New No.4 Mk1 owner... what can you tell me about my rifle (pics)

[Surpmil]

The bluing used on Long Branch and Savage No.4 rifles and TSMG's during WWII was Dulite. It's no where near as durable as Parkerizing which incidentally, was designed for and used by the U.S. Navy as a pre paint prep finish starting in 1918.

Interesting, do you know when parkerizing was introduced here Brian? Well under way by 1949 would you agree?

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[Peter Laidler]

Brian..... I used to export new and used MGB and GT parts to Australia/Tasmania during the 80's/90's as a bit of a lucrative hobby to a pal from my days in the Army there. I used to deal with a freight forwarding agency locally and tell them what I had, rough size/estimate/quantity - you know the sort of thing. They would call me back and say that they or their connected companies had a container going in 3 weeks, would I like pro-rata space. The deals I/we got were tremendous in a shared container. The BEST deals were with heavy medical equipment going from the big electromed places locally. The drawback is that you can't have it by yesterday of course - but what the heck......

Talking of which, I have some MGR-V8 parts waiting 'the call' as we speak. When I said 'lucrative hobby', change that to read VERY lucrative hobby!

Maybe this is an avenue the exporters could look at especially bearing in mind that in the ghreat scheme of things, weapons and parts such as barrels are very small but xxxxxxx heavy. That's where the costs come from!

[Brian Dick]

I appreciate that Peter. The brick wall I'm hitting is because all of the items I ship are controlled/licensable and the shippers simply don't want to deal with them. Things go from bad to worse at the mention of "firearm" or even firearm parts. Even the shipment of DP SMLE barrels which are basically only good as rebar concrete reinforcing to me, have to be licensed on a DDTC DSP-5 export license before they can be shipped legally out of the USA. I guess the deact business is very lucrative in the UK and business is business. I'd much rather see deacts being produced using up barrels that are no good for anything else. It hurts to see new woodwork and other nos parts being used for wall hangers but that's how it is.

[Peter Laidler]

Mmmmmmm Would it make any difference at this end of they were partially chopped at the breech? More time, cost though. Theres's no easy way though.

Now back to my MGR-V8 panels for Oz......

[Brian Dick]

I'm guessing that Parkerizing was introduced in certain Canadian production in 1943-44. Inglis Parked Brens and BHP pistols starting about that time. Long Branch Stens were Parked too at that time, maybe even a bit earlier. LB No.4 rifles were Parkerized as the standard factory finish at some point in 1950 in the 93L serial range. You'll still see a mixture of blued small parts on them. I've seen many CAL/LB FTR rifles and would guess that they were Parkerized during rebuild up through the 1960's and possibly later. One of my own favorites is a 1942 with a Canadian ownership mark present. It sports the lovely manganese Park finish that Long Branch and Inglis were famous for.