Strangely interesting

[5MadFarmers]

The belt is supposed to be original. It was made by Russell I think. I can't remember without looking up the information I had. Ive read that this type of early belt produced by the company hadn't any name stamped into the metal. The Five Round pockets were made without the puckering at their bottom which I've read was developed to protect the webbing from being worn though by the pointed Spitzer bullets of the 1906 design.
The suspenders are a reproduction. Originals are shorter to hold the belt up higher just under the rib cage.

Indeed, my bad on the belt. Had to go poke my data to refresh my noggin.

The bullet poking thing is an urban legend. The real reason was costs and patents. When I put that book out that topic and those belts will be detailed in spades.

[5MadFarmers]

Since the rifle is composed of Original parts that've been assembled back into a rifle, it obviously isn't going to be one of the $55,000.00 specimens. However Most of the parts are pretty darned difficult if not impossible to find today. When they Are found, they're really expensive IF the owner even wants to sell them.

Interesting what one starts when one runs into parts. I ran into one from 1904. Altered. Might be in 30-03 - never checked. Guy I took it from said it was. Most was later.
CMP sent me a random '03. Later gun swimming in early altered RB parts. Why did it have them? No idea. Just ordered a LSN '03 and it was the next one to be mailed.
Was at an auction some years ago. Very early on for me. A loose stock on the table perplexed me. Looked at it twice wondering about the damage to the end. Then it hit me. It was an altered RB stock. That rod channel kind of a sign right? Last item to go. Bid, and won at, $5. When I looked at my closing bill they didn't even charge me.

Let me stew it. I'm interested.

[Kragrifle]

1902 carbine sights will be found with the altered 1898 knob and with the later milled knobs. The bases will all be the low profile, but can be found marked with the C on either side. The leaf assembly will be the same as the rifle, though I have seen one marked with a C like the 1898 carbine sight.

[5MadFarmers]

1902 carbine sights will be found with the altered 1898 knob and with the later milled knobs. The bases will all be the low profile, but can be found marked with the C on either side. The leaf assembly will be the same as the rifle, though I have seen one marked with a C like the 1898 carbine sight.

Pictures on page 218.

[5MadFarmers]

Now it's time to go over that oddity. I like to stew things like that for a few days while the noggin games it all multiple ways.

Back to 1mark's gun and the on-the-fly guide I made up:

It's an interesting gun. Beyond our knowledge. I'll make up the three gun rule:

1) Bog standard.
2) Mucked up.
3) Oddity

When faced with #3 see if it's really #2. If you can't prove it's been mucked up by somebody in some obvious way apply the rule set from #3 instead. #2 is #1 after the butchers were turned loose on it.

So it's an oddity. In that thread I added this:

That's what I'm going on about. Trying to wind forward from SA is only one direction. There is the other. In one direction it's:

[.]

That dot is the point in time when the Ordnance Store Keeper accepted the gun the first time.

[.AAAAAAAAASSBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB]

In that line that dot remains. The "A" is army service. To include trips, sometimes multiple, through rebuild. "S" is the surplus dealer and "B" is Bubba. So you're trying to see if it is as it was for that dot. That's going to take you back to 1895. They didn't start peddling them until well after that. Krags were issued in 1917 but I'm not going to digress into that right now. So you can either judge everything based on that dot, in which case you might as well eliminate every gun as none of them stayed there given that "A" thing, or you can figure out something else. "Under government control" works. So the dot and the A. As the carbines were hauled up a certain hill in Cuba they're well past the dot. Does that mean we ignore time in Cuba? Might have already received a replacement Extractor to replace a broken one. "While your gun is documented as having been with the 1st Vol Cav in Cuba we note that the Extractor was changed in 1897, and not at SA I might add, and thus the gun is Bubba!" That doesn't work for me.

So looking for the dot and only the dot isn't really practical. In previous posts I listed the reasons that wasn't done in the "S" or "B" range. Which means back it up. Not to the dot. Perhaps John Thompson, at whatever Ordnance post he was at in 1903, whittled it so he could see if the O.D. was interested in some novel design idea he had which didn't work out in the end. Pick any theory you'd like, and an exercise in futility, but remember to account for the "B" and "S" as that's really the important bit. What theory you put into that "A" range is theory but it doesn't matter if you get it right. What's more significant is eliminate "S" and "B". Changing it now would put it squarely at the end of that "B" line. Right now it's likely in that dot/A range. Wanting it to be the dot doesn't really add much as none are there really. Every gun that was issued was beyond the dot. The crapload of spare parts they made were made to be used and they were.

Then we add the rule: models, models, models, models.

I'm not a binary type. I'm a statistical probability type. So let's mix that in. Then review it in my circle the prey for a while until the prey gets bored waiting and then strike mode.

The rear sight. Patina is fine. In fact every bit looks new. 1902 top and 1898 bottom. Odd. That sight is really post 1899 on top of it. Sure, they retrofitted that sight, but the 1903s were on the way. So "late" and "odd" don't bother me.
The lack of sling swivels. Nobody noticed the swivels. That's because it doesn't have any. See what's not there and what is.

That actually creates the problem for the sight. If it was late enough for a bored gun worker to mash an 1898 and a 1902 together that really implies they just wanted a gun. Let's say 1903-1917. It'd likely have swivels if assembled in that era officially.

So due to that I'll give it an 80% improbable and 20% probable.

Now let's get to that stock. It's a very lovely 1899 stock. Assembled onto a gun in 1900. So second block. The era of the 1896 sight. So that receiver was unlikely to have been banged into a carbine at that time. They could make stocks and made 1896 long stocks. So it's 95% unlikely that receiver was originally in that stock.

What about later? Whittled, well, post 1899? Doesn't make sense. Why not?

Models, models, models, models. Industry, industry, industry, industry.

SA could make stocks. They recovered the RB 1903 stocks so they were known to alter stocks. But, it's key, on an industrial basis. "We have thousands. Toss them?" "Goodness no. Alter them." "This one is won't fit." "Toss it on the scrap pile."

So models and industry argue against that combination. So it's 95% unlikely to have been made that way and 95% unlikely to have been altered in government service that way.

1899 stock. Carbine barrel. 1898 carbine sight base. These are not parts just laying around. This points to one of two things:

1) Somebody faking a gun.
2) Somebody swimming in parts and wanting to peddle guns.

#1 is unlikely. Faking an 1896 carbine with the 1899 stock isn't going to work. Why not bake up on altered 1898c? Faking an 1899 carbine is pointless as they're marked. Turning an 1892 receiver into a carbine isn't going to fool anyone.

Thus we arrive to #2.

That gun was assembled ages ago. The bolt work is very well done. Not your run of the mill Russian level hacking. The receiver is still swimming in cosmoline. Which means what?

A perfectly good altered M-1892 was sacrificed to make that thing. Ouch. That does imply guns sitting around in their thousands. Guns which weren't considered particularly valuable. $10 each in a barrel at the hardware store.

I'd call this one a Bannerman or the like.

[5MadFarmers]

I'm a post bot. Post, post, post, post. Next week I'll slow down as I'll finally get out of my pajamas and start getting something done.

=====

I don't think there is an overlap. Statistical probability. I've seen too many. I've even targeted that range. That picture of three in that neighborhood is kind of a sign right? That's not all of them in that range that I have around here.

Lowry mentioned, if my noggin is providing good information, that he had an 1896 with a serial down in the teens.

I think it's a muck up. Somebody did something dumb at the stamping machine. We tend to think in modern technology methods. A rolling odometer type thing. That was over a century ago. I wonder if the dies were hand set? I watched hand set dies in operation making license plates about a year ago. We're a century later and they were still swapping dies by hand.

I think it's a booboo and not an overlap. More data points will tend to either disprove that or increase it. Another year or two of trolling that range should do it. Knowing me I'll do it just out of habit.

[Fred]

[QUOTE=5MadFarmers;462054]


I never noticed before that there were these variations of knobs. Wonderful! Thank you!

[madsenshooter]

Now that's a model of Springfield ought to be going to Camp Perry Fred.

[Dick Hosmer]

I watched hand set dies in operation making license plates about a year ago.

Did some time, eh?

And we all thought you just went walkabout.

[Dick Hosmer]

Oh come on, a joke's a joke ferhevvinsake. I've asked Al Frasca for his input on the numbering machine.

[5MadFarmers]

Did some time, eh?

And we all thought you just went walkabout.

Prisons are very interesting places. Fascinating even.

At the end of the day if you really want to get out you just show your staff ID and hand stamp. They're full enough where they rarely have a bed free anyway.

Oh come on, a joke's a joke ferhevvinsake. I've asked Al Frasca for his input on the numbering machine.

The machines were deep in the bowels of a maximum. Prison jokes don't bother me.

It stands to reason that the serials were stamped before the model marking. I have no idea what type of machine they used but the 1898/1899 overlap would tend to indicate the serial numbers were stamped first.

[Dick Hosmer]

Been in the Big House myself. My company was doing some door modification work in a secured area of the San Quentin (big-time maximum) hospital, many years ago. Our work involved requiring access to several doors, for which we were provided one of the huge Folger-Adams keys for their monster 18th century prison locks. It so happened that a guard came by, with his hands full, who needed to get into one of "our" rooms. So, I unlocked it for him - and, ever the wag, couldn't resist saying "bet THAT doesn't happen very often". Gave me the strangest look before realizing what I meant, and then chuckled.

[Fred]

Now that's a model of Springfield ought to be going to Camp Perry Fred.

Wouldn't sight of that on the firing line cause a sensation? Too bad it's case hardened receiver eliminates it from competition.

[5MadFarmers]

Been in the Big House myself. My company was doing some door modification work in a secured area of the San Quentin (big-time maximum) hospital, many years ago. Our work involved requiring access to several doors, for which we were provided one of the huge Folger-Adams keys for their monster 18th century prison locks. It so happened that a guard came by, with his hands full, who needed to get into one of "our" rooms. So, I unlocked it for him - and, ever the wag, couldn't resist saying "bet THAT doesn't happen very often". Gave me the strangest look before realizing what I meant, and then chuckled.

When people ask me what I did for a living I told a few I'd been in and out of prison for some years. Talk about strange looks.

When I was a kid I was threatened periodically with being sent to kiddie prison. The first time I went into that place I chuckled. "They were right! I did end up here in the end." Actually that has an even stranger story in some regards. That particular facility opened when I was a kid. Previous to the opening of that place there was an ancient one which had been purposely built in the 1800s as a juvenile prison. When they opened the new kiddie prison the old one was converted to maximum for adults. Didn't take much to convert it. Think about that for a bit.

Prisons are fascinating places. It was the mental hospitals for what used to be called "the criminally insane" which are creepy. Went through one. Sad place.

====

Puzzles. Patterns and puzzles. Cadets were a puzzle but I'm pretty sure those are understood at a useful level. So 90% probability that they are as painted.

It's those thirteen hundred and change 1896 rifles in FY95-96 which bug me. The numbers don't come out. That puzzle still obviously bugs me. So I'll keep looking at that range. More pieces will appear.

====

Time to move on to the next book. Next books probably. Finish the fiction ones for the wife and start stewing and gathering more data for the second gun book. Volume 6, Part 2.

That's mainly what I've been looking for. Stuff for that book. So I'll keep an eye on Krags to finish that FY1895-1896 puzzle but it's time to start crafting the other puzzle.

That odd "Carbine" is an interesting item. I have no ideal what I'll do with it. In the end I suspect I'll unglue the entire thing and screw the receiver back together as a Cadet. Just to be weird. Time will tell.

[Dick Hosmer]

Are you still planning to follow through on your previously stated idea of actually becoming an actual publisher?