I recently had a sten MkII manufactured by Charlie Erb remanufactured into a Sterling Mark IV by charlie himself. I have to say that he took a boring awkward gun and turned it into a sweet shooting subgun that has fast become my favorite. The Sten did not do much for me. It was awkward to shoot, had a crappy heavy trigger pull and the mags were a pain to load. I heard that Erb was doing Sterlings so I gave him a call. Luckily, he lives about an hour from me in PA. He agreed to turn my Sten MKII into a Sterling clone for $600.00 with my parts kit. Since it was his tube to begin with, he was able to manufacture it into an exact clone of the sterling with the factory correct cocking slot and the ability to accept original unmodified Sterling parts. I drove my tube and parts to him and in less than two weeks, he had it done. As far as I can tell, it is an exact conversion into a Sterling. I had two parts kits and parts from both fit with no problem or modifications. Fit and finish were excellent. The only difference that I could find was that the mag well and pistol grip are tig welded to the tube instead of soldered. All other parts are soldered as in the original. The welded parts are more noticable than the originals, however they are very nicely done and are much stronger than solder. Charlie does not do the crinkle finish and leaves the gun parkerized. I initially was going to coat it black, but the parkerizing is actually very nice and I may leave it alone.
RANGE REPORT: Took the gun immediately to camp and test fired it the next day. Temperature was 15 deg. F blistering snow storm. I fired 6 sterling 34 round mags and one 50 round lanchester mag with no malfunctions what so ever. Shot exactly to point of aim and I was able to keep a full mag dump in a 9 inch pie plate at about 20 yards. Controllability was unreal. The front sight just danced around the pie plate, hardly moving at all. VERY smooth. Even one handed with the stock folded, the gun was very easy to control due to the centrally located pistol grip.
MAGAZINE REPORT: Test was done using DSA $10.00 special mags that I bead blasted and coated in matte black epoxy. These mags are a helluva bargain. I needed to tap the right side mag lip on a few with a small hammer to bring them back into spec, but other than that, they ran perfect. They all had severe finish wear and about 1/4 had some light pitting, but they all refinished to near perfect, except for the pitted ones. Even the pitted ones looked nice. Springs and followers all looked new and may have been replaced at some time in the life of the mag. Buy some of these before they are all gone.
EOR
CLC
RANGE REPORT: Took the gun immediately to camp and test fired it the next day. Temperature was 15 deg. F blistering snow storm. I fired 6 sterling 34 round mags and one 50 round lanchester mag with no malfunctions what so ever. Shot exactly to point of aim and I was able to keep a full mag dump in a 9 inch pie plate at about 20 yards. Controllability was unreal. The front sight just danced around the pie plate, hardly moving at all. VERY smooth. Even one handed with the stock folded, the gun was very easy to control due to the centrally located pistol grip.
MAGAZINE REPORT: Test was done using DSA $10.00 special mags that I bead blasted and coated in matte black epoxy. These mags are a helluva bargain. I needed to tap the right side mag lip on a few with a small hammer to bring them back into spec, but other than that, they ran perfect. They all had severe finish wear and about 1/4 had some light pitting, but they all refinished to near perfect, except for the pitted ones. Even the pitted ones looked nice. Springs and followers all looked new and may have been replaced at some time in the life of the mag. Buy some of these before they are all gone.
EOR
CLC
