Lee Enfield ID

[Claven2]

Actually Matt, most of the ww1 era gun built with butts machined for the disk after 1916 either had a blank disc installed (no info stamped on it) or the inlet was simply left empty.

As I understand it, the filled holes were most often filled during a rifle's time in India after 1919, or less commonly, during British rebuilds in the 20's and 30's.

By late WW1, the only maker still possibly fitting unit disc inletted butts was LSA, though they certainly stopped doing so by mid-1918.

That being said, after WW1 concluded, there was a massive effort in India to overhaul the worn rifles in store. Rifle furniture often got swapped around in the bins and you sometimes see pre-WW1 butts on much later guns, usually with the butt stamped with the early (pre-1941) Ishapore ISA roundel. Many of these guns have no Ishapore Screw, the screw generally being only fitted to non-wire wrapped guns that went through armory inspection or refurb in the 1940's and later. (wire-wrapped guns got a heavier bolt).

England also refurbed rifles in this time frame (1919 to late 1920's), but on a smaller scale. Remember, at this time, the emphasis was on demobilizing troops owing to the fact that the "war to end all wars" was over, and hence, why keep arms enough to equip millions when the standing peacetime army was measured in tens of thousands? England actually sold the many of its SMLE's to other countries and to sportsmen all over the world at this time - a fact that was to come back and bite them after Dunkirk 20 years later... though some of those guns were donated back to the army by private sportsmen in 1940.

Back on topic...

To further muddy the waters, it is likely that some guns were fitted with unit marking discs during the inter-war years, depending upon the unit and the issue purpose of the rifle in question. visual evidence would suggest that some 1920's issue guns would have had the unit disc re-instated, but for marking with a 2 or 3 digit rack number, not unit markings. it's possible unit-level armorers fitted discs independently, as needed. We sometimes encounter matching 1920's made BSA guns with British or Canadian issue markings fitted with discs with what appear to be rack numbers. There are also period instructions on how to locate and drill the inlet holes for them.

In general, however, if your gun has a wood plug in the hole, the purist opinion would be to leave that plug there as it is correct and was done in service.