Is this L42 A1 legit??

[snipershot1944]

For what it's worth, speaking of 40+ years of gun collecting, I've found that buying something that you have to explain, as being modified, restored, etc. makes for something that is often difficult to resell later down the road. For that reason, I tend to wait for an example to come along, maybe at a bit higher price, that speaks well for itself.

Just my $0.02

[Peter Laidler]

Charlie, let me wander off at a bit of a tangent again with a sort of parable........... When I was a very young lad, about 20 years old, out on my own, 12 thousand miles from home in a few foreign Countries....., some good, some bad some truly bad where we all lived like rats in a hole the one thing that everyone looked forwards to was the weekly or twice weekly mail drop. My mum, bless her soul used to write to me as regular as clockwork, twice a week and no matter where I was, her post would follow. Sometimes it'd be weeks behind and all out of sequence but when I got a small handfull of letters, I could just TELL which ones were from my lovely kind mum. Dont ask me why or how, but I could just tell............

It's like looking at a genuine Mini Cooper or an MGB GT or a Norton Commando - OR one that's been resurrected from parts over the years. Like that letter from your mum........, you can just tell by the smell or from familiar things that you recognise after having handled hundreds of them......... Little things......... undefinable things......... the smell of the XG279 grease......, the way that everything aligns or is collimated by an expert as opposed to those what I call, sometimes unkindly '.....enthusiastic amateurs'. Sometimes you can describe it as just good old hands on experience or plain familiarity. Like my mums letters

You get my drift?

And there's a little sequel too........... When I got back to England after 3 years away in Australia, New Zealand, Malaya, Singapore and South Vietnam, before I hit the sack (after a 30 hour Hercules flight - try sleeping in those net paratroopers seats) my kindly mum made me a lovely dinner followed by a nice rice pudding. I really didn't have the heart to tell her that I'd lived off fxxxxxg rice, boiled, fried, steamed, creamy as well as rice puddings (and banana and pineapple too.......) for the past 3 years and the thought of any more made me sick! And I ain't eaten one since. Nor a Banana or a pineapple either!

[Gil Boyd]

So Peter, the answer to the Parable is, don't shoot an unknown L42 with a mouthful of rice pudding, in any foreign country, after flying on a converted C130 with no armchairs, surrounded by loads of vehicle objet'art smelling of XG279 grease then?

Sorry mate couldn't resist it...Merry Christmas

[Roger Payne]

Snipershot........your comments are very sensible, but in a way, I can't help feeling, sad. I know exactly what you mean about waiting for a nice typical or non-controversial example to come up - one that conforms exactly to how it is stated in the books that this type of firearm should look, be marked, has not been rebuilt, etc. However, (& forgive me if I'm repeating myself), when my pal & I bought about 140 No4 T's nearly 20 years ago, there were rifles with variant markings, markings not present where they 'should' have been & so forth - for example there were a number of early (1941) BSA, Savage & Maltby conversions. It is now widely accepted that you will not find them 'typically' marked like a 1944 or 45 BSA. There were also several Savage Mk1 * T's, which according to the then accepted wisdom, should not have existed at all. Whilst this is all now common knowledge amongst collectors it wasn't then, & I still occasionally hear people impugning the authenticity of a perfectly correct rifle. Additionally, most of the rifles we bought had been stripped to varying degrees (sadly), but they were most definitely genuine & well worthy of restoration. Yet even so, some people moaned when I rebuilt them & sold them at pretty reasonable prices, that they were 'got at'. Of course they were! 'Got at' by me! But they were rebuilt as carefully as I could do it, with original parts wherever possible, & accurate reproductions where not.

I sold one rifle to a very experienced shooter/collector who still regularly frequents Bisley. It was a 43 BSA & so like many produced earlier in that year, it lacked the D6E examiner's mark in the usual place. I could see he was a little uneasy about this, but I reassured him the rifle was correct, & explained I would not take offence at all if he decided he would prefer not to buy it (& wait for a 'typical' example), but he insisted he was ok with it & liked the rifle. So, we did the deal. I later found out he had almost immediately taken the rifle to Fultons & asked them to sell it for him.

I guess what I am saying is that thinking from a purely personal & investment viewpoint I can understand people playing safe. But sometimes, by digging your heels in & saying, 'no, the book's not right', you ultimately advance our state of knowledge, & guns that would have been considered 'suspect' become accepted, rightly so, as correct. Further, by renovating bubbafied rifles & selling them on at a price commensurate with this fact, many people got to own a 4T that would not have been able to afford a 'pristine' one! Maybe not an as it left the factory example, but a real one all the same. So, perhaps there should be space in our collections for the 'choice' as well as non-standard, or less pretty examples.

Sorry, I'm not criticising anyone & don't mean to rant, but just wanted to put the other perspective across.

And, yes, I did keep quite a few of the batch of rifles for myself!!

[Brian Dick]

Bravo Roger. You might remember one ROFM 1941 "T" from your "batch" that wound up here in my hot little hands in the year 2001? It's a very late FTR as known to you, myself and a very few others. I wouldn't part with it under any circumstances and use it as the standard to judge by on the rifle range. Even with it's Mk.1 scope, (I didn't have a spare Mk.3 at the time), it's a flawless example as restored in 2000!!! I have one "as new" rifle left in my vault that was built in 1945 and it certainly has no stories to tell except that the scope was jammed solid from never being used in 60 years.

[snipershot1944]

I certainly don't disagree with you Roger. I "took a chance" last week on a 4T that was a Savage Mk 1, with walnut rear stock and beech forestock, properly marked with scope number on the wrist, serial number on the forestock, parked finish to the rifle but blued scope pads, an un-numbered but maker marked bracket, and early Mk1 scope. Not being an expert on the 4T like some others here, seeing the lack of the "T", "TR" and "S" led me to scratch my head a bit. But the price was right, and it had all the accessories, so I decided to buy it anyway. After spending a bit of time looking in the archives, I found that rifle 0C1862 was a good piece to purchase. It just looked and felt right. But, finding a rifle that is tired, or messed with, or has been on an auction site for week after week, with few bids and a high reserve, I'll wait for something better to come along.

David

[Roger Payne]

Hi snipershot, sounds like you got a good early rifle! Reminds me of the early BSA rifle I saw recently that hadn't had such a kind fate. It was one of our lot that I'd rebuilt & sold on. I guess it must have changed hands a few times & as it was a 41 BSA it was not typically marked with the T TR etc., so some enterprising 'expert' had hand stamped 'M47 C. 'T', 'TR' etc., all over it, completely ruining a good rifle! It looked a right dog's dinner. Sad that it survived all these years only to be spoilt by some idiot with a little knowledge wanting to make it 'correct'.

ATB

[snipershot1944]

My dog's dinner is usually deli turkey which is not too bad, but that's another story.

Over here we call such a rifle "humped up". Reminds me of a beautiful 98k I once had, a S/42 1936 marked RFV on the buttplate. Some idiot had stamped little SS runes all over the rifle. Reduced the value by a good 75% of a wonderful 98k. It bothered me so much I had to sell it, just to avoid embarassing my other 98k's. As for the Savage, my expectation was a Mk1* less T that would be an easy flip, after peeling off the accessories I needed. But the rifle was so nice, I had to keep it.

[PrinzEugen]

I was about to say exactly the same thing before reading Roger's salutary last post. The quest for 'perfect as it said in the book' inevitably leads to entirely genuine 4ts being subject to fakery to make them as the owner thinks they should be...

[Gil Boyd]

Roger,
Thanks for that, as it encapsulates the varied anomalies that find there way to this breed of rifle, and I suppose others too across the pond.
One can only sit back in wonderment, when you think there would have been a standard of markings and a minimum level of such markings set down in a War Office paper and latterly a RAOC/REME paper somewhere to all civvy companies doing these conversions from the best in the pot to ensure they were all compatible.

But I suppose that is the Holy Grail and those lists have long disappeared!!

I take my L42 as a good example and my recent 4T I sold. I am a great believer that such lists if they do exist should be held by an organization to authenticate the best they can from the information they have, rather than one person. As I have seen too often such history disappears once that person drops off the planet and the history notes end up in the skip by a wife who doesn't understand the true value of such information!