m1917 question

djankle

djankle

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Did a few google searches and couldn't find any good articles on this topic. Between the three manufacturers (Winch, Rem, Eddy) did they share a lot of parts when they were producing new rifles? Did remington 1917's come out of the factory with Eddystore parts, stocks, etc? And vise versa?
 
I think that for the p14, each factory were pretty much independent from one another, and some interchangeability of parts could therefore tricky. I am not sure if by the time they started making the m1917 the situation was different? In any case, today you will often see some mix and match rifles.

Lou
 
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Like lou says, the factories were mostly independent. Weapons techs and any commercial milsurp assemblers didn't care if the parts matched or not. Both just wanted that rifle finished/repaired and sold or re-issued as fast as possible.
 
Yes, the three makers each made all of their own parts and marked them with the letters E (Eddystone), R (Remington), and W (Winchester). An original rifle will contain parts with the same makers mark. Parts are interchangeable, so many were swapped around during military maintenance and overhaul. M1917 bolts and stocks were not numbered at the factory, but some were numbered to the rifle s/n by the military. The Danish Army was especially diligent about this with their M1917s which equipped their reserve forces after WW2. Many of the ex-Danish rifles contain a real jumble of all 3 makers parts in addition to their numbered stocks and bolts.
 
The early Winchester rifle (first 10,000 I think if my memory is correct) parts WILL NOT interchange with all later rifles. Some of the parts will but not all. So if you get an early WInchester M1917 it never saw combat.
 
purple said:
Yes, the three makers each made all of their own parts and marked them with the letters E (Eddystone), R (Remington), and W (Winchester). An original rifle will contain parts with the same makers mark. Parts are interchangeable, so many were swapped around during military maintenance and overhaul. M1917 bolts and stocks were not numbered at the factory, but some were numbered to the rifle s/n by the military. The Danish Army was especially diligent about this with their M1917s which equipped their reserve forces after WW2. Many of the ex-Danish rifles contain a real jumble of all 3 makers parts in addition to their numbered stocks and bolts.
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I have one of the Danish ones made by Remington which was a U shaped notch cut on top of the receiver in order for a longer cartridge to be used. It ius quite the tack driver also.
 
Winchester-1897 said:
I have one of the Danish ones made by Remington which was a U shaped notch cut on top of the receiver in order for a longer cartridge to be used. It ius quite the tack driver also.
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Ah yes, the mysterious "Danish notch". The "why's" for this have often been debated as there is no functional requirement for it. Some of the ex-Danish rifles have it, some don't.
 
I suppose we would need to resurrect the ghost of some long departed Danish ordnance officer to learn the reason for this. Any military ammo, incl 173grain match loads which are 3.330 OAL, will load into the magazine just fine. Millions of rds of the longer 172gr ball ammo were fired in M1917s during WW1 without a problem. A number of the Danish M1917s were from Cdn WW2 surplus and some have speculated that the Cdn Army might have done this. I've never seen it on a Cdn surplus M1917, but I have seen it on a Cdn surplus M1917 that was used by the Danes.

Seems like a solution to a non-existant problem. I've never tried to open a bottle of Tuborg beer in the notch, but seeing how the M1917s were used by Danish reservists, maybe it was deemed to be an operational necessity at the end of a long training day.:cool:
 
Eddystone was owned by Remington but the plant was in Pennsylvania; Remington's regular plant was in Ilion, New York.

Each plant made all parts, operated independently and made complete rifles.

No matter: Winchester did the tooling for all 3 plants.

Winchester also modified the P-'13 design slightly in several ways to suit it to American manufacturing practices, which were different from the British practices.

Good article on the P-'14 in Reynolds' book, THE LEE-ENFIELD RIFLE (1960). You can get a free legal download over at milsurps dot com.
 
purple said:
I suppose we would need to resurrect the ghost of some long departed Danish ordnance officer to learn the reason for this. Any military ammo, incl 173grain match loads which are 3.330 OAL, will load into the magazine just fine. Millions of rds of the longer 172gr ball ammo were fired in M1917s during WW1 without a problem. A number of the Danish M1917s were from Cdn WW2 surplus and some have speculated that the Cdn Army might have done this. I've never seen it on a Cdn surplus M1917, but I have seen it on a Cdn surplus M1917 that was used by the Danes.

Seems like a solution to a non-existant problem. I've never tried to open a bottle of Tuborg beer in the notch, but seeing how the M1917s were used by Danish reservists, maybe it was deemed to be an operational necessity at the end of a long training day.:cool:
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I'm a big fan of the Danish Fax 5 beer,maybe after a few more I can figure it out. ;)
 
Remember that there WAS another war in which these rifles were used. It lasted from 1939 to 1945 and was called the Second World War.

If parts are on a rifle and are bearing different manufacturers' markings, likely that is when they were mixed.

Practice was that rifles left their respective factories with all parts from the same plant.
 
I have never seen or heard of a Eddystone bayonet, anybody have one? if you do I will buy off you!

From my understanding Remington made all the bayonets for both factories, they were after all both owned by the same parent company. Maybe they did the same for some other parts when one or the other factory was running short on a particular minor part, they were all on very tight delivery timetables for complete rifles to the military.
 
Winchester-1897 said:
yes Smellie I am pretty aware of the 2nd world War, I was just trying to get an answer for the cresent cut out of my Remington P17. :)
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found this on the interweb


http://curioandrelicfirearmsforum.yuku.com/topic/18694/P17-question
wichitaman,

I received the following comments mentioning "notched" receivers on another forum when I posted my Canadian marked M1917 and pointed out that it had a non-issue front sight:

". . . there are a couple of "on-going" threads on this site regarding the canadian/norwegian/danish M1917s. i am still on the learning/discovery curve. very interesting though. one of our forum members had a wealth of information regarding the danish home guard because he had served with them. current knowledge and opinion is that the danes received a batch of canadian M1917s from norway which had a notched receiver. a question arrose concerning the notch. the norwegians modified their 98K mausers to fire 30-06 ammo and had to notch those receivers. it is atleast possible that the M1917s were notched as protocol or as a practice, even though they may not have needed it. the danes used the M53/17s (M1917) with their home guard as target rifles, and some may have been selected for accuracy. it is known that the danish arctic defenses used the M53/17 up until the early 90s due to the rifles possitive action and power in the arctic conditions. a nice intersting study and one of the reasons that mil-surps are intriguing."

And still more from another forum:

"Thank you for investigating the notched M1917 receiver issue with us. several theories have been put forth. consensus is, that as you have re-affirmed, M2 ball ammo (including match ammo) is assembled to the same OAL spec. not alot of documentation as to why this was done, but safe to interpret from everyones efforts, that it was not done to load a longer OAL cartridge. it would appear that most if not all of the 10K M1917 rifles wich were sent to denmark from norway have this notch. orignal lend/lease rifles were sent to canada and england, not directly to either norway or denmark. more info to follow as we delve deeper."

Your M1917 must have spent some time in Norway and if it has the replacement front sight similar to mine . . .
 
The notch was made in Norway. I once read this post about the stripper clip adapter, and thats the only time I've seen this. The 1917's didn't see much service here before being sendt to Denmark. In 1952 the norwegian army sent all .303 cal. rifles in the inventory to England (about 24000), and got about the same number of 1917's in return. These were later sold to Denmark. BTW, what is the difference between the 1917 stripper clips and ordinary K98K clips? I'm not sure swedish clips were used as suggested in this link, as I have many norwegian clips, and 6,5x55 cartridges fits very tight in most of them.

http://www.milsurps.com/showthread.php?t=41281

here's the norwegian stripper clips.
http://iaaforum.org/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=7036
 
I have often wondered about this notch. I have never seen one in person. Has anyone tried to put an M2 ball cartridge into a Swiss K31 charger and then tried to use it in one of these notched M1917's? If it does fit, maybe they had similar chargers that the K31 used. I have a K31 with chargers and the charger is rounded at the front to fit into the corresponding notch in the top rear of the receiver ring.

Just my two cents...

Ian
 
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