So last spring I picked up a greasy, smelly old rifle that'd likely been in a barn for many years. I was pretty sure there was a sportered SMLE under all the crud, plus it was fairly cheap so I bought the poor thing and spent a week's worth of evenings doing some cleaning.
It's a 1917 Lithgow, non matching bolt but still has the original matching windage adjustable sight and barrel. The interesting part is the 2nd M.D. stamping on the top of the receiver and the absolute plethora of numbered A star stamps all over. It had a stock disc as well with nothing on it but an A star marking. I did some brief looking and found out 2nd MD means it was issued to some sort of reserve or militia unit.
I'm just wondering how unusual these markings are. I know there's a few around, but it's the first I've stumbled across. Reason I'm asking is I have two 1917 Lithgows and would like to get one back to more or less original shape and I'm trying to decide which to go with.
This one is definitely the worse off one, the butt and sporter fore end were complete write offs, a split had been fixed with a dozen large fencing nails. Under the grease and grime I discovered a 're bluing job' done with blue Tremclad, some steel wool took care of that, underneath most of the original blue is gone. And some type of counter boring was done at the muzzle end as well, I'm just hoping it was a military attempt and not Bubba.
The other one is functional with rough wood and shoots fairly nice.
So is there any kind of rarity to the 2nd Military District marking, or am I better off putting my efforts into the other one and putting my leftover wood on this one?
It's a 1917 Lithgow, non matching bolt but still has the original matching windage adjustable sight and barrel. The interesting part is the 2nd M.D. stamping on the top of the receiver and the absolute plethora of numbered A star stamps all over. It had a stock disc as well with nothing on it but an A star marking. I did some brief looking and found out 2nd MD means it was issued to some sort of reserve or militia unit.
I'm just wondering how unusual these markings are. I know there's a few around, but it's the first I've stumbled across. Reason I'm asking is I have two 1917 Lithgows and would like to get one back to more or less original shape and I'm trying to decide which to go with.
This one is definitely the worse off one, the butt and sporter fore end were complete write offs, a split had been fixed with a dozen large fencing nails. Under the grease and grime I discovered a 're bluing job' done with blue Tremclad, some steel wool took care of that, underneath most of the original blue is gone. And some type of counter boring was done at the muzzle end as well, I'm just hoping it was a military attempt and not Bubba.
The other one is functional with rough wood and shoots fairly nice.
So is there any kind of rarity to the 2nd Military District marking, or am I better off putting my efforts into the other one and putting my leftover wood on this one?
