I never ever quite worked out whether the fore-ends with caps, which of the two sorts or cap-less came first, second or last! Not that it made one jot of difference to us who were using, maintaining and repairing them. Mind you, that was in the severe tropics but pictures of Kenya show both sorts in use too and that ain't tropical! The parts lists and EMER's make no mention of it/them and in any case, if we got one that had ANY sign of rust beneath the cap, off it came, peg rivet hole, make good and out it went! All the ones we had as spare parts during the 60's came as the cap-less type.

Once they'd been in the warm-to-touch linseed bath the cap-les type were far longer lasting. The main problem was warping so far as I remember - but that affected all of them

Has anone looked into the actual sequence of which type of cap and/or capless