No. 4 Mk 1 Civilian

Hello everyone, I stripped down a rifle that my dad gave me several years ago and I got curious about the stampings and markings, following a recent fun-filled time doing the same with some Mosins I recently bought.

Here are the markings on it:

Left side band, under the safety:
R O F
G/ A (I'm guessing that it's a G - it looks loopish with a middle curl)
F226xx

From what I gather, the F in the serial and R O F suggest manufacture in Fazakerley? I've no idea about the second line.


Right side band, under the bolt handle is completely blank (this means made for civilian sale and not for military service?)


On the left rear of the receiver, between the bolt and safety is a 0


On the right rear of the receiver, under the bolt handle, appears to be a small crown.


Does anyone have any thoughts or comments on these markings? Any other places I should be looking on the rifle?

Right side bands on no 4's are all blank - or at least do not have factory info stamped there

A blank right side band on an SMLE can indicate non-Commonwealth-government contracted manufacture.

Fazackerley and Maltby were both ROF's, the serial number first digit will give a clue.

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Originally Posted by enrious

Right side band, under the bolt handle is completely blank (this means made for civilian sale and not for military service?)

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The blank RH butt-socket on a No,.4 has already been explained however, in addition only BSA could/would have made them for civilian sale and as far as i know they didn't. (During WWII all of their production would have been for the Government and post WWII, the country was awash with No.4s.)

And (further to thread 3) BSA simply made the No4 rifles on contract to the then Ministry of Supply and were not permitted direct sales elsewhere. They did 'mistakenly' sell 'out of contract' to a foreign buyer but as soon as the 'mistake' was noticed there was some wrist slapping and chastisement!

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Originally Posted by Peter Laidler

And (further to thread 3) BSA simply made the No4 rifles on contract to the then Ministry of Supply and were not permitted direct sales elsewhere. They did 'mistakenly' sell 'out of contract' to a foreign buyer but as soon as the 'mistake' was noticed there was some wrist slapping and chastisement!

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No doubt with a suitable amount of harrumphing.

And from what I gather, it's essentially just a surplus No.4 released for sale and from family lore and the lack of any import mark than I can see, likely brought over prior to '68. Is there a good resource that could estimate the date of manufacture based on the serial or some other criteria?

There should be a date on the left side of the wrist. Failing that on the barrel maybe so the wood will have to come off.

We need pictures please, lots of parts have maker and date stamps.

"F2xxx" suggests ww2 era fairly early. Have a closer look at that "GA" again it maybe actually be numbers

Fazakerley with a '2'

2 or 5 groove barrel?

2 groove. I've posted up three pictures, I can take some more later.

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...6_201412-1.jpg

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...6_201405-1.jpg

https://www.milsurps.com/images/impo...6_201314-1.jpg

There is a little program bundled with Windoze called "MS Paint". It allows us to do neat things like rotating photos 90° or 180°

Your rifle looks like an early Fazackerly with the A suffix for non-standard parts/tolerances.

Looks like the "D7E" inspector's mark on the right side of the boltway.

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Originally Posted by Surpmil

There is a little program bundled with Windoze called "MS Paint". It allows us to do neat things like rotating photos 90° or 180°

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Yes, as does the Windows Photo Viewer. Of course, if you wish to purchase a program to do so, you could go with Adobe Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro, or you could go open source and use GIMP or imagemagik.

Thanks for the random aside. Someone could easily have been faced with the task of having to rotate pictures and dreaded having to purchase a program or downloading something open source, but thanks to this aside if they didn't know before, they would now know they may likely have something built into their operating system.

Quote:

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Your rifle looks like an early Fazackerly with the A suffix for non-standard parts/tolerances.

Looks like the "D7E" inspector's mark on the right side of the boltway.

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Thanks, more for me to research!