Bought a Remington 1903, have a few questions

[69daytona]

I bought a Remington 1903 from a very old collector here in town, was made in August of 42, has a USMC stamped 12-43 sedgley barrel, bolt is electro pencil engraved with serial# that doesn't match rifle, stock is pinned type, I think a series 10 stock, has FFF stamped in butt stock like my M16s use to have in boot camp.
Just sent rifle to a gunsmith who just works on WW2 era guns, he finish reamed it because it was never done when going through rebuild,
Anyone here that might know if this was a USMC training rifle?
After spending 10years in the Corps it would be nice to have a piece of it that I can go shoot.

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[browningautorifle]

Welcome to the forum.

Just sent rifle to a gunsmith who just works on WW2 era guns, he finish reamed it because it was never done when going through rebuild,

That sounds very strange...never heard of that one. Hard to believe it was rebuilt and marked as finished but not done. I suspect something else took place between then and now.

[cplstevennorton]

I hate to say it, but I think the barrel was installed by someone probalby in the civilian world.

I have thousands of Marine docs from WWII and it doesn't appear they ever received any Remington 1903's. The only 1903's they received in WWII , were used and they received them from the Navy. It doesn't appear they received any new 1903's in the war.

The other issue in this is the 43/44 Sedgley barrels seem to have not been installed by the Marines. I've never seen a 43/44 sedgley barreled rifle that seemed to be a Marine rifle.

I honeslty think those barrels were mostly surplused and installed commercially. I hate to say it but your rifle doens't sound like a Mairne 1903.

Semper Fi by the way. If you want to learn about Marine rifles and by chance are on facebook. We have a group of several hundred Marine collectors and we post our Marine rifles all the time. And that is all we talk about are Marine rifles and pistols. So you will learn a lot on what to look for.

The Marine M1903's aren't really hard to find. There are a lot of them out there floating around.