1876 Enfield Martini Henry Restoration

**MarkV** · 07-06-2013, 02:09 AM

My son and I drove to the IMA store in Easton, PA today to look for 2 Martini Henry MK IIs. They had about 25 Mk IIs, most with wrist cracks, some very serious. We found maybe 3 that had butt stocks without cracks. I ended up with a nice 1876 Enfield Mk II and my son grabbed an 1876 LSA with a cracked stock - but one that looks to be repairable.

They had a bunch of Mk IVs - including an entire pallet that were in very nice condition. We really wanted Mk IIs because of their service use by the British Army.

There are just a few gouges on the butt stock and perhaps a little wood rot around the rear forearm pin. The only issue I'm a little concerned with is some pitting and rust on the right of the barrel. That may keep me from shooting it - need to see how bad it is before I decide.

Both rifles function even with all the caked-on gunk.. The bore on my sons is beautiful. Mine is caked with gunk but seems to be OK, too.

Here are a few pre-cleaning pics of mine. I did just a very little bit of cleaning of the butt stock tonight and found some very nice cartouches.

**sandgroper** · 07-06-2013, 02:19 AM

Great stuff, I really like the Martini Henry rifles, they were used extensively throughout Australia.

**Tango** · 07-06-2013, 07:03 AM

Mark looking forward to seeing the end product!!!.. I need to get 1 of these rifles one day!!...they look great.. Cheers Terry

**Glenn66** · 07-06-2013, 07:25 AM

A freind of mine bought one of these off an old villager in Oman a few years back, after much deliberation and internet photo swapping with Martini experts it turned out to be a modern, Indian-made fake.

**m3bobby** · 07-06-2013, 10:23 AM

From the pic it doesn't look to bad but until you get the wood off you will never know for sure. I know some guys who shoot them with quite externally rough looking barrels but they are fine. I think you will really enjoy this one, there may be some difficulty in getting the butt off, the rusty butt bolt gets seized into the but and wont turn. There's another thread all about this somewhere on this forum.

**guns ltd** · 07-06-2013, 02:08 PM

Great rifles. Reminds me of the movie Zulu Dawn. I have a friend of mind that just loves these rifles.

John

**MarkV** · 08-03-2013, 11:10 PM

She's done and ready to fire. I am very happy with how well she cleaned up. I had to do some interesting wood repair - first time for me. It isn't perfect and I opted not to sand the two plugs I had to made so I didn't mar the original finish - I may still do it to blend them a bit but, who knows? I needed the two plugs to replace wood rot. I got some stock pieces from IMA-USA and used a plug maker to make the sized plugs after drilling out the bad wood.

In any case, I am very happy with her!