Interesting items found in butt trap

[vintage hunter]

Looking to find out some information about this pair of tags found rolled up in a plastic tube and stored in the butt trap of a No.4T I recently acquired. One has the rifles s/n and the other an oval stamp but all I could make out is the date Apr. 1975 and an S or 5, it also has ''field standard'' hand written on the back side. Thanks, VH

Information

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[enfield303t]

Back in the 60's Fram filters gave away to dealers Martini-Henry rifles when they purchased a certain amount of filters. The Fram sales rep was a friend of my family and he told me they found countless items in the butt trap of of these rifles.

From his description it was not common but did happen quite a few times and aparently they checked all the rifles.

Your find is very interesting and a great piece of history.

[vintage hunter]

Back in the late 80's my cousin came across a 1916 dated Enfield No.1 that had an oil soaked clipping from a 50's Russian news paper in the butt trap. It would be interesting to know just how that got there. The most valuable(to me anyway) thing I ever found was in the butt of ''Old Red'', my grandads single shot Stevens shotgun, his old hunting license for the years 1950-53.

[Peter Laidler]

It's the Stores Inspection Department REME (the SID branch.....) label signed by the examiner. The Field Standard indicates the fact that it's returned to Ordnance by a unit somewhere in a field workshop standard as per EMER C-504, checked to this standard and passed by the 'in-examiner'. From there it's been disposed of. The other avenue would be to be sent into the big Base workshops to be rebuilt to new and then put back on the shelf as 'new'

Next question..............

[vintage hunter]

Ok then, there is one more thing about this rifle that I'd like to know. It has no scope number on the stock wrist. The wood and magazine has been replaced so it's been through some sort of overhaul. Any particular reason why it lacks a scope number? I have a few weak theories,1. it just did'nt get the number stamped after the butt was replaced, 2. it had a fubar'd scope or bracket and was returned to Ordinance and disposed of before a replacement was fitted, 3. it was disposed of because a replacement scope or bracket was'nt available. Any of these stand a snowballs chance of being close to right?

[Peter Laidler]

Ain't got a clue, but you can be rest assured that when it went IN to Ordnance, it was complete to CES and correct. Quite whether it was stripped of its telescope prior to disposal is quite another matter but I would suspect that after its disposal, someones swopped the butt. It's a simple matter though to tell whether the tele and bracket have been fitted as an afterthought by someone or is very probably original.

On a similar matter, my friend found some eastern european writings on a bit of card/paper in the butt (or was it the chest.....) of his old well used and tired No4T. I took it to the language technology labs in Park Road here in Oxford and it was adentified as cyrillic (?) and said words to the effect '........ do not mix the telescope and the rifle. the telescope must stay with the rifle' The problem was that those simple words posed more questions than the original question!

[Warren]

I believe yours was probably part of a shipment purchased by a long deceased gun dealer in the USA. They were purchased from a UK source back in the late 80's or early 90's. You might find the scope serial number on the butt has been erased by sanding the stock.
Some of the rifles had two tags.... There was also 6 long branch rifles in the pile and through a mix up they did not come home to Canada... :-(##
Attachment 34662Attachment 34663

[Brian Dick]

Good call Warren. It's got John Appleton's import mark on it. I had a few of his No.4T's that were less the scopes and identical in the early 90's.

[husk]

Here is his long-lost Bro' - twenty-five numbers off...

[vintage hunter]

Good possibility, I believe I know of the fellow you're talking about. His import marks will be found on the lower right side of the butt socket? I take it those rifles in the picture were among the bunch, did they have commercial proof marks? Mine does'nt, not that it really matters. I don't think mine has had any recent sanding to the stock wrist, theres that deeply stamped H remaining plus the scratch pattern and color matches the rest of the wood but there were some markings stencilled in white on the right side of the buttstock that were scrubbed. Unit or rack # maybe. The buttstock may have been changed at some point but it was'nt in the recent past, those cheek rest screws have been there a while. Have'nt removed the buttstock to see if theres a s/n on the ledge, and most likely won't either. That would be tinkering, right.

Too bad the brothers are so far apart, bet they ain't seen one another in years.................