US Model of 1917
Posted: Thu Jun 30, 2022 3:55 pm
A friend said he wanted to downsize his firearms collection so I said I would help him out. I bought his US Model of 1917 from him. He has had this for 20 years or more. It is a Winchester made example and has been through the refurbishment process at some point. The receiver has been parkerised and it has acquired an Eddystone bolt, numbered to the rifle, but retaining a Winchester cocking piece. It has a 2/19 dated Winchester barrel. The stock is Winchester marked and numbered to the rifle. The upper wood has been replaced at some point as there are the remains of red paint stripes that do not match the red paint marks on the stock. Perhaps the Walmington-on-Sea Home Guard got them mixed up whilst cleaning their rifles in the Church Hall. It came with a Parker Hale 5B target sight. Normally, if this sight is fitted, the issue sight has to be removed as the target sight fouls the battle sight. He wanted to use both, so instead of faffing about changing sights, he bought a spare issue sight and ground off the battle sight. This enables the target sight to be used but also allows for the issue sight to be flipped up to be used also when the top part of the target sight is removed. An interesting point about this rifle is the number. Charles Stratton in the 'for collectors only' book on the P14/M1917 on page 129 gives the highest number observed as 545511 for Winchester made M1917 rifles. This rifle is 1,322 numbers higher. It shoots very well and came with a few hundred cases, mostly once fired. I also have an Eddystone US M1917 but I don't think I have posted about that on here. We bought them at the same time from York Guns when they were in King Street in York. They had a batch of these at the time. A few pics.
Peter.
RegardsPeter.