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What, you can smell cold blue through your monitor? The whole thing looks a bit distressed, and it may have been "improved" a little, but how many bog standard No4's have you seen with the mag cutoff slot milled in the body?
Let's see where this goes before throwing the baby out with the bath water...
oldhound, WOW, very interesting! Both Maltby and Fazakerley had start-up (If I read it correctly yours is 908th off the line.) problems that both RSAF-E and BSA were likely trying to help sort out. To me it appears that a left over trials action body from RSAF-E went to Fazakerley for assembly. Why waste it?
I think it's safe to think that your rifle had a backsight with a battle aperature and wasn't equipped with a cut off when it left the assembly line.
Thanks for bringing it to our attention.
Brad
It looks to me like an early Fazakerley rifle made using the original No4 drawings supplied by Enfield and made to that spec that included a cut off slot. Shortly after this feature was deleted and it was probably never fitted with a cut-off. Someone found the slot later under the fore-end and put a No1 cut-off in it, jigging it to fit with a needle file etc etc.
But, true to form, it's got the Fazakerley A suffix..............
I'm thinking Captain Laidler's hit it on the head.
The rear sight and fore end screw have no bearing on the rifle itself. They neither add or subtract to the package.
well first of all I'd like to thank Surpmil for posting the pictures for me, and to the other members for their views. The consenus seems to be that the cut-off was added later at some point in time. I have had the rifle for five or six years and can only say that it has not been touched in that time. I wonder why anyone would want to do that. The only thing I can add is while looking carefully at it today, on the bottom of the cut-off it has a crown and under that is the letter E and under that the letters IR. They are quite small. If anyone would want more information I would be happy to try and help. I love the old rifle.
To further advance the study of this VERY early Fazakerly would best be done during a teardown of the forestock and cutoff. The action itself (and whatever other 1941 vintage parts that remain) is the focus of interest.
Fully understand if you don't want to take it apart, however! Whatever detail shots you provide would be most welcome. We really appreciate your efforts.
One interesting feature of this action is the rounded top of the left side of the body between the charger bridge and the gas escape hole. I haven't seen or heard of that on a non-RSAF(E) body before.
Perhaps it is just a weird trick of the lighting or an odd wear pattern, but, the so called, "spotting hole" in the SMLE cut-off looks like it got the attention of someone's drill bit, or countersink. Wonder why anyone would do that?
no it is not the lighting or wear. The same round spot is on the other side of the cut-off as well. Looks like something was attached to it at some point. You can see a imprint right up to the receiver as if something was clamped on to it? I will strip it down and take more pictures. Will be a few weeks since I don't have a camera that will take good closeups. The other pictures were taken a few years ago.Quote:
Originally Posted by Terry Hawker
Hold on a minute chaps....., I think we're all fogetting the mnemonic KISS for Keep It Simple Stupid. We are all complicating things with theories when there's a simple answer given the forum answers above.
This rifle is a part-finished or finished body from Enfield, taken to Faz with a lot of skilled staff to help start rifle production. It's finished at Faz and sent out into the world where it has emerged years later.
A cut-off, either a No1 or No4 - but a cut off of some description, has been fitted AT SOME TIME. Either at Faz or afterwards when someone removed the fore-end and noticed the slot. As for the countersunk hole, in the absence of anything to the contrary, someones just countersunk a roughly punched or ragged hole which is normal engineering practice!
A nice find undoubtedly but nothing complicated. Production engineering doesn't either DO nor ENCOURAGE complicated, believe me!