Changed Serial # - Bubba or the real McCoy?

[BritishBeer]

My No4 Mk1* has a drastically lighter (I assume different wood) lower than the rest of the furniture and it has an old serial # sanded down, with a new matching serial # stamped a bit wonkily.

Having a lack of experience with both fake and real stampings, do you think this was down professionally by the military/factory or has bubba had a crack at it?

Just curious more than anything - it's a shooter and not exactly rare.


Thanks in advance.

Information

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[Detroit-1]

Any FTR marks? Is the bolt matching? My LB has the # across not lengthwise on the forearm.

[BritishBeer]

Bolt not matching and no FTR marks. Would a damaged forearm be likely to cause the rifle to be FTRed?

[Peter Laidler]

A damaged fore-end wouldn't be anything but a unit repair. And in my experience, this is JUST what's happened here. In a typical REME workshop of the era a rifle with a damaged or ill-fitting fore-end would come into the workshop and the next decent, repaired fore-end on the shelf would be accurately and correctly fitted to the rifle. The rifle would be range tested for accuracy and then sent back to the Company Arms Store. The old damaged fore-end would then be repaired at leisure. Usually, when there were about 5 or 6 waiting to be done. Then THEY'd be put back on the shelf and so on. So in the Military, you'd often see re-numbered fore-ends. Nothing new or strange there

The only fly in the ointment for you is that it could be some bodge up, crap fit by some local dealer that thinks he knows it all and gets a rubbish warped fore-end of his mate for a couple of beers........... You know what I mean!

Just remove it and test it for fit, then accuracy. But when you DO remove it, make sure that you do it properly, from the REAR forwards

[Thunderbox]

Looks like a recent renumber to me...... perhaps someone just used a spare forend to restore a sporter?

[Homer]

Looks very recent to me also

[BritishBeer]

Thanks for the replies.

Would armourers care about matching wood on rifles if possible?

Don't know whether aesthetics were ever taken into account, definitely aren't with the SA80s.

[Peter Laidler]

We would defdinately match the wood up. BUT, that said....., only within the bounds of what is available and you're able. There were instructions for matching up wood but you'd just do your best.

The SA80 alas. There's not much you can do about the aesthetics of it but I do recall a suggestion submitted about the COVER, top, handguard. It is the metal flip-open cover that allows access to the gas cylinder. (Maybe Skippy or BP could show a picture of one.....) that has a khaki green plastic cover, matched to the plastic green hanguard material. One of my blokes from the top workshop submitted a GOOD suggestion that when the plastic bit of the actual cover breaks, there is no spare part so the whole handguard assembly has to be replaced. Not expensive in the great scheme of things but not cheap either. He suggested that if the metal cover underneath was still good, then so what it the plastic cover was broken! Just break off the rest of it and leave the black cover which still protected the gas cylinder after all. It might get slightly hot as it acts as a thermal shunt but it's not even as though you touch it when firing!

I agreed. Back it came with a £40 award for the idea BUT! It would mean that there would be odd rifles within the system and....... blah blah blah and so on. A case of aesthetics again. Have we gone off at a big enough tangent yet........?

[BritishBeer]

I quite like tangents, they make conversations interesting.

I've only ever been on the side that breaks SA80s and gets a bollocking.

In regards to the cover I think they're aiming to replace them all with a quadrail and paying a ton for them. Only a dit I heard so may just have been wishful thinking.