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Hi,
I have a P14 I have owned for close to 30 years. The rifle is as follows:
ERA manufactured
bolt and rear sight match receiver serial number
blueing and wood at 90 percent
Excellent bore
Has rear and front volley sight
What is something like this worth?
Is the rear sight also matching numbers? And is the bolt factory matching or force matched? You didn't state if blueing was factory original or reblued, just that it was excellent. And is your stock sanded, or is the IE in a circle marking perfectly visible?
Bolt and rear sight are matching. The cartouches are visable on the stock and the blueing is original at 90 percent.
Quite a few early ERA rifles seem not to have been converted or used much. There have been reports that something like the first 60,000 were condemned for active service due to QC issues, reputedly do with the heat-treating of the actions IIRC.
Can't put my hands on "The U.S. Enfield" at the moment or I'd check.
Sold one of mine 6-7 years ago, also in very good condition, for around $450 IIRC, but did not have the volley sites. I also have one very similar to your description, wouldn't think of selling mine now for less than somewhere in the $750-$800 range (and I may be too low at that!) Pictures of yours would help, but based on your description, I would start high and see what offers you get. That is based on the market were I live, money could be higher or lower based on the actual condition. Have to remember; these rifles are getting harder & harder to find, especially with volley sights intact!
--728shooter
Surpmil, I went through my copy and couldn't find any mention of the 60,000 rejects from ERA. If you find it please let me know what page. The Americans really struggled to produce rifles of acceptable quality and part interchangability but eventually were able to produce I think I read 280 rifles per man, per day. Not bad. I should sit down and read this book in it's entirety.
If you've been through the book and didn't find the reference it probably isn't there and in that case I was mistaken in attributing it to that book. I'm afraid I can't say where the story came from if not from "The US Enfield". I don't think it can be Reynolds, though I do remember smiling at his sniffy remark about "the rather rough American rifle."
On p. 59 of the US Enfield we find this:
So what happens to "rejected" rifles? Are they scrapped? Stripped for parts? Probably would depend on what they were rejected for.Quote:
The first rifles turned out in 1916 were rejected by the British Inspection Department....the Inspectorate failed a large percentage of these early batches. Continued large scale rejection by the Inspectorate resulted in the American companies [that is all three presumably] refusal to continue the contracts at the quoted prices....Difficulties in meeting the required standards were encountered particularly by the Edddystone factory, and certain relaxations in the standards were permitted and extended to all the factories.
Obviously there were negotiations between the Inspectorate and the three manufacturers. Would it make any sense to scrap completed rifles when if they were "marked down" in price they could be used for training?
Skennerton goes on to state that despite what the existing contracts assert, Eddystone was unable technically to ever produce any P14 bayonets that would pass inspection: "...one U.S. contractor failed so badly as to have to give up attempting the production altogether."
The fact that two "trouble-shooters" were sent from Britain in October 1916 must show how long-standing the Q.C. problems were, as production had begun about six months earlier.
Given that Eddystone produced 1.18 million rifles, I can well believe that 60,000 rifles might have been rejected (at least initially) or marked as DP or EY rifles.
The assembly record for the P14 was 50 rifles a day. When the M17 entered production it miraculously shot up to over 250 rifles a day!
There was lots of contract-padding as well says Skennerton.
Over the years I've seen several Eddystone's in very good original condition marked D.P. As these had obviously not been through the Weedon "Repair" the logical conclusion is that they were marked that way from much earlier.
If there is a definitive answer to this it is probably in whatever records of the Inspectorate survive, or the papers of those were members of the Inspectorate.
The other possibility is that some early Eddystones were not downgraded to the point of being marked DP or EY, but were perhaps thought suspect enough that they were "put on the shelf" somewhere which might explain their untouched condition.
P51-- If the rifles has not been screwed with and numbers match, no sanding, no bubba, and letter parts match. It could well over $1,000.00 You did not indicate a serial number range or if the stock was a fat boy stock or not, pictures would help a lot in get a true determination of value.
I have seen very nice Pattern '14's with volley sights sell for ~$2,000