Beech Aussie Handguards

I have a buttstock and carry handle and pistol grip which appear to be beechwood and allegedly came from an Australian L1A1. Having MAJOR difficulties find handguards that are clearly beech. Did the aussies use beech for their handguards?

Nope, all the Australian production used coach wood, a quite soft local "hard wood". You can see the difference in profile of the Lithgow L1A1 butt compared to British production, much thicker at the wrist for one. The UK used Walnut and Beech for their L1A1 production, not sure about the C1, whats on that one chaps?

FN C1s and A1s used walnut for stocking.

So long story short, the guy who sold this lot to me as Aussie was telling porky pies! Oh well, I ive and learn. What I need now then is a beech set of British handguards (these had the elongated oval slots right?).

First things first, you need to verify what wood work you have, take a look under the wrist on the butt, there should hopefully be some markings, what do you see ? If its SLAZ or MA its Lithgow and you need to go down the Coachwood route.

Assuming its British, and I might be wrong here, but I think the beech was used for replacement parts, or perhaps the last few rifles off the line, so about 1964 on I would guess..

You are looking for the two slot triangular forend, if the markings are still visible, it will be B (BSA), D (Enfield) or F (Fazakerley) marked, followed by a two digit year suffix.

If its Fazakerley though, it will be walnut, as they stopped parts production in 1960

Assuming you can find a pair in good order (not that easy to find now), carefully check for cracks between the slots or radiating from the screw hole.

On the other hand............... Walk into any Armourers shop in the real world, away from the concourse comp crowd and guess what'd happen? BSA, Faz, Enfield, P-H, SLAZ, LB, they're made to be interchangeable so you'd get the next matching set on the shelf. If they fit and match the remainder, out they go.

Just my jaundiced but realistic and pragmatic look at life as it was.

Point taken, (you know what us collectors are like!) unfortunately, they are hard to find these days Peter, in any condition, its only the more robust laminates that seem to have survived in good order and in any number.

Yep that be true. Of cours ethere is Peter with his view of "getting functioning guns back into the hands of Soldiers so they work and can kill the enemy". It's almost like the army doesn't care if the handguard sets aren't highly polished book matched birds eye maple with buttstock and grip from the same branch of the same tree with matching grain like WE all know if how they are suppose to look .LOL

Inch pattern anoraks! .... Yep, that would be me!

What's more, if there were dues-out, we'd put the cracked handguard to one side and patch it. Couldn't even start to guess how many splits around the screw cup or captive nut I've put a cross section patch in. And rear enders where the retaining ring has chomped a chunk of wood out. Or splits along the rear end of the gas cylinder.........

The good thing was that so far as I recall, no one brought a rifle back and said that he wasn't happy with BSA or F handguards on his Lithgow or it wasn't serviceable or my Armouring skills weren't quite up to scratch. It might have happened but I don't remember it........

RSM Lee was quite impressed with the 12 sets of L1A1 rifle bayonet grips I made for the quarter guard. I wonder of he'd notice mismatched wood?

Q for you Peter. How would a Lithgow L1A1 end up with you in the British Army. Did we buy them from Australia or woudl it just be by circumstance / changing in the Falklands or any other combat or exercises etc.

Two good reasons. a) I was attached to the Australian Army for almost 3 years between 1967 and 70 and in Malaya we had pooled Ordnance stocks where we had UK and Australian rifles, ammunition, Land Rovers and Bedfords and the usual other stuff. and b) we purchased some from Aust to bolster our dwindling stocks during the 80's

When I was in the ACF back in the mid 1980s we used to occasionally get to shoot L1A1s when we went away on camps. Sometimes they had a mix of wood and plastic stocking. Was this the usual practice too?

Yes it was permitted but generally speaking if a rifle had wood h/guards then it'd be fitted with wood p/grip and butt. What was not permitted was a mix of wood/plastic h/guards

The British MOD purchased a quantity of Australian built L1A1 rifles direct from Lithgow, they were sold to the MOD without furniture and fittings in 1972 and 1973. Its noted in the EMER's that Australian rifle will be en counted and just because they have some slightly different design features these differences were to be accepted when inspected. A lot of the differences had been given production concession codes.

1972 MOD London: 31 Rifles (no furniture or fittings) AD7208114 - AD7208144
1972 MOD London: 392 Rifles (no furniture or fittings) AD7208147 - AD7208538
1973 MOD London: 1625 Rifles (no furniture) AD7300043 - AD7301667

1975 UK Ordnance Depot: 156 rifles (Long Hinge Pin) AD7501744 - AD7501899
1975 RSAF Enfield: 8 Rifles (no furniture) AD7501900 - AD7501907

That's pretty well definitive. We definately had Lithgow rifles mixed in with the usual UK made L1's. If you see any of these you'll find that some of them have been allocated one of the codified numbers such as SA79A12345. I can assume that they came as bare bodies/barrels(?) as they'd be cheaper and we could fit our own plentiful plastic furniture and other stuff.

This is what i have. Attachment 66083

Looks pretty beechy to me. Are there any otehr woods used that look similar?

Yep, looks like British pattern beech to me too...

Any luck finding a forend?

I've never seen British beech handguards over here that I can remember. I've got an nos beech buttstock and a couple of pistol grips too so they must exist. Decent British walnut and beech have always been scarce on the ground in these parts. There used to be a lot of Australian coachwood available, both the early solid and later laminated handguards too. Try Rav at Dealer's Warehouse in Sacramento. He may be able to help with a set of wood that will match up, even if it's coachwood.