#4 trials "sniper"

[Warren]

The scope is a bit of a mystery I must say. I had about 30 No32 MkIs I picked up in the UKicon in 1986/87 in various states of disrepair and all had the usual markings on them. If those were the ones you refer to Warren, this ain't one of them. I polished a few that were smooth enough to do so and had them reblued by J.P. who passed on those spare brass eyeshades to you at the time. Anyone who saw one of those tubes would know immediately they had been reblued! Most were too pitted to polish and one would have to be pretty stupid to polish off the markings in an effort to get a smooth tube when the correct finish for a rebuild was phosphate and Suncorite! In the end, that is what most of them got, but that was after they went back to the UK. I certainly never polished the markings off any. Did someone else have a stash of No32s out here?

I've done a number of scopes from out west without markings and some I know came from the Edmonton area. Others farther west. They MIGHT have been part of the stash that a a guy got from Wainwright some years ago ( late 70's early 80's). Most of the scopes I had the chance to look at had been turned, polished and blued were finished with what appeared to be cold blue by the thickness and wear. Not the high quality blue that JP does. I also got one or two from the Winnipeg area. A possibility is someone who worked at REL or stores in Montreal 25 COD moved to the west with a trunk of "retirement goodies". Never did get any sun shades from JP so not sure where they went but it sure was not here.
The scopes that were sold off by Crown Assets from Wainwright were British and I cannot recall seeing a single REL in the lot. Most were well used, no mounts and just wrapped in brown paper with the usual duck tape type sealing.