Peter,
Because no one would sell me a Ross action to do this conversion, I sacrificed an old SMLE to make mine up. I welded up the barrel prior to chopping the tube off, so I suppose that it was dead before it was short ( where I am just the opposite ).
Did you ever answer the question as to whether a 'deactivation' needs to be 'officially sanctioned' by an inspection by an approved armourer, of similar representative of our PC world?
Thanks,
Stewart
PS - hopefully this is OK, as I drove in front of the PM with it for the D-Day parade in Ottawa 2 years ago. This after the powers that be had made all of the militiamen remove their bayonets from their scabbords, stripped all of the bren guns from the assembled bren gun Carriers, and generally chessed off the assembled HMV gang.
