Cleaning up an old War Horse

[ickmann]

Picked up this Peddled scheme 1916 Mk III * from a local shop a few months back. Got bored one day and decided to strip it down and clean her up. Was a bit surprised to find the green paint and more surprised to find a bunch of sand underneath the barrel. if only old War Horses could talk eh?

Ian
http://s31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...me%20MK%20III/

Information

Warning: This is a relatively older thread This discussion is older than 360 days. Some information contained in it may no longer be current.

[Anzac15]

Interesting. Your peddle scheme is almost identical to mine. I also have what appears to be a bit of green paint on mine as well. I also cleaned a great deal of dirt and what did indeed appear to be sand out of mine. Dirtiest LE I have ever cleaned up. But there was a gorgeous rifle under all that! Very curious about the paint.

[Demo]

Good looking rifle and the khaki paint is a nice addition.

[Peter Laidler]

Any geologist with a modicum of forensic knowledge will be able to identify the sand by its structure/form and tell you immediately where in the world it originates. It's simple. We had the same 'problem' with captured Indonesian PINDAD 9mm Browning pistols that had sand ingrained in them. They were supposedly made in-house in Indonesia but that was easy to disprove. So the intelligence people came to look, took samples and lo and behold, they were supplied to their mates by Jordan................ Naughty!

So if you really want to find out.................... Any geologists out there?

[ickmann]

My Uncle is a Geologist..this may be interesting.

[Peter Laidler]

Let us know how you get on.................

[barbarossa]

Interesting! I have a 1916 Standard Small Arms Mark III* too. It was a RSAF Enfield build up and is serialized G4041. Skennerton sez 13,000 total production for Standard Small Arms in 1916. Your rifle is a 1916 "W" prefix assembled at BSA. All this definitely proves conclusively both factories were receiving these SSA receivers in 1916. There do not appear to be many survivors from the 1916 SSA III* production from this particular year still extant. SSA rifles of 1916 vintage certainly should be classed as scarce to rare and are hard Enfield variants to locate. I have seen only four examples of 1916 SSA production in 40 years of collecting.

Might we infer from this that SSA forwarded their receivers unserial numbered, at least initially, to either BSA or RSAF Enfield for final build where the guns were serial numbered right into whatever series the respective factories were producing in house at that moment? It seems the later SSA may have been serial numbered at SSA or National Rifle Factory from the serial number research I have seen thus far collated by fellow Enfield collectors. Or perhaps the SSA rifle actions were delivered in large batches as opposed to piecemeal. If received in large batches, the SSA made actions would have entered the factory's assembly process as a group and would thus likely bear serial numbers from the same letter prefix.

Any ideas?

[ickmann]

Time to update..

Well, my uncle said that he would not be able to give me any good answers, so I sent the sample of the sand to a Geological Forensics expert..more or less on a whim and not expecting to get much for my efforts as the sample was small and the gentleman said that he more than likely would not be able to tell much...Anyway, I received an e-mail tonight and here are some extracts from his report.

"Forensic geologists at Geoforensics Inc. reviewed the sand sample from your 1916 Lee-Enfield rifle. No particular grains of sand in the sample provide a basis to identify a specific location(s). Ideally, the process to identify source location(s) for your sand would involve comparing your sample with samples from anticipated specific/souce locations. Additionally, the experiences of the geologists involved in the analysis also can play a significant role in determining the provenance of a sample.

Although we are unable to identify specific locations your rifle encountered, the diversity of the sample particles provides some bases to suggest the rifle encountered the following types of environments:

* Desert
* Marine
* Volcanic Sand
* Sandy Clay

Extrapolating from this information, the rifle possibly could have been used in the following geographic locations (consistent with the sample and British Army activity over the period involved):

* World War I:

- Middle East (e.g., Saudi Arabia), most of the sample material can be found in this area where British Troops were deployed.

* World War II (assuming the rifle was still in service in WWII)

- Salerno, Italy and/or Sicily,
- Northern Africa (e.g., Libya, Egypt)

These speculations are based on very limited evidence and meant to provide you with information for further research. If you haven't done so, you may want to consider trying to trace the rifle's serial number. It's a long-shot, but the War Office in Britain may have kept records.

Finally, in the "for what it's worth" category, you may be interested to know that the sample contained a portion/"clipping" of a fingernail. The form of the clipping suggests it was cut with something other than scissors (e.g. a nail clipper)."

...For the record, I do not groom myself in my work shop/gun bench room

Cheers,
Ian

[jrhead75]

Stratton's research indicates the same s/n prefixes carried across all 3 years of both SSA & NRF production. My 'G' prefixed 1916 SSA shows a pretty even mix of both EFD and BSA marks on the body and various parts (for example, the trigger's BSA, the T/G is EFD). I've seen a grand total of 4 1916 SSAs myself (counting the OP's in this thread), and 2 of those, including mine, have been Canadian marked.

Interesting geological research...wish I'd thought to have someone check the vegetable and mineral matter that I've pulled out of my rifles over the years.

[Gav]

Finally, in the "for what it's worth" category, you may be interested to know that the sample contained a portion/"clipping" of a fingernail. The form of the clipping suggests it was cut with something other than scissors (e.g. a nail clipper)."

Ok, so are you now going to try for DNA for a previous owner?