L39A1 advice for a beginner if possible please.

[jss]

Firstly, I'm am not really a collector, so please excuse my naivety.
I had a look at a few L39A1's the other day. They all had what I believe are No8 Butts with rubber butt plate and 7.62 magazines and some had slightly "sloppy" bolts.
Does this detract from their collectable value?.
Would it be wrong to replace the butt with a No4 one for more authenticity or should they be left alone?
Parker Hale 5C2 I've not seen or read of one before. Is that right for the L39A1?
The Butt on one looks as though it's been shortened. Are the No8 Butt's and rubber butt plates still available?.
Is there any point in looking for anything matching on these rifles except for the bolt, magazine and action?.
How much are they currently worth as the asking price seemed a bit high for what they are?.
Personally I find the No4 based 7.62 1st generation target rifles more interesting but they appear to have little collectable value or interest!.

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.

[Peter Laidler]

The L39's came, issued from Ordnance with No4 butts. The difference was that at the knuckle of the butt, there was a small round recess into which you could screw in a little brass cup/cap that held the various foresight blades used in conjunction with the various P-H rear sights.

They didn't come with P-H sights but if you were lucky, the bog standard unmodified Mk1 sight. Otherwise no sights at all!

The magazine wells were modified to take the 7.62mm magazine but they came fitted with the No4 mag that was used as a single shot loading platform. You were permitted to fit a No8 butt where competition rules allow it.

But, when the rifle was returned to Ordnance workshops for repair or backloading, it had to be to the current EMER spec. That meant, 'as issued' So I suppose you could say that the rifles you looked at were 'as permitted' as opposed to 'as issued'. However, we wouldn't shorten a butt, we'd just fit a shorter one and if that wasn't short enough............ tough!

[Thunderbox]

The bottom rifle is a totally unused L39A1 as it was issued from Donnington. The top rifle was in the same batch, but was briefly used by the receiving unit - i.e. the rear target sight, magazine, No8 butt and accessory rail are all "user" additions to the basic rifle.



L39A1s are still quite common (in UK at least), but some people charge a ridiculous price for them. A decent L39A1 should have a matching bolt (not obviously renumbered) and the rifle number also stamped on the underside of the forend just behind the sling swivel. No8 butts, sights and 7.62mm magazines are fairly universal additions and part of their working lives, so shouldn't really detract from a "collectors'" point of view.


Incidentally, fellow collectors: I currently have L39A1 number A173 in my possession. Has anyone got, or seen, a lower number than this? I haven't come across a lower number L39A1 in SE UK so far, and it would be interesting to find out if a block of "7.62mm CONV" rifles occupy the bottom part of the "A" numbering sequence.

[jss]

Thanks for the response.
Interestingly, the wood of the Butts on those that I saw matched very well with the forend given that they would not have been together when originally issued. I did not check for numbering on the forend, but they did look like matched sets of woodwork. In fact I did not think that the wear of the bolts/actions was mirrored in the wear/patina of the woodwork.
Would they have come from the factory with the No 8 Butt if requested, thus possibly matching or would whoever replaced the No4 butt have had access to plenty of No8 Butts to find a perfect match.
Is it likely that all of them might have had their entire woodwork replaced, and if so are they still as collectable?.

[Thunderbox]

Thanks for the response.
Interestingly, the wood of the Butts on those that I saw matched very well with the forend given that they would not have been together when originally issued. I did not check for numbering on the forend, but they did look like matched sets of woodwork. In fact I did not think that the wear of the bolts/actions was mirrored in the wear/patina of the woodwork.
Would they have come from the factory with the No 8 Butt if requested, thus possibly matching or would whoever replaced the No4 butt have had access to plenty of No8 Butts to find a perfect match.
Is it likely that all of them might have had their entire woodwork replaced, and if so are they still as collectable?.

The rifles would have been issued without any facility for "customisation", as they were a simple stores item. As the rifles would have gone from Enfield to an Army depot for storage, there would have been no connection between factory and end user.

The later "7.62mm CONV" rifles - which appear to be part of the overall L39A1 production run - did apparently have No8 butts fitted from new. However both of the rifles in my picture above are very late production L39A1s (the unused one is A1111, the mint one is A1217, and came with its original No4 butt as well) and so it appears that normal No4 butts remained standard to the end.

Its not surprising that a No8 butt would match an L39 forend: the majority of No8 butts were finished in the same BLO'd beech as the forends and handguards, and 40-odd years of ageing have given all of the wood the same sort of patina. Indeed, its quite easy to retro-fit a beech No4 butt off a typical 1950s rifle onto an L39 in place of something non-standard (No8, Swing-style or PH Monte Carlo, typically) and achieve an exact match.

One interesting feature of (usually ex-RAF shooting club) L39s is that the woodwork and sights often give the impression of considerable use (dirt, unit marks, wear, etc), yet the bore, bolt-face and feed ramp appear unused. I get the impression that most L39s were fitted with sights, marked with unit ownership marks - and then left knocking about the armoury for thirty years without actually being used much. In the following photo, most of the rifles have had some sort of mod or unit mark and all look "well-used"; in fact it was hard to tell from the feed-ramp and bore that they'd had any use at all:

[Peter Laidler]

Thunderbox is right. These rifles had very little use in units. I'll let you into a little secret too. Each rifle issued to the unit came with a sizeable additional ammunition allocation for use with it. You don't use the L39's but you use the ammunition allocation for extra range practice or sniper training, annual APWT shoot ............ get my drift. As a result, the rifles were stuck in the armouries while the ammo allocation came in VERY handdy. I used to borrow/use one for practical rifle shoots with my club. However, when booking it out during the week, I always seemed to get it mixed up with an L42 so had to use that instead.............. Most members of the North Wilts club got their first taste of shooting an L42 using it during those balmy days. Later, during the 90's or so, the MoD tightened up on us using them for external competition use. My sons school Cadets used to use them in preference to the issue L81 Parker Hale target rifle. They still had 6 until a couple of years ago plus the ammo allocation too of course.......... Happy days

Notice that the second rifle down in the photo has the little brass foresight blade container screwed into the recess in the knuckle of the butt. Close to the end of the life of the old No4 with school CCF's and ACF's, a big load of these butts were released for general use so Armourers had to plug-patch in the 5/8" approx hole
The Army rules that allowed units to modify the L39's for the various competitions don't mention milling the fore-end for a rail although it does mention many other allowable variations

My sons school used these rifles..... oops, mentioned that already

[jss]

I get the impression that most L39s were fitted with sights, marked with unit ownership marks - and then left knocking about the armoury for thirty years without actually being used much.

Thanks for sharing that very useful bit of expert knowledge on the woodwork Thunderbox. I think the ones I looked at did come from an RAF armoury and certainly one of them looks hardly used. Unfortunatly it's the one with what looks like a shortened butt and ill fitting butt plate(or perhaps it's the wrong Butt plate).
But, with a little used action and barrel, is it perhaps worth as much as a new modern 308?. It certainly has a lot more character, a ten round magazine, and it sounds an easyish job to find and replace the Butt with a matching No4 one.
Presumably the No8 butt must improve the rifle otherwise they wouldn't have bothered changing them. Are spare No8 butts still available?.

[Thunderbox]

L39A1s are very good rifles, and used to be ridiculously under-rated compared to their sibling L42, Envoy & Enforcer - given that all these rifles are more or less identical actions clad in different combinations of the same set of components. Today, however, L39s are becoming "collectable", and thus are priced at significantly more than - say - an absolutely identical Fultons-built No4 target rifle. None of these rifles are really on a par with something like a modern AI .303 sniper/target rifle, but its chalk and cheese - collectable and relatively cheap vs. foolproof and extremely expensive.

L39A1s are more than adequate for general club target shooting and fully competitive in "first generation target rifle" matches. After all - even the performance of a standard No4 in .303" probably exceeds the marksmanship ability of most shooters!

The No8 butt provides a higher cheek rest than the standard No4 item, and some people find this better for target use (military-trained shooters tend to shape their body to fit the rifle, and seem happy with the No4 butt). Although there are plenty of bolt-on civilian target butts for the No4 action, the No8 butt is not bad - most Envoy shooters from the 1970s/80s Bisley era seem to have stuck with the standard No8 butt on that rifle.

No8 butts are not rare, and they do turn up all over the place. Unfortunately, eBay does drive prices up.....

[PrinzEugen]

When I bought mine it had been fitted with a plastic stock for use with a bipod - I don't know if this made it more accurate, but I suppose an L39 is a good accurate rifle which some people might try to 'improve'. It might be surprisingly common as I've since seen several subsequently which have had similar conversions done to them. Not all 'improvements' work though - to get a light trigger they'd completely arsed up the cocking piece, so much so that the safety couldn't even be applied without pulling the cocking piece back...

Even after all that though, the metalwork part of the rifle really did seem 'as new' and the bore etc hadn't seen many shots from the look of it, which suggests as said earlier, that it didn't see much use in service.

Re Parker Hale sights - well the 5c was generally calibrated for 303 ammo but I'm sure you could use one perfectly well on an L39 counting clicks. The 7.62 sights are the 5E (as seen on Enforcers) and also the Alfred J Parker Twin Zero 4/47 (generally held to be a bit better quality than the Parker Hale versions).

[spinecracker]

Dang it, seeing Thunderbox hogging the L39A1s makes me want to get one...beautiful rifles, and a nice collection. Thanks for sharing.