John jovino Lithgows'

[5thBatt]

Might it not be a sold out of service stamp not Q G.

A while back I blew up a pic of that mess and one by one whited out all the sold out of service arrows and x's, what gets left over is very close to QG, some of the letters are damaged by the marks but they can be seen. There's some other odd marks too but I'll have to have another go at cleaning it up to get them clear.

*1918 * barred out would only have the cut off replaced never had the windage sight on or replaced.
Thats why I began with that I added the cut off and windage sight, if no1mk3* refers to not using the cut off (?) then surely striking it out would mean the opposite?

lol, the odd feature of the serial number is the string of 8's, I've never seen an enfield with all repeated numbers, ever. I should sell it to some chinese man who thinks 8's are lucky.

Thanks for the comments ...

RJW,
Lithgow produced MkIII*s with cutoff slot in the early part of 1918 when production switched to the MkIII* a good indicator of a 1918 being one of these early MkIII*s is the * being stamped within the shield, most of these rifles show up with the * barred out, mine included, mine also came to me without a cutoff but i have chosen to leave it as it is.
Only the presence of a cutoff denotes whether a rifle is a MkIII or not, windage rearsights were fitted to early MkIII*s as well.