The British Lee Metford bolt action rifle,First produced in 1884, the Lee Metford was a revolutionar

The British Lee Metford bolt action rifle,First produced in 1884, the Lee Metford was a revolutionary rifle.  The ancestor of the modern Lee Enfield, the Lee Metford was the first military rifle to use the celebrated .303 British cartridge.  It combined the rear locking bolt mechanism invented by James Paris Lee, with a new type of barrel invented by William Ellis Metford.  A ten shot bolt action repeater, the rifle greatly outperformed the Martini Henry single shot rifle, which it replaced in 1888.  It had a ten round magazine, a capacity that was rare at the time, combined with a smooth bolt that only operated with 60 degrees of rotation (most at the time had 90), which gave the rifle incredible firepower.The only problem was that the rifle used black powder cartridges, and blackpowder can cause fowling, an especially big problem with repeating rifles.  The Lee Metford solved this problem by using a special rifling design in which the rifling was shaped in a hexagonal pattern (see diagram above).  This helped to reduced the buildup of gunpowder residue when firing.  However, this also caused problems since the shallow rifling would wear out quickly, often less than 5,000 rounds.  Quality control in the manufacturing of the barrels was also a complication, and the accuracy of the rifles varied from production to production.The Lee Metford mostly saw action in the Boer Wars and other colonial wars, though some were still being used around World War I.  By 1895 the Lee Metford was being phased out in favor of the Lee Enfield, which improved upon the old Lee Metford design, used smokeless powder, and did away with the Metford hexagonal barrel design.  Production ended in 1896. -- source link

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