Morning Peter,

Interesting that one, I can only assume the Britishicon rifles left the factory with different finishes at different dates. I am probably using the the wrong term in "oil blacking", so lets say a very thin chemically etched finish seems to be what they left the factory in.

I base this purely on my own observations, so I could well be wrong, but the current crop of Straight pull L1A1's coming out of Suffolk Rifles for instance have the thin worn chemical grey/ black finish on the receivers and TMH (the parts kits have their origin in the sold off War Reserve rifles I believe), this finish is not newly applied and not Lithgowicon type parkarising ..... nether is it a sunkorite paint finish.

My cutaway BSA L1A1, also appears to have the very same thin black/gray chemical finish, again without sunkorite.

I assumed (probably wrongly) that the Sunkorite was applied during base workshop refurbishment ??