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Have just bought an Eddystone 1917 that has no arsenal rebuild cartouche stamps on the stock. What does this indicate? Did the rifle escape a WW2 rebuild? The end of the stock is stamped with the letter "E" indicating it is a WWI production stock. It is a late production, high serial number rifle with a barrel date of 10-18.
So it's in good shape? Maybe it was sitting in an armory somewhere and was missed.
Does it have blue or Parkerized metal finish? They are great rifles.
Yes it is in good condition. Has a parkerized finish.
I have an early five digit serial number Eddystone, (86453 / 10-17 barrel date), that was lend lease to Canada. It sports original blue finish but some mixed parts including a Remington stock. I don't know whether Eddystone switched to Parkerizing during later production or not. I thought I read somewhere that they did. I'll have to get back into the books a bit. At least I have some decent reference books. The P'14/US M1917 has been understudied IMHO.
The park finish could be original for a late war build Eddystone. In fact having a mixture of finishes would also be correct as long as they are all the parts are marked E. Only Eddystone adopted the park finish during original manufacture but assembled them with already made parts most of which were still blued. This can be referenced in the Remington society article on the P14-M1917. It boasts how they were able to reduce manpower by going to the park system over the rust bluing.
Apparently, 98% of the Eddystone rifles examined that are Parkerized are rebuilt at US arsenals. Finding one with original Parkerized finish is pretty rare. It's hard to distinguish from the original blue as it was applied over a polished and not sand blasted surface. It's just a little bit duller to the eye. Being in Alaska, I'd guess quite a few M17's found there way up there during WWII and yours would be worth a very close examination as it does land in the serial number range where Eddystone was Parkerizing them during new production.