Since I'm on a South African kick of late, South African No4 wood?

[Garandy]

Thanks to a buddy bird dogging them for me, I came into a pair of NOS No4 Beech No4 Mk1 forends on Thursday for a price so cheap the seller may as well have paid me to take them.

After wiping off all the spiders, cobwebs and sunflower seed shells, it appears that these forends might be from SA.

They are both marked on the bottom right in front of the trigger guard with a tombstone shaped marking with a three digit number in them and a U with something in the middle that I can't make out. Very similar to the markings on my NOS SA No1 barrel.

Forend caps are marked CE1967, but that's all the markings I see beyond the wood stampings described above.

Were these made in SA with English forend caps or do these sound like English made stocks with SA inspection markings?

Thanks.

Information

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[Daan Kemp]

Doubt very much SA made, especially wood.

Photos would tell the tale clearer.

[Alan de Enfield]

Forend caps are marked CE1967,

The "CE1967" furniture was made in 1967 in the UK for (allegedly) a contract with SA which was never fulfilled (apparently due to Apartheid and sanctions)

The CE is for C E Welstead who made the metal components (wartime code S126) for the No4 rifles as their original business was the manufacture of metal framed window systems. They closed down in 1973.
I do not know who produced the actual 'wood' parts, or assembled them.

There have been 'thousands' of these 'sets' floating about in the UK & I have bought and sold 100s of these 'sets' over the years - my last 4 sets going to the 'Klondike' just last year'

I was fortunate enough to find a warehouse full of stillages of these and could select the individual parts to be all 'colour / grain matched', and could choose the L length butt (more suitable for todays 'modern man' LoP) and another carton full of the metalwork.

[Simon P]

Probably all came out of Dince Hill, I've still got a stillage of these in the Workshop.

Sometimes they need quite a bit of work to make them bed properly, occasionally the fore-end end caps have to be removed, holes filled, redrilled & refitted, because,
They are set to far forward & touch the sight protector or low on the fore-end, and make fitting the front barrel band impossible to fit

[Alan de Enfield]

They probably all came out of Dince Hill, Ive still got a stillage of these in the Workshop.

They sometimes need quite a bit of work to make them bed properly, sometimes the fore-end end caps have to be removed, holes filled, redrilled & refitted, because they are set to far forward or low on the fore-end, and make fitting the front barrel band impossible to fit

The ones I bought were from a huge old converted church building that was a warehouse full of all sorts of milsups stuff and was in a suburb of Nottingham, One complete floor was dedicated to 'gun bits' and another to clothing and webbing.

[RobD]

I'm not an expert on the exact dates but I do recall that in South Africa, by 1967 the FN (FAL) was our combat rifle and No 4s were relegated to the part timers (commando system). The SA police had the No 1 rifle.

[Roger Payne]

I find your comments reassuring Simon - I have experienced exactly the same issues when fitting these forends. In fact, I do my best to let these sets go to third parties rather than original wartime stuff, wherever possible. They all require a degree of fitting but the made for SA stuff usually requires quite a lot. One other thing I've done in the past is to use them to create 'pretty' deact No4's. The finer points of fitting really don't matter a great deal then, so long as the wood drops on & doesn't foul any moving parts.

[Garandy]

Tough to photograph, but here are the markings. Identical, but hard to see or get the camera to focus on unless you stand on one foot and hold your mouth just right.

[Garandy]

Sometimes they need quite a bit of work to make them bed properly, occasionally the fore-end end caps have to be removed, holes filled, redrilled & refitted, because,
They are set to far forward & touch the sight protector or low on the fore-end, and make fitting the front barrel band impossible to fit

Yeah, these do seem a bit thick compared to the 2X spare Walnut stocks I've got here.

[WillSarchet]

Probably all came out of Dince Hill, I've still got a stillage of these in the Workshop.

Sometimes they need quite a bit of work to make them bed properly, occasionally the fore-end end caps have to be removed, holes filled, redrilled & refitted, because,
They are set to far forward & touch the sight protector or low on the fore-end, and make fitting the front barrel band impossible to fit

That's a relief to hear. I have been wrestling with one recently and thought it was just my imagination that is was more difficult than normal to stock up.