, BUT WHAT OF THE CLASSIC BOLT ACTION NO.8 .22LR TRAINING RIFLE, AND ITS EARLIER FOREBEARS THAT DATE AS FAR BACK AS THE TURN OF THE PREVIOUS CENTURY? HE GOT HIS HANDS ON G&G’S LATEST RELEASE IN THE FORM OF THEIR GAS POWERED NO.4 MK.I OFFERING TO SEE IF THE OLD CHAP HAS BEEN GIVEN ANY NEW TRICKS COMPARED TO THE SUDDEN INFLUX OF ALTERNATIVES.
The Lee Enfield No.4 SMLE in particular was developed prior to WWII and pushed into service midway through as demand for individual weapons and replacements for those damaged or lost in action soared, and the No.4 sought to simplify the base rifle and avoid some of the frills that cost time and money to produce. It essentially distilled the Lee Enfield to a very workhorse-like weapon that took lessons from the practical realities of more recent actions and the modern, at the time, shifts in combat and more urbanised European battlefields, as well as the requirements of simplified mass manufacture in a wartime setting.
Long gone were the classic magazine cutoff, heavy checkering of the furniture, volley sights and intricate rear sights of earlier classic models, with a simplified rear aperture sight optimised for shorter range use and rapid engagements; the flip up ladder sight was initially retained for the diehard users, paired with a heavier barrel that was also somewhat free-float in nature, albeit not yet fully exposed like later models. The No.4 Mk.I SMLE was all the business, but retained a lot of the classic look and feel of its earlier and much-beloved forerunners.
Even in my younger years, I seemed to appreciate the classic lines of the No.8 single loaded training rifles we cut our teeth on, often liking the very deliberate action of a bolt-operated rifle; there’s just something timeless and almost personable about your involvement in the process and the cycling and firing of every shot. So of course those memories came flooding back as I unboxed the new G&G offering after getting another long suspicious outer cardboard parcel emblazoned with their logos, and opening it only to find their very well decorated main packaging with the name and picture of the Lee Enfield No.4 Mk.I SMLE and its accessories and features adorning it on all faces.
The rifle is a little over 3.5kg so not terribly unwieldy despite its near realistic weight, and the wood-finish plastic is reasonably well executed, comparable to other recent offerings from other manufacturers that make use of such materials. One can’t grumble really, although I did see some comments on the internet regarding the price and the fact it isn’t real wood; unfortunately the realities of post COVID supply chain issues, materials cost hikes and just the realities of the G&G offering over its competitors hasn’t sunk in fully yet. You could, if you were a stalwart with the money and means, theoretically go about changing the front end furniture for real wood equivalents without a huge amount of trouble; the external barrel and its stocking up or interfacing with the furniture is the only functional thing to worry about ahead of magazine well really, and the benefit of the Lee Enfields is the front and rear split in the furniture around the metal receiver socket where the trigger and main gripping point are.
MOTIVE FORCE
However replacing the rear section with real wood alternatives would be a much harder prospect.
This is a result of the propellant method used in G&G’s LE4 rifle; while some of the equally recently released spring action equivalents may benefit from wooden furniture, the gas reservoir that resides
in the butt stock of G&G’s model would make that somewhat difficult to accomplish. With not a great deal of thickness left surrounding it and the external surface of the stock, I imagine you would struggle to make use of real wood, aside from perhaps a very tightly packed laminate solution akin to soviet era rifles, but either way G&G elected to take the simpler and more economical option to provide a functional and practical material that is less likely to fracture in use or rough handling, as well as no doubt making the system somewhat more affordable and open to a wider market given the times we’re living in and many manufacturers are suffering through. The reservoir itself is quite substantial and I counted a little over 300 BBs fired on a single
fill during my recent morning’s testing of the LE4 prior to game on at one of team Taiji’s urban close quarter environment sites. I ran an entire thirty clips of ammunition through it, which was somewhat of an undertaking in itself and purely an excuse for me to get some data points whilst also pandering to the many teammates who had asked if I’d run ‘mad minutes’ with it during my testing process. Spoiler alert - he did, in fact, run a lot of ammunition through it in short order!
And how does one run so many rounds through a bolt action, you ask yourselves? Well, one of my favourite features and selling points of the G&G LE4 is its innovative charger loading magazine system! As with the real Lee Enfield systems, the main external magazine is removable, however that tended to be mainly for maintenance purposes, infantry were not issued additional box magazines, rather they were given stripper clips of five rounds of ammunition to load into the attached box magazine from above when the action was opened rearwards, with the overall ten round capacity being the largest of any such system in service at the time, giving the British and Commonwealth forces an advantage over most Axis troops.
G&G deftly replicate the realistic loading experience while also making for a practical and fast operating mechanism by making use of their patented charger system; the magazines are in fact plastic cases made to resemble 5-round stripper clips which would be fed into the real rifle; however these blocks house a ten round spring loaded magazine tube in the body and feed lips built into the top round of the stack, as well as the included specialist speedloader which can be charged with thirty “rounds” of your chosen ammunition weight through its flip-up feed tube, which attaches to the driving shuttle. Basically you inject the rounds in through the tube after locking it upright, and they feed down into the loading tray beneath, then you can present the stripper clip magazines upwards into the feeding position, and ram the measured ten rounds in the feed tray into the stripper clip, and then repeat it for the other two clips included with a single load of the speedloader.
All in all a very slick system, I have to say, and something I really enjoyed using for its realism in loading and delivering the real steel “ten rounds” of bolt action fire, of course you will be able to purchase additional stripper clip magazines to suit your usage case or loadout; in general with them being simple lightweight plastic units I can see them being very handy and economical to carry in volume for the dedicated re-enactor or impressionist user, and I’m already looking to source some more for my own use, as well as considering scoping up the LE4 for jungle sniping work. At the very first game I fielded it at our Hutoushan mountain site up in the hills west of Taipei I fired it in anger but once in the first round and got a stealthy eliminating shot out of it as a result - most impressed!
The stripper clip system also has the advantage of an integral locking latch system; upon retracting the bolt on an empty external magazine, you can insert the stripper clip into the spring loaded storage cavity
within the main external magazine body beneath and then press down on it to latch it into its feeding position. Should you need to unload and make safe you can retract the bolt and press down on the stripper clip to unlatch and remove it before its ammunition is exhausted, or alternatively if you fire all ten rounds and run it dry, upon the final cycling of the bolt it will automatically unlatch and jump up into the way of the bolt, preventing it closing with no rounds present. The whole system works excellently, although on occasion one of the three stripper clips supplied would misbehave and pop up before all its rounds were expended, but by and large the whole design and operation of the feed system is excellent and very enjoyable to us in its utility and realism.
GETTING INTO BATTERY
The bolt itself is very smooth and easy to operate given that there is basically no spring pressure involved in its movement aside from the final resistance on the closing stroke caused by the realistic ‘cock on close’ action familiar to the real rifle; the cocking piece latches onto the main sear just as the bolt gets to its end of forward travel before locking with the downward cocking handle rotation. When the trigger is pulled it drops the sear and releases the cocking piece against the striker valve inside. You can close the bolt on a BB chambered by pulling the trigger as you cycle the action without firing it (I would however be careful if choosing to do so, and mindful of muzzle discipline nonetheless) then when you are ready to fire just grip the cocking piece and retract it to engage the sear and make the LE4 ready to fire. Alternatively you can use the manual safety lever on the rear left side of the receiver to lock both the cocking piece and bolt itself once the action is cocked, however as per the instructions be mindful not to cycle the action with it in the half or fully safed positions to avoid damage to the bolt and action.
You can also remove the bolt completely for maintenance in the same manner as the real steel rifle, by retracting it to its rearmost point aligns the locking lug with a small takedown button on the right side of the receiver, pressing this down allows the locking lug to be disengaged and rotated upward and then the bolt can be removed completely for cleaning or to get access to the striker valve beneath it if required.
Upon firing the cocking piece strikes this integral valve beneath the bolt and blasts out a measured amount of gas from the reservoir up through the bolt and into the chamber behind the seated BB round in the chamber, and then down the 625mm internal barrel. Despite such a considerable internal barrel length nearing that of the PSG-1, there is apparently no joule creep to worry about from the LE4 regardless of ammunition weight used; because it is a manually operated gas system with a single instantaneous gas release that is hit once by the cocking piece as it travels past, only a certain volume of gas is released with each shot, and because there is no recoil operation or NPAS system timing the gas release until the BB leaves the barrel, there is no excess gas usage and related increase in power due to heavier ammunition’s inertia and the related longer expansion time in the barrel upon firing.
Thus during my testing I made use 0.2g, 0.3g, 0.4g, 0.45g and 0.5g BLS BBs, with the Joule rating staying in the region of 1.5-2.0 and varying a little between shots regardless of the ammunition used, but not increasing dramatically as the BB weight tested was increased and the resultant muzzle velocity dropped progressively. Regardless the muzzle energy is perhaps a little hot for other markets, but the bolts themselves are marked on the underside, mine having ‘2.4’ on the bottom of its main body which relates to the bore of the bolt nozzle, and Rick confirms that different nozzles will be supplied to suit different local environments and laws.
Chrono’ing on the 0.2g rounds produced an initial peak shot of 140m/s that dropped down to 135m/s over a string of ten, while switching up to 0.3g BBs resulted in a similar string of ten rounds starting around 125m/s and dropping to 113m/s or so, 0.4g rounds resulted in 110-103m/s, and finally 0.5g rounds gave a 100-85m/s spread, so your ammunition weight of choice may have to be considered depending on the kind of gameplay or setting you intend on using the LE4 in if you’re contemplating running it in game. The general performance is fairly
consistent, lobbing most rounds out to a good 40m range without much movement, and without even touching the HOP unit, the adjustment for which is cunningly disguised inside the magazine well front screw. Removing the spring-loaded magnetic adjustment tool from the rear storage compartment in the butt plate (which is also where the gas fill valve for the integral reservoir resides) allows you to turn the middle part of the magazine well screw to adjust the tension of the HOP unit directly above, however I found that the HOP is already somewhat overly effective even on the minimal setting, so perhaps needs minimal adjustment anyway.
FINE TUNING
I did find the barrel to be reasonably stable and the whole system consistent, however the path of the BBs was somewhat high over the sight picture afforded by the rear aperture and front blade, neither of which appear to offer much adjustment. Even though the flip up ladder sight is highly adjustable it seems the LE4 would always fire a little too high over the front sight and I had to mentally adjust for the variance. It was pretty consistent in shot placement to be fair, I just had to mentally aim below a ‘six o clock hold’ and sometimes slightly right to ensure the rounds met their target. As G&G are planning on releasing a scope mount base in the future you should be able to work around this issue with a more readily zeroed optical sight in a No4(T) configuration if you prefer, or indeed when using the No4 Mk.I against meat targets I doubt the variance will be such an issue.
I was trying my luck hitting small targets at considerable ranges so perhaps expecting too much, and over the course of my testing the HOP unit did seem to settle in somewhat; I did have the whole front end apart to check the viability of using wooden furniture as a future upgrade potential, as well as seeing if I could bias the inner barrel down a little to drop the point of impact more in line with the point of aim, by using shims on the floating barrel; however, this seemed to produce corkscrewing shots way off centre and all over the place during further testing so I abandoned that idea, reassembled the front end after removing the shim and tightened the whole assembly up. There had been a bit of barrel wobble when my example arrived due to the construction of the front end and its realistic barrel band clamping action, it may be a case of fine tuning or fettling to get it seated nicely and shooting as consistently as possible.
The main issue I had was upon arrival… the gas reservoir had a slow leak! I immediately took the rear butt plate off to inspect the gas reservoir which is how I realised the amount of space it took up, a likely inability to make use of real wood furniture for the rearmost section of the stock at least. For me it was a relatively simple fix of removing the reservoir back plate, soaking the included seal in silicone oil as I do with all my leaky gas magazines, and reseating it then reinstalling the rear plate. I have to say this design perplexed me somewhat as the back plate is entirely flush, and the seal itself is akin to an engine block gasket with indentations to avoid the threaded internal sections in the main reservoir that house the fixing bolts. My background in hydraulics engineering in a past life makes me think it would be better to have a simple oblong shaped seal with the bolt retaining protrusions biased to the outside of the reservoir vessel thus avoiding the complex gasket shape, and I’d also be inclined to sacrifice a little capacity to have a protrusion on the rear plate that forced the seal into its seated position as fitting the flush plate across the sealing surface and gasket was a bit of a pain in the rear to get right.
This would likely be a warranty issue for most rather than something you try to rectify for yourselves, but for me; needs must, and experience allowed, I
would assume
this would be an unusual exception and an artifact of early production and procedures requiring refining given its a brand new design, and the fact they wanted to get it to me for testing early after release. Regardless, once I resealed the reservoir with this easy fix I had no further issues with leaks and the rifle ran like a champ on every outing.
MAD MINUTES FOR ALL!
At this point I imagine I’ve run 500 rounds through the G&G LE4 over the course of three outings and particularly my gas capacity testing mad minutes on the most recent game, and I naturally got quite adept at running the action rapidly and smoothly. Occasionally if you still impart a turning moment on the bolt handle as you retract the bolt body you might skew the cocking piece off-centre slightly and cause it to hang up, but for the most part its operation is smooth and there are even inward angled surfaces on the rear of the receiver track it travels in to encourage it to realign. If it does jam up its merely a case of pushing it back to centre and learning to run the bolt with authority and precision in your movements, which I managed for the most part and it IS extremely satisfying as both a tactical and auditory experience; the LE4 really brings a lot to the table in terms of nostalgia and realism, and many of my teammates from Commonwealth countries who had the opportunity to train on them in the cadets or own and operate real ones in the likes of Canada or Australia were crowding around at our Hutoushan game to reminisce about their younger selves running that action and thoroughly enjoyed doing so with the G&G replica, with plenty of BBs sent downrange that day as a result; I was actually struggling to reload the stripper clips quickly enough for demand!
Admittedly it is definitely ‘hard mode’ to field one of these up against your regular skirmish crowd running semi autos of any format, and believe me, I tried! At our terminal shoot I was running it most of the games in an
indoor and more targetrich environment, cycling the action and exhausting all my ammunition in short order; I definitely want another few packs of stripper clips and some form of bandolier storage solution as well as a scope, although it must be noted that fitting a scope will entail you having to remove the main external magazine from beneath and reloading the stripper clips into it manually while it’s out of the gun as the scope mounts will block the access from above for normal loading… certainly something to consider!
Overall, despite my initial concerns over the gas system, the G&G LE4 No.4 Mk.I SMLE has been excellent fun to use and once I got past the initial teething issues it has run excellently, the novelty and realism of both the bolt action and its proprietary patented loading stripper clip and accompanying speedloader should not be understated! So if you’re in the market for a fine-looking and practical period correct system that is very easy to operate from any position without the need to overcome springs as with air cocking bolt actions, I would strongly suggest giving the LE4 more than a cursory glance; if you find a shop that will let you try it or run it it’s definitely worth it for the experience and fun factor alone!
I’d like to extend my sincere thanks to Rick and the team at G&G ARMAMENT once again for sending their LE4 for my testing and evaluation, and do Be sure to check out the latest on the LE4 program (there will be more!) by visiting www.guay2.com. AA
