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I could well be wrong but I rather suspect that production lines would have been changed over to the later pattern as soon as it was practical & convenient to do so, & I would think that would have been most likely during the course of 1942. I took a look at a few of the early type fore ends in my garage & they are in the 20L's or lower (1942 mfr.).
Hope that helps.
ATB.
I have a '42 date in the 18Lxxxx range with the later pattern forend.
Thx Brian. I guess there must have been multiple machines turning them out & not all would have been changed at exactly the same time. No doubt it would have occurred when it was least disruptive to production to do so.
I have said this several times on the forum that I learned during the production engineering phase at Uni during a spell at Pressed Steel in Swindon, that changes during production are never as simple as just switching off one machining process or just leaving the tool station empty or......... You get my drift. So on something like the fore-ends, where there were probably several lines and several sub contractors to deal with, it was a case of stopping production at one plant for a few days to do the change-over then gearing up to full production again befrore even attempting to start the next one and so on. So it could take many months of faffing around*.
*(Faffing around....... A technical expression used by REME Warrant Officers to junior ranking men when it is not exactly clear just what they're doing or if they're actually doing something or doing anything remotely useful or whatever it is, is just seems to be a complete waste of time. Used by REME Officers to Warrant Officers when asking for an explanation of someones inability to just get the bloody job a) done - and b), on time)
I always recall the textbook example used as a lesson plan about the updating of badges on MGB GT tailgates.
Long Branch production rifles are pretty easy to ascertain as factory original up until 1944 when they stopped serial numbering the forends. The '42 rifle mentioned is one of the South African owned rifles as imported by Interarms in the early 90's and it's unaltered except for storage dings and dents in the woodwork. It's still greasy as I haven't ever stripped and cleaned it except for the barrel of course. Rog, your 20L changeover guess appears to be spot on. You can bet there was plenty of cross over. Nothing is ever cut and dried as some collectors want to believe. Peter's post says it all.