A full woody

[RJW NZ]

I know flee bay is a baad word, but look what I bumped into, I wonder if its affected by corrosive ammo?



Home Guard / Home Front Wooden Lee-enfield ; no 140326822675

Information

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[harry mac]

Hmmm, it must be genuine it was "found in a barn". More likely to be a toy belonging to the farmer when he was a lad.

[Peter Laidler]

We have something similar to it in a glass case at Warminster. Ours was a real training aid. Can't see the E-xxx item clearly enough to say its exactly the same as ours. Ours is old and the steelwork parts such as the trigger and mag assembly plus the nose cap looks as though they're made from sintered steel

[Terrylee]

Found this on a flea market. Was in rather bad shape and I have since restored it. It has been variously identified as a training rifle, a toy and a film prop! Any suggestions?

[harry mac]

Found this on a flea market. Was in rather bad shape and I have since restored it. It has been variously identified as a training rifle, a toy and a film prop! Any suggestions?

I'd say that one's most likely to be a film prop. It looks too realistic to be a toy (is it full size and weight?). As a training rifle it would be next to useless unless it was purely a dummy for use on the parade square. Even dummy rifles usually bore only a passing resemblance to a real rifle.

[Peter Laidler]

I'd be intersted to hear exactly what material the metalwork is Terry. Is it machined, a solid rough sand casting or sintered/powdered compressed steel.

Keep us informed as the actual make-up of the body/breech area is identical to the SMLE variant we have at work. What's also of a bit of anorak/train spotting interest is that while there is a sort of drill/training use for such rifles, they don't appear in any of the official wartime training publications or even in the Ordnance system.

Do such beasts feature in a Parker Hale catalogue?

[jmoore]

Swift training rifle or its Canadian counterpart? Mine's at home where's there NO friggin' computer!

[villiers]

Wehrmacht armourers made dummy Lugers to fit into holsters. Use was mandatory when high ranking Party officials were present.

[Peter Laidler]

It's definately not a Swift, that's for sure. And I don't recall making up a dummy rifle or pistol for when high ranking VIP's paid us a visit. This is for two reasons. A) they never paid us a visit and B) with the little .38's we had there wasn't even a remote chance of hitting anything! Not with our practice allowance of two rounds per man, per year, per haps!

Anyone else any thoughts on this 'rifle' It'd be good to get to the bottom of it. Where are you based Terry Lee?.

[Terrylee]

Peter,

The woodwork is in one piece and there are absolutely no original No.4 parts, not even the swivels. The "butt socket" is made of two thin pieces of tin tacked above the small of the butt and painted black. (the originals were rusted through in places and I replaced them)

No metal part is moulded or machined and everything is fabricated from mild steel pieces welded together. They were originally painted black and this has been redone.

Since the foresight and its protector were missing I remade them and thus am uncertain whether they are the same as the originals. The barrel is a piece of pipe about 6 inches long which fits into a hole drilled into the front of the forend. The whole is very much lighter than a real No.4 but the same size.

I know absolutely nothing about this piece's background, but its condition when found at a flea market indicate both age and extreme neglect. It is South African and I have never come across another like it.

Terry