To refurb or not to refurb that is the question

[Peter Laidler]

Some rifles sat in armouries for years and years, little used, inspected regularly and with a big major in-depth inspection annually. Others at some training units or recruit or regimental depots get a non stop pasting, day and week in and out. These get slogged top death and show wear and tear. They're repaired by the unit Armourers so often that they know them by their serial number! These are the ones that develop faults that require a more in-depth line of repair, so they get sent back to the bigger Field Workshops for bigger problems. This is where they are subject to greater gauging standards and it's here that you find faults.........., say a high sear, checked using a slave calibrated bolt. Then you'll see that it has already been corrected once, so it is re-classified as Z-BLR. That goes back to Ordnance where at the Ordnance Depot it's sentenced ZF/FTR for a full FTR in the future. When 500 are ready to be called in, back they go. In the meantime, if there are large stockpiles they might not bother FTRing the rifles, they'll be set aside as 'CAST' and disposed of.

So a year later, a dealer acquires a job lot of ZF rifles that he gives a quick once over, cleans the bore and sells on to other dealers complete with the ZF paint or stamp markings on the butt as ex Zimbabwe Forces A1 top quality surplus. In the meantime the much older rifle at some backwater unit never goes further than the rifle range once a year (if that.....) so remains pretty much as it always was.

Then, a year or so later an Armourer looks through a rack of these supposedly ex 'Zimbabwe Forces' rifles and points out the ZF marking to the del-boy dealer - who looks back at him like he's just fallen out of the last banana boat.................

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