Dads treasure

Go figure!

Good things:

The recoil plates ARE fitted I could see them with a flashlight & a bit of a contortion. Tick!

The wood is nowhere as dry looking as it appears in the pictures I was sent. Tick!

There's more visible grain coloration than shows in those pics. Tick!

The matching assembly numbers are on the bolt handle bottom & left upper rear of the receiver. Tick!

The bore looks "minty" Tick!

The bolt face, while not "unfired", is only lightly marked. Tick

Bolt overclocking is tight, maybe 2~3 degrees only. Tick!

Striker protrusion looks about right, couldn't measure though.Tick!

Stock fit to butt socket is good with tight & full contact. Actually all the wood to metal looks good. Tick!

I can not find a "JJ&Co" stamp anywhere even with a light & a lupe Tick!

Dubious things:

Odd semi-matching serial #! The bolt serial #, doesn't look like it ever had a prefix, or suffix letter, & the receiver's "B" prefix looks separately stamped from the digits. Not unusual. I've seen rifles that never left Australia with similar abbreviated serial numbers. The thinking seems to have been what are the chances of A12345 body having a B12345 bolt mismatched at unit level? Matching fonts are good to see. However it seems to match the stamps used on the wrist for:

M A

LITHGOW

S.M.L.E.

The bayonet boss seems more "rounded" than my 1914 BSA. Its is unnumbered. The slightly different profile to the older rifles is not unusual. Most people never notice because they don't have another rifle to which they can compare it. Possibly due to updated tooling at the Lithgow factory? Also you're comparing to a 1914 BSA rifle and there were slight differences in non critical measurements. Unnumbered nose caps are also not unusual in rifles that had replacement parts in the latter half of WW2 as far as I can tell. Your "best friend" will quote British Army lore about the nose cap being fitted to the rifle but he makes no allowance for the reality of what was happening half a world away and under very different pressures 15 years after British Army armourer's notices were written in 1931.

There are no embossed marks of any kind on the butt stock. except the Slaz 44 (crown) 3 S on the bottom of the wrist.

I don't see a serial # on the fore-stock wood or the rear-sight base. My 1917 rifle doesn't have a serial on the rear sight base either. Only on the rear sight arm for the windage rear sight along with the seven point Lithgow star.

Seller admits its been restocked & refinished. The finish is a nice deep black Park semi-matte one. Not the greenish-gray I'm used to seeing with South African (Savage) ones

I wonder where the stock embossing was done? At the Lithgow factor before shipping, or at the M.D. or Unit when received & allocated to a unit & added to  stores?  That makes sense with just the Slaz 44 (crown) 3 S being the only markings. That would have been applied before leaving the Slazenger factory to go to Lithgow or M.D. stores. At least the Park colour is correct for a late WW2 production from Lithgow so that's a nice nod to the original. In WW1 and '20s '30s Lithgow applied all of the stock/rack numbers before the rifle left the factory. In WW2 rifles I have seen the other markings have been applied by M.D. armourers as they were received. The font is slightly different.

So, when are you sending it on to me?"

OK the "recoil blocks"

Little brass pads screwed into the front faces of the recoil shoulders inside the stock.

The protected the slightly softer Ausssie "Coachwood" stocks. NOT all HAD them, but its a good thing if yours does.

To see:

Remove the magazine & invert the rifle.

Look up into the magazine well & to the rear. SA slim flashlight will be a BIG help.

you should just see them bottoms of the square brass blocks peeking out from  behind the action.