Do you have a 1950 Long Branch?

[Lee Enfield]

All the unissued 1950 LB No.4's I've seen were deeply and richly blued. Those that were parkerized, it has always been considered that they were refurbished by CAL after manufacture.

In fact, on the batches of unissued 1950 LB's that returned from Belgium, all were blued with no parked parts.

Claven, you should take another look at the (admittedly) incomplete data in my second post.

The change-over from bluing to parkerizing appears to occur between 93L1 & 93L6.

I looked at 95L4x65 which was the middle # of 10 consecutively serialed 1950 LBs, which were Belgian bring backs. I hope to get back early next Sat to examine the original shipping crate.

Disproving the theory: Unfortunately every part was parkerized (and CA marked) including the bands & barrel. Didn't pull the handguard off to check the bbl date because the gun is still cosmo'd & the bolt un-opened.

Why anyone would have FTRed a case of brand new guns is quite the puzzle...

Actually, if you don't take my word for it, you could check out Brian Dick's comments in the thread on Jouster. He said:

Posted By: Brian Dick
Date: Saturday, 9 December 2006, at 5:47 pm

In Response To: jean, I pulled some strings last night (dcv)

I had 200 Long Branch rifles in 2001 imported back from Greece through England. The Parkerized finish was prevalent after the mid 93L serial range as stated before. There were no blue bodies and barrels after that point. Some were in near new condition and had obviously never seen CDN/FTR. There were also CDN/FTR rifles with Parkerized finish and WWII dates in the mix but the 1950 rifles all sported original finish. Some with more use had seen work in Greek workshops and had a mix of British and Canadian woodwork and the usual stock patches, etc.