Another Variant of the No4 Mk1???? ;)

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Originally Posted by GeeRam

They got stamped with the TR at the factory to denote passing that test.

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43 is before they got the stamps organized. But I will stand corrected on the date.

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Originally Posted by Bindi2

43 is before they got the stamps organized. But I will stand corrected on the date.

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Well, that's an idea....I've not got my book to hand at the moment, so not in a position to double check.

As Roger says, we need to find a cross section of non-T BSA made 1943 dated No.4's as reference.
20 odd years ago, I was specifically looking for a 1943 dated No.4, (not a T) for family connection reasons, but it wasn't easy to find one back then for some reason.....lots of 1942, 1944-45, and post war dated but very hard to find a '43 dated. Must have taken a couple of years to find one, and it was the Maltby one I posted a photo of earlier, which was a nice bonus. Would have liked to have kept that, but the chance of the getting the mint 4(T) I now have, meant it had to go.

1943 was a funny year.....it was during this year that we see the standardisation, if we can call it that, of the markings that Peter describes in the book. Certainly by late in the year they were being marked as you might expect to see & as continued through 1944 & 45, but earlier is hard to be dogmatic about. For example, some 1943 rifles lack even the crown/D6/E examiner's mark.

I pulled two 1944 No4Ts out of the safe to see if either had the quotation marks. One was covered in brunofixing, and I was unable to make out any extraneous markings.

The other 1944 is an F-prefix, and has some bluing left over (not sure when the transition from blued to brunofix took place). No quotation marks on this one, so perhaps as Roger and others had theorized, this was something peculiar to the 1943 dated rifles.

Here's another T with similar markings for sale currently on Gunbroker:

https://www.gunbroker.com/item/870237041

Check photo #11

Brian B

And it's an AT prefix '43........

It may all come down to just a peculiarity of whoever was doing the engraving at that time.

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Originally Posted by Roger Payne

And it's an AT prefix '43........

It may all come down to just a peculiarity of whoever was doing the engraving at that time.

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Most likely.....maybe if all these seem to be quite close in number, it was just as a result of a damaged set of * stamps, which they had to wait for a replacements and thus used the " in the set as it was 'closest' to looking like a * when stamped....?