Opinions on this No. 5 Mk. 1

[jrhead75]

He must be a brilliant man to be able to speak for the whole collector community like that.

[Peter Laidler]

Yes, I thought that too JR............ The FMP markings WERE British markings as the Federation of Malaya was under the protectorate of the crown at the time. Oh well, British, English......, who cares!

[clarkmilitaria]

I guess that the FMP mark is a matter of personal preference.

Oh well, British, English......, who cares!

Sorry for the mix up.

[HOOKED ON HISTORY]

I am not an advanced collecter by any means but I would not concider the markings as a negitive as they provide an additional story line to the history of the rifle.

[Peter Laidler]

But surely, if the markings prove/provide another story line to the rifle history, that'd make it BETTER, surely. Or am I missing something.

If I had a rifle with a provinance or markings that it fought at Monte Cassino then wouldn't that make it something special?

[Bruce_in_Oz]

The whole "originality" thing is a serious can of worms.

Very few service weapons go through life unaltered or unused.

I am just a bit young to have earned a crust on SMLEs, but I did my share of parts swapping on L1A1s. A lot of the work was often based on formal instructions (EMERs, EMEIs), to delete an "obsolete" component and replace it with the new model.

Extractors, body locking levers and catches lightly spring to mind. Then there were the bits that were modified over the years. As the old version wore out or broke, the new pattern was substituted in. Handguards and carry handles, for example.

Then there were the stuff-ups: a batch of rifles ended up with dodgy return spring assemblies in them. The correct arrangement is that, as the springs are nested, one inside the other, they need to have opposite twists; otherwise they bind when compressed. "Somehow" a batch of spring sets with the same direction of twist got, not just into "the system", but into a number of randomly distributed rifles. These would cheerfully bind and cause malfunction. Thus a culling programme was instituted. Did putting in a "correct", and in fact, EARLIER, pattern of spring assembly detract from "originality"?

Was the rifle any less "authentic" after various authorized modification? Not to my mind. It was precisely as specified by the technical documentation of that time. It would be "nice" to have a mint, unaltered example of an early production ANYTHING. However, such a specimen has one story, albeit brief. Something completely rebuilt but exactly as specified for the date it LEFT service and liberally sprinkled with all those mysterious stamps, is quite another thing.

Think about all the vintage Lee Metfords and Enfields that were re-hashed into beasties like the SMLE Mk1 (converted) and Mk2 (converted), then used and abused on numerous battlefields or Naval capers. And after all that, being turned into .22RF trainers or drill rifles.

That is the REAL reason so few really early "original" Lees survive. They got "re-frocked" and went off to yet another depot, ship or war, or all three.

[HOOKED ON HISTORY]

But surely, if the markings prove/provide another story line to the rifle history, that'd make it BETTER, surely. Or am I missing something.

If I had a rifle with a provinance or markings that it fought at Monte Cassino then wouldn't that make it something special?

You Brits always having to show us up with your command of the language. Well said!