The pistols weren't actually intended to be a part of the theme, but it happened to work out that way. Besides, switching to a Luger and .455 Webley wouldn't have changed anything in the results.
I'm quite familiar with rimlock, and how to load clips to avoid it. What the rifle was doing to me was the bolt riding over the rim of the cartridge when feeding, and jamming up against the body of the partially-fed round.
We will probably do some more matches this way, but haven't made any decision on what guns to use in the next one. Krag/Mauser would be interesting, but so would some more modern stuff.
@@LordVader1094 the left handers being evil was still a doctrine.in the religious schools of the UK in the 1960's mainly the Catholics. As for how people the British army didn't have a MASSIVE issue with left handers shooting.as long as you did it right on parade.
One thing that must be noted is that the Enfield is being used left-handed, which means that one of the Enfield's best features is not exploitable. You should be able to use your trigger hand to work the bolt without having to take your eyes off the sight. Here, the wrong hand has to be used to work the bolt, slowing the rate of fire enormously and losing sight focus.
Indeed, in later videos, Ian's speed keeps getting better and better and I feel humbled by his skill. He can shoot that thing as fast as any righty. The inability to retain sight picture, however, is still unfortunate.
Wouldn't you loose sight focus anyway when rapidly working any bolt action? I would think target focus would be the issue, but that you should only loose with a malfunction or hiccup with the action, left or right handed.
Toast not really, the problem with using old military bolt actions left-handed is that they are very front heavy and have no pistol grip. So the rifle goes of target as soon as you let go off the forend
Having owned both rifles, I think sand in the action was a smaller problem than reloading - those enfield stripper clips and magazines are mostly awful, and exacerbate the issues with the rimmed cartridge. The enfield magazine is stamped, and the feed lips are easily bent. Rim lock is avoidable but extra friction from the rim scraping against the feed lip is not. The Mauser has machined feed lips and (usually) a machined follower. The machined feed lips are beveled both ways to allow for easy feeding as well as loading. Ultimately, I don't see how the enfield's 10 round magazine is an advantage in sustained fire - if you want to fire 5 rounds, you need to load 1 stripper clip, same as the mauser.
I can hear tons of tactikool going on in the background: "Light laser blah blah 300 Blackout blah blah" "blah blah my buddy is really into crossfit blah blah" Its refreshing to watch your videos with some older weapons in somewhat real use.
Generally I was starting with 10 rounds loaded - the exception was stage 4 (which only allowed 5 rounds to be fired from the rifle). Doesn't help so much when I miss a lot, though. :)
I'm well aware of the bolt issue - I did a whole video about that, including deliberately blowing one up. However, I think the Ross is a quite good rifle, just not really optimum for dirty battlefield conditions.
Testing the shooters' skill was part of the idea - as I asked at the beginning, the question was whether the faster Enfield could make up for a poorer shooter. FWIW, I do have a decent bit of experience reloading the Enfield, but it gave me trouble this time around (and I think the mag spring may be a bit weak; a lot of the fumbling you saw was me fixing failures to feed when the bolt rode partially over a cartridge.
A late contributor here with just a tip about the Kar98. When loading with stripper clips you don't have to manually pull the empty clip away. Just close the bolt and the clip will be flying. Shaves off about a 1 second on a reload. If it's work on a SMLE, not sure because i have never fired one in my life.
Yeah, they need to fly in Bloke for these competitions. Karl with a German rifle, Ian with a French, Bloke with Enfield and... umm... a rotation for the 1903 or 1917.
I realise I'm a 1,000 years late on this but: It strikes me that part of your problem with the Enfield is that you're not pulling the bolt straight out. I noticed you hoisted the rifle with your left arm and braced away from your right as you pulled the bolt, thus causing it to be pulled back and to the right as your right hand tended to pull towards your chin rather than to your left shoulder. At the time this rifle was IN USE in use, the Army Instructor would have FORCED you to learn to use the rifle Right-handed . . .
I did have loaded chargers (in my ammo belt), and used them during the stages (generally not visible on camera because the cameraman was behind me). I didn't have a lot of loaded chargers, and wanted to keep them in reserve, so I was loading loose rounds at the beginning of each stage, when not on the clock.
I have shot Enfield competition with left hand shooters and they operate the bolt with their left hand , with practice you can cycle almost of fast and you keep rifle in position, you break your position every time you move your right hand. Its painful to watch you do this,I was grinding my teeth as I watched. having said that I really like your vids, keep up the good work.
i was stessing the same way an enfield in the hands of a leftey is painfull to watch... and my guess is ian knows how to shot. the right hand shooters the smle would have spanked the kar for sure big time.
Ian is a pretty good shot, I have learnt so much over the years watching his videos, I would never of thought there where so many unique firearms out there.
The rimmed cartridge certainly doesn't help anything, but it was only a problem for me here insofar as the Enfield clips were more difficult to load into the rifle than the Mauser clips. As far as rifle designs, I think it's more of a tradeoff and choice of priorities than a matter of one being definitively better than the other.
I've shot enough matches with Karl to be quite sure that the result would be no different if we swapped guns. If I was going to have a chance at this one, it would have been with the faster gun.
I've got to admit, I've never seen someone run a bolt gun southpaw the way that you do. Typically seen the shooting hand over the action. Very interesting! Great video as always.
Personally I hate the charger clips used by the Lee-Enfield, but I always found the killer of speed was the cartridge. I had a .303 No. 4 to learn on and was taught by ex-military riflemen. The only time that keeping your hand on the bolt helps is during rapid suppressing fire. I have always found that it made landing hits beyond 100m harder.
+Forgotten Weapons The british in WW1 fired using their pinky finger with there hand still on the bolt for the purposes of speed. In my opinion the gun that had the biggest effect i the 20th century, and basically made the ww1 era BEF an entire army of special forces thanks to the mad minute. A very interesting gun.
jaxative jax to make a comparison between to weapons doesn't make sense if you don't have the same circumstances for each weapon. Make a comparison and have two right hand firers or two left hand firers. Don't mix
I just wanna pop in here to tell you guys that I really enjoy your videos! You've quickly become my favourite firearms-related channel on all of youtube!
My father had the same trouble (with stripper clips) in ww2. He said that when you load with a stripper clip the rounds tend to lie flat in the magazine. He and his mates used to collect complete magazines (readily available) and instead of using strippers he would replace the whole magazine (hitting them on the ground to make the first round pop up) in the rifle. He said he had no bother from then on except for the occasional misfire (round not going off).
Nice all around. You both did awesome. Im quite impressed in the control-ability of that Bolo. Its a shame that a modern firm hasnt set out to faithfully recreate the Broomhandles in all there glory.
Awesome match! Ian, I think you were definitely at a slight disadvantage with the bolt action since you're a lefty, so being able to grasp the bolt handle and pull the trigger at the same time with your right hand isn't possible, forcing you to take your hand off of the forearm to cycle the gun. Also, the .303 British rounds are definitely finnicky when loading via clip; if the rimmed rounds aren't stacked correctly, you are liable to get a rimlock, which seems to have happened in your 1st stage
I think this is one of the reasons why I was so interested in getting a bolt action rifle when this video aired. But I was around 16 then and now I own a nice AK derivative.
Great video, but one consideration it seems like you guys glossed over was that bolt actions seem much tougher to use precisely as a lefthanded shooter. Having screwed around with a Mosin Nagant as a righthanded shooter, it seems plausible that the lack of deft bolt control probably slowed him up and maybe caused many of the jams.
The main difference between these to are this. 1. Smle was designed for a fast reload and suppression firing. Solders using this rifle was taught to count rounds and cycle the bolt and fire with 3 fingers. The term mad minute comes from a ww1 British rifleman being able to load and fire on target 15 rounds in a minute. Reloading single rounds by hand was discouraged. The K98 was a typical over designed masterpiece of gremany that would function flawlessly in any environment with a well trained solider.
I don't think my left-handedness held me back to any significant degree. I'm pretty sure I can run that rifle faster left handed than most people can right-handed. :)
That was my thought when i saw your Ross MkII / III vid. Your RoF was incredibly high, same as with the Enfield. The only problem i would have, if i would shoot left handed, would be keeping the gun up during the bolt action.
Going back through some of these older videos. Ian if you happen to read this and if you ever do another two gun match with an Enfield revolver, I have a Mk 1* that still has it's spur. It was an RAF pistol and did not get chopped but did get the Mk1* stamping.
A very poor excuse for not accepting the results crekow. The mauser shooter had issues managing the bolt sometimes, having to slam it the last bit of way, which slowed his recycling, and this was probably due to sand as-well. There's a reason almost every bolt action design is a copy of the M98 today, whilst very few if any ever copied the Enfield action.
great job sir,I always enjoy the videos and website,I look forward to many more,a suggestion,profiles of lesser known AMERICAN and european flintlock,percussion ,rifles and muskets,thanks again
being left handed really made it much more difficult for you...would love to have seen you with a left handed bolt set up...I realized that that probably is not even available but it would have been interesting...kudos for braving the heat...take care!
hi Ian, great vid as always, a few things, I trained on the enfield no4 as an army cadet in the 80s and have shot them a few times since. first, where's your chargers? we never loaded rounds individually, (also due to the rounds having a rim they have to be loaded in the charger staggered (every rounds rim sitting on top of the following rounds rim (otherwise when you operate the bolt it pushes the following round forwards.) 2nd, im also a lefty, but was trained to shoot right handed.
I have a No.1 Mk.III Enfield made in Australia in 1917. For a 100 year old rifle, I shoots grate every time. Kicks like a mule but i love it. If you don,t load the stripper clip right you are going to get rim lock. I think Ian had that problem. Good video, Fun.
Something I learned while shooting the Mosin Nagant is that when loading rimmed cartridges into a magazine the rim of the cartridge you are inserting should be forward of the rim of the previous one. This prevents the rim of the top cartridge catching on the one below and causing a double feed. Not sure if this is the issue you're having but thought I'd post it anyway.
In my opinion, The only way for you guys to make a fair comparison, would be if you both used both weapons & then added the times together for a total elapsed time.
From a fellow lefty shooter, your speed while shooting the SMLE left-handed was quite impressive, especially considering its very downturned bolt. I do think you could likely work the action even faster right-handed; I certainly can, although I then I can't shoot as accurately as I can left-handed.
Don't know if someone else mentioned this yet, but on the '98 Mauser you don't have to pull the charger out before closing the bolt. You can just punch the bolt closed and the charger will pop right out of its guide, apparently undamaged.
I'm a mauser fan and know first hand the consistency of the mauser so when shooting at those targets and needing a hit to proceed I wouldn't doubt the mauser one bit my mauser is a Turkish marked vz 24 and I absolutely love it's accuracy and reliability well done to the gentleman who handled the Mauser...you both did a great job however..
Nice video! I will like to see a match between the mouser and a mosin nagant. I know very little of fire arms but I think the mosin tends to get progressively inaccurate due to the expansion of the materials of the firearm produced by the heat of multiple shots. I would like to see if the simplicity of operation of the mosin can compete with the mousers quality.
Portal reference for the win man! You should play Bioshock Infinite, your character starts out with an "Americanized" C96 with a very interesting magazine release peddle.
I was wondering two things: 1. what ammo did you use in the Enfield revolver? 2. what was the HKS speedloader meant for, a S&W M10? Thanks for the video - it was entertaining!
I always like watching the 2 gun matches, but I really liked this one as it was interesting to see the two rifles and pistols compared under the same conditions. Seems like reliability held the Enfield rifle back a lot, but the Enfield pistol seemed to out perform the Mauser pistol.
They made a point on reliability but one Gun was from World War 1 where the propellant was corrosive with a World War 2 Weapon that had been rebuilt and refurbed.
I agree. Plus it looked like Ian was having some trouble with his stripper clips. The .303 is a rimmed cartridge similar to the Russian 7.62 x 54R, and is susceptible to rim lock when loading from strippers.
I was waiting for the cake being a lie. I KNEW it. Anyway, awesome vid. Any chance we could see something with the good old MAS 36? I just picked one up and I love it (when I can find the ammo).
Ian how were your Enfield clips loaded? OUOUO or top rounds rim forward? I have used it both ways and have no problems feeding or loading either way. But then I'm not using my rifle in matches.