Here’s how I fixed a magazine feeding failure in an Ishapore 2A1.

by Brian R Smith

This Indian 7.62 NATO Enfield wouldn’t strip rounds from the magazine, and the owner wouldn’t allow use of conventional repair techniques that involved modification of his rifle.That left reversal of the actual process that damaged the rifle as the only option.

The Ishapore 2A/2A1 is a bolt action rifle chambered in 7.62×51mm NATO, and heavily derived from the .303 No.1 Mk III* Rifle, SMLE. It was produced by the Rifle Factory Ishapore just north of Kolkata (Calcutta) in West Bengal, India. The 2A was formally adopted by the Indian Armed Forces Reserve in 1963 and the improved version, 2A1, entered service about two years later. The Ishapore 2A/2A1 is the last bolt action rifle designed to be used by a regular military infantry forces and the rifle is still used by units of the Indian police.

The Ishapore arsenal had produced variants of the .303 Lee-Enfield since 1901 and the No.1 Mk III* SMLE for some 50 years at the time the 2A was introduced. There are some notable improvements in the 2A/2A1 compared to much of the former .303 No. 1 Mk III* rifles, most notably the use of…

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