NS marked safety on Original Winchester Carbine

[ncblksmth1]

I recently picked up a nearly mint Winchester Carbine, the only part that is not properly marked is the safety and its marked either SN or NS depending which way you look at it. The carbine is a Post April 1944 carbine and has the type II barrel band with the wire sling swivel, and the Hemphill milled rear sight. Did Winchester receive parts from NPM in the last part of the war? Any info would be nice

Would that SN or NS push button safety be right? Tuna and Rick please weigh in.

Bob

[Tuna]

While I find no information on Winchester using those safeties, They did use safeties from Sargent & Co. in New Haven CT earlier in production. I would not be surprised if they picked up left over parts from NPM made by Sargent & Co. or from Sargent & Co. directly as that company was right there near Winchester and they may have had those in numbers in stock already stamped. With carbines almost anything is possible as there were a lot of swapping of parts back and forth. If the safety looks like it's been there for a long time then I would leave it alone.

[jimb]

I agree with Tuna. Only a small percentage of the parts sharing has ever been documented. While I see nothing that says that those parts were shipped to Winchester, I know of nothing that says they were not.

[ncblksmth1]

Thinking about it this morning. I could see a batch of safeties being readied for shipment to Winchester and inadvertently one that was for National Postal Meter getting in the bunch. you know "get that bunch ready now Winchester needs 175 now" and then the rush begins.

[garandeguy10]

I have an all original Winchester M1 Carbine.
It is all original, matching finish etc, except it has a Inland hand guard on it.
The finish matches perfectly, and it looks like it has been there since day one.
It will stay there.

[Johnny P]

Back when parts were cheap and plentiful and there were no books we would go through parts to find one that looked better to swap out without regard to who made them.

[Sunray]

Everybody and his brother, plus all their cousins and everybody they knew, made Carbine parts. None of the manufacturers made all the parts. Winchester only made 15 of the parts. NPM only made 4. NPM's maker's mark was an 'N' too.
I'd be highly suspicious of any Carbine claimed to be 'original' or 'near mint' too. There's a whole industry based on making those.

[Johnny P]

There was a strict accounting of parts and manufacturers didn't just swap parts or send another manufacturer a case of parts they needed. The parts were handled like the "free issue" barrel program. The government paid one manufacturer to have the parts shipped to the manufacturer that needed them, and then the manufacturer had the price of the parts deducted from their invoice for the finished carbines.

Quality Hardware didn't manufacturer anything but the receivers, and didn't manufacture all of those. Essentially they got paid for making some of the receivers and assembling the Carbines. The other parts were deducted from their contract price.

[BrianQ]

Essentially they got paid for making some of the receivers and assembling the Carbines. The other parts were deducted from their contract price.

Neither statement is factual. Q.H.M.C., like all the other prime contractors, was contracted to provide the government with a completed product and were paid as such. Quality, again like all the other prime contractors, had a network of subcontractors that they paid for the parts that were procured from them. Parts that were transferred from one prime contractor to another at the direction of the C.I.I.C. were paid for by the requesting contractor to the contractor that provided them.

The Barrel Free Issue program was just that, a free issue to the prime contractor from the barrel manufacturer who was paid by the government for each barrel.

[Johnny P]

Nothing was free. It was called the "Free Issue" barrel program where Carbine manufacturers that produced barrels produced excess barrels which were purchased by the government. These barrels were issued to contractors that did not make barrels, and the price of the Carbine was adjusted to reflect the barrel provided by the government.

The Carbine integration committee kept a running inventory on every manufacturer and headed off any shortage of parts by having parts transferred from someone with excess to someone that needed them. No parts were simply swapped between manufacturers unless ordered by the military. Did not happen.

[BrianQ]

The barrels were in fact free to the prime contractors that did not have the capability to manufacture barrels. The minutes for the September 1943 Inspection Council Meeting calls them Free-Issue Barrels as do many of the other various carbine meeting minutes. The government contracted for such barrels and they were provided in quantities specified in the individual contracts. As an example, Rock-Ola's contract was initially for 145,000 carbines, with spare parts (which consisted of ten spare barrels per 100 carbines) and an additional 161,409 barrels & gas cylinder assemblies at $6.00 each. So those barrels were not as you say "excess" they were a planned manufacture to be used in the Barrel Free Issue program.

Other parts that were transferred between prime contractors to keep production rolling were not free nor paid for by the government. Like stated earlier they were paid for by the requesting contractor. The best known example of this was Winchester's resistance in taking the left over receivers from Underwood since they (WRA) could produce the receivers cheaper than they could be purchase from Underwood. The C.I.I.C. stepped in and was successful in negotiating a deal in which WRA paid Underwood what it would have cost WRA to produce the receiver.