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Today I found an Enfield that had long grooves cut in the wood ahead of the rear sight. There were four groves on each side about a foot long. I guess the wood would be called the top handguard?
Could this have been original?
Thye are too long and straight to be from someone in the field whittling.
Some did have grooves in them, I believe this was standard practice on those rifles made by Long Branch in Canada.
Simple Answer! Some do, Some Dont.
so, if it has them then it could have been made in Canada?
I have no problem with it if it's original, I don't want it of it is bubba'd.
The grooved handguards appear on No. 4s made by every manufacturer(North America and Britain). They were supposed to make the rifle easier to handle with wet hands. To save time(there was a war going on at the time), the spec was made optional, so less than half were grooved.
If was a general wartime manufacturing concession permitted in order that the manufacturer might make the best use of his resources. If he was set up to carry out this now optional concession, then he was free to do so. If not, or was re-setting up manufacturing machinery, then the ribbing was left out. So you'll fine some manufacturers were producing ribbed AND plain handguards from the same factory. I would imagine that as soon as the original production machinery was in need of re-setting then the process was deleted. But, as production engineers will tell you, omitting something from the production process is not always a simple job