I have come across a few rifle that have been 'drilled and tapped' for scope mounting by amateur's and the holes are skew and stripped!  One of those was a friends and so I made him a scope mount and refreshed the tapped holes and made the base to suite the offset holes.

But what to do if one wants to sporterize a good rifle?  Well firstly, keep the original wood and other bits.  An SMLE tends to lend itself to a scope mount but that means drilling and tapping the receiver ring and the clip charger bridge.  That we don't want to do.  With some difficulty we can make a scope rail that key's into the charger and hugs the receiver ring so that can be glued into place.  Heat removes the glue should one want to reverse it.  Then do take the trouble to fit decent wood work to it.  By all means remove the iron sights and blue the exposed barrel but hang on to those bits.

If the action has already been drilled and tapped and they are skew or stripped the refresh the stripped holes and match the scope rail to the skew holes.

Here's an example;

If you look carefully, you can see the holes are skew.  (That groove in the bases actually forms a rear U sight notch).  Sadly, the rear sight mounting had been cut off.  The rear scope base is keyed, silver soldered and screwed on.  Not sure why.  Overkill perhaps?  The front one is 'only' glued and screwed.  Notice the mounting surface area?  The glue alone would hold it.

Hear is what one should do with the sight mountings;

I kid you not.  This is my own rifle which I got without the scope mount but which had skew and stripped holes.  I made that rail and matched it to the existing holes.  It's keyed, glued and screwed and had withstood the drop test - literally.  Anyway, that cord and clip are attached to the rifle by a split pin that fits the sight mount holes.  That is actually shock cord and that's how I carry the rifle in the field - clipped to my back pack strap rings.  It frees my hands and save me elbow pain (elbow injury) and keeps the rifle right in place ready for a quick shot or the clip can be unclipped.

The SMLE has a little hole in the clip charger bridge and most folks don't know what it's for.  Some think it's for breaking off the firing pin when capture is imminent so as to disable the rifle.  But actually, it's so one can attach a carry cord like on my No4. 

I did drill it out to take the split pin but a smaller split pin that fits should be plenty strong enough so as not to 'modify' the action.  Mine was drilled and tapped already.

It's your rifle, enjoy it on your terms.

I made a fibre-glass stock for someone once.  It had a very high comb and was very light.  It also had somewhat of a Wundhammer swell on the hand grip.  But that one did get drilled and tapped for the scope base.  It came as an action and I had a new barrel fitted.  It only shot 2 MOA groups but that was ten shot and it would do it all day long.  It was also insensitive to different ammo.  The stock dimensions and shape made the recoil feel mild.

Have a look over at scrub bull hunting with the 303 and there is a fully as issued SMLE being used for hunting.  It looks good and it kills those bulls.

Parker-Hale bought actions & barreled actiions from BSA among others to build commercial hunting rifles.

 

Interesting

I have seen plenty of commercial long Lees and a couple of No1's but I have never seen a commercial No4. I am not saying they did not happen though.