Unless they are marked, by manufacturer Peregrine and C-130, then it's going to be difficult to actuially tie them down because butt slides were a readily replaceable item at unit Armourer level (I seem to remember but other Armourers will soon correct me ....). The main reason for changing was that the axis pin holes would elongate and fail the 'no-go' gauge limit. Another was worn detent holes in the change lever so that you couldn't feel the change lever actually click firmly in place. So, we'd just use the next butt slide that was available off the shelf or came in from Ordnance. It'd be numbered to the gun and thereafter, who would know if it wasn't the original.

Later, because someone decided correctly that butt slides were all interchangeable anyway, it was deemed that once an old number was removed from the butt slide, then due to their full interchangeability, there was no reason to re-number that butt slide to the gun. FTR'd guns that had rebuilt/rebushed axis pin holes and had the number machined off the back of the butt socket area had the 'new' gun number engraved on the rear left hand side of the butt slide.

Anyway, mix and matching isn't just a US trait C-130. When we still had hundreds of Cadet Force .303" guns of all marks still in use, we had instructions to upgrade, where possible, to Mk3 spec. I've mentioned this before and this might appear sacrilege to the purists, you could have a line of apparently Mk3 Brens only to look carefully to see Mk1 and 2 bodied guns made up to almost Mk3 spec. There seemed to be so many Mk3 barrels in the system, it wasn't even worth matching worn Mk1 and 2 barrels...............
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