M1917 notched receiver

[shjoe]

visited a gun store today and observed an eddystone with a serial number with-in the barrel date range and had a good bore. import marked with other stampings which may indicate overseas/lend lease duty. BUT, deal breaker was notch machined into the receiver about where the "M" is on "Model of 1917". that would place it about 12 o'clock on the receiver. it reminded me of a notched carcano or steyr made to accept 8X57 ammo. very odd, any ideas?

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[bigduke6]

shjoe,

I purchased one recently, Eddystone barrel date 9-18 s/n 1119243 with same notch, received the following info from "cadre"

Quote:"The Danes did this so they could feed their heavy MG ball and tracer ammo into the rifle with stripper clips. "

Pictures of the rifle on this forum look up "Pics of my M1917" interesting to find what serial number it had and the condition.

The one i purchased was from a collection, would say it was refurbed and then was in storage as it still covered in grease etc, will be selling this if anyone is interested.

[shjoe]

thanks for the info, bigduke6. my thoughts were that it had been modified by a "bubba". now that i know it was a lend/lease, specifically danish, i have less worries about buying it. the bore and head space check out very good and it should be a good representative piece. i plan on using cast bullets in it. i will post pics and other markings next week.

[Chuckindenver]

both the Danes and Canada 17,s may have the notch

[shjoe]

thanks chuck. i was un-aware of that. perhaps when i have a chance next week and it is stripped down for cleaning, i will discover more stampings and marks. i have a suspicion that it may have been a candaian lend/lease, shipped to denmark post WW2. not shure. i will look for any canadian broad arrow stamps.

[shjoe]

chuck, i wonder if the notched receiver reason is far simpler. it would alert any canadian or commonwealth soldier night or day and in the confusion of battle, to the fact that the M1917 rifle in his posession is chambered for 30-06 ammo, not 303.

[Dan Wilson]

shjoe

That sounds like a pretty good guess to me, I have never liked the "longer bullet" theory since the rifle itself was designed to use M1 ball with that 174 grain thumper sticking way out and didnt need a notch to work. Even if they were using 220 grain bullets I really have trouble thinking a notch would be nessesary for loading.

Dan

[shjoe]

i may return to the shop and purchase it so that i can strip it down and take photos/investigate markings and stampings. it is atleast possible that if the stock is not painted red near the upper hand guard area, (which i didnt notice the last visit), then the notch would could have been one countrys (denmark) way of establishing the correct caliber/ammo for a soldier to use with it. if i undersstood CS Ferris correctly, perhaps as few as 5K were imported from denmark in the 90s, from about 38K originally sent there from canada, britain, and norway. if correct, i should expect to see stampings and possibly proof marks from each former lend/lease country. interesting.

[Chuckindenver]

sounds like a good idea to me..i was told it was to clear longer ammo, iv seen some Mausers with the same notch, that were chambered in 30-06.
i like your idea better.

[Amore2]

The trainingrifle M/60(53/17) was made as an official trial by the danish army in the beginning of 1958, where a worn-out cal. 30-06 were changed to cal. 22 by inserting a short barrel, change the bolt and cutoff the magazine, so the trainingrifle were single shot. This first trialversion was named T/57(53/17).

Two years later, in 1959, an order was given of 1000 pieces of M/60(53/17), which were the official name of "production"-version. The year after another order was given for extra 1000 pieces. Unfortunally they were not rebuild until may (500) and dec. 1962 (1500 pieces).

The rebuild was made on the Danish Våbenarsenal.

As you can see on the attached photo, they were not (all ?) notched. I don't recall, how our trainingrifles looked liked or if they were notched.

By the way, I can see, that a large number of the danish cal. 30-06 had changed the front sight. The elder members of the Homeguard had difficulties to see the original, narrow frontsight clearly. In 1960 it was decited to change the frontsights from the original, flat version to a cylinderformed (2,8 mm. diam.) sight in the same hight (3,6 mm.) as the original. The changed frontsight improved the shooting-results by 13-20 pct. for both young and older shooters.

Niels