No4 7.62 Magazine ID

The magazine springs and platforms fitted to the repro magazines were original. By the time that the L42's were withdrawn, the stockpiles of new magazines were pretty much exhausted. Any demand for a new magazine was usually met with a refurbished/used/previously numbered magazine. There were only 60,000 made in the 60's (was it 1965 I seem to recall.....) for the ill fated Indian order and this quantity were deemed sufficient for the L42 programme of the late 60's/early 70's and onwards. It was these magazines that had already been produced and were in Ordnance Stores that kept the cost of the L42 down to an acceptable level. I don't think that many were actually 'scrapped' as such - there weren't many left to scrap. Most L42 specific parts were in short supply for several years before it went. As a matter of interest, the FIRST part to be classified as NLA (no longer available) or NP (non/not provisioned) from the L42 was the cheek rest. And that's the reason why you see so many with slip-patches across them, as you do.

Usually, when a part is NLA or NP'd, you get what we call a 'dues out' telling when you can expect the part. When the stocks are getting low and can be replaced by another part you'd get a note that would say 'WSE (when stocks exhausted) use 1005-99-960-1234....'. But the stocks of cheek rests were never replenished nor was there an alternative. The brackets were available for Base workshop overhauls for those L42's being cocooned for war reserve stocks but not the cheek rests.

I like to think that the only suppliers of woodwork remaining at the time were those converting the fore-ends. And looking at the dire quality, even worse than schoolboys efforts, the powers-that-be had decided that enough was enough! But that's only my opinion!