No1 Mk3 Help with bolt lock issue and marking Identification.

[Surpmil]

At a glance it looks like the Fianna Fail marking went on after the existing finish, so from that we could deduce that the rifle was supplied to the Irish "Free State" after the rebarrel date of 1935.

For a minute I thought it might have been an inanimate witness to the day the Free State army shelled and burned the Dublin Public Records Office to get the I.R.A. out of it, thus destroying most of their own historical patrimony in an afternoon. Fianna Fail alright!

Someone has been buggering about with the rifle, I see three dents in the rear face of the receiver ring where the end of the extractor spring has jammed into it. And that would require the bolt head to be disengaged from the guide for some unknown reason... Someone messing around and perhaps trying to fit a new bolthead that didn't fit and wasn't even needed? (The wear to the finish does not suggest to me a rifle that has seen enough use to be likely to need a new bolthead)