Ross ####-Please add your pics!

[flying pig]

Two more. A MkII** Civilian, this one with a very early serial number. The bluing and case couloring on this rifle are gorgeous in person. The stock has quite a bit of fiddleback too, which I have a real endearment for.

And a crown jewel. Cadet Factory Sporter, ambidextrous and takedown. This may very well be the only one ever built like this. Serial number 0000.

 

[seaforth72]

Ross Mk. III s/n 154 / 1915 The two following letters are indistinct, the first one might be a "C".

Ex-CEF presumably. Stamped "1 BN" (?) over a number "10?1" (cancelled) and "2CAN" over 496. Stamped CEF / 15 inside a circle, but I have been advised by John Taylor that oddly, this is an inspection mark, not a battalion identification. The sling which I added, is an excellent condition original 1916 dated Canadian sling, made by "B.F. ACKERMAN ... PETERBORO ONT." The maker's name is in a horseshoe and there is a profile of a horse's head with bridle fitted inside the horseshoe.

Then this rifle went to the Royal Navy/Royal Marines and was issued to the British super-dreadnought battleship "H.M.S. CANADA". Stamped at wrist "M / 135" (RN and/or RM number?). Smaller miscellaneous numbers also stamped into the butt. This battleship was involved in the Battle of Jutland May 31 to June 1, 1916, the largest naval battle of the First World War, involving 250 ships and around 100,000 men. Sadly, we do not know WHEN this and other Ross rifles were brought on board that ship.

This rifle was in Chilean naval service when the ship, which was being built for Chile in 1913 but which the British took over for the war, was sold back to Chile and was renamed "Almirante Latorre". The British modified the bayonet belt hanging system, fitting an obsolete British bayonet scabbard mouthpiece and stained the scabbards black.

Rifle and bayonet matching with Chilean numbers "D.A. 90". It seems that a lot of owners and auction houses do not notice or pay attention to the third serial number placement, on the top of the bolt, by the safety. It is not visible unless one pulls the bolt back a bit. They simply list these as rifle and bayonet matching serial numbers, and never mention the bolt s/n as happened to me when I bought this rifle. Normally Ross bolts were not numbered as far as I know, but the Chileans numbered them. This bolt is D.A. 113 and I have a spare H.M.S. CANADA bolt D.A. 134. I found the matching rifle for one of those bolts, but sadly the owner was not interested in reuniting them. I am however very interested in reuniting bolt D.A. 90 with this rifle.

interested in reuniting bolt D.A. 90 with this rifle!

 

[Longbranch1943]

Here is mine, Ross Mk3 Niagara Falls Home Guard rifle. 1 of a 1000 gun contract made for the Niagara Falls Power plant in the early 1910s. Gun is completely early config. Including its components (i.e. thin wall magazine, no reamed chamber, fragile barrel band and nosecap, etc.) This rifle was produced to commercial specifications as well, not military. Serial number has a special range, will post at a later date as I do not have it on hand currently.

 

[Oldguncrank]

Coming in late here with a couple of M-10s, a couple with Lyman rear sights. Porter is just not up to the kind of accuracy that a Ross is capable of.
OGC

 

[Oldguncrank]

A couple more with an RF Sedgely custom in 30-06 with G&H scope mount.
OGC

 

[terrylee]

Mk III & Bayonet from HMS Canada.

 

[gordonlbyrne]

Here is what’s left of my Ross collection a 1905 mk11 two star like new bore and a 1910 mk111 cut back to carbine length 24 in barrel

 

[anietfeld]

Here’s my 280, I had custom bases made to fit Tally’s

 

[flying pig]

A Commercial Cadet and a nice 1905-E

 

[flying pig]

Posted this over at milsurps dot com as well. But thought it might help some here too.

So, over the last 2-3 years that I’ve been chasing Sir Charles Ross’ rifles down, I’ve taken on a bit of a side study into serial numbers and the patterns they show in production as well as how they may help to date a given rifle’s manufacture. Since the Ross site has gone down and we’ve lost that serial number list, and I wasn’t interested enough to save it back in the day, the thought was to track down as many as possible and start over. There’s 161 rifles in this list. It’s missing a few I have come across and dropped the ball on recording the numbers from. There’s no Mil Match, Supine or single shot target rifles on this list either. They also need to be factored into it. Home Guard MkIIIs should represent a large percentage of these as well, but I dropped the ball on them until recently so there’s only 3 on there to start.

This only represents known Quebec production as well. Obviously there’s a few earlier sporters out there as well.

Anyway, here’s the breakdown so far:

Rifles by model and order of appearance, percentage of rifles on the list.

MkII** -36. 11132 is last one. 1749 is first 22.4%
1905-R -21. 2605 is first, 1020? last 13%
SDS -16. 3336 is first, 7171 last 9.9%
1905-E -8. 3637 is first, 7011 last 5.0%
1905-M -1. 8237 0.6%
M-10 -44. 7453 first, 17834 last 27.3%
E-10 -4. 10905 first, 16818 last 2.5%
R-10 -19 11047 first, 17864 last 11.8%
Commercial Cadet, -9. 11659 first, 17266 last 5.6%
MkIII HG -3. First 12615, last 14253 1.9%


From this we could speculate roughly when a given model showed up or went away. We can see that the release of the R-10 was delayed until the 05-R production had used up remaining 3tpi 1905 actions. 1905-E and MkII** Civilian production coincided with each other, but the E was a much lower demand unit. The M-10 was by far the best selling sporter Ross manufactured.
Also, the 1905-M is a very rare bird, in any of its 3 versions.

Love to hear feedback from any of you other Ross nuts as to your thoughts, interpretations or any other feedback on this.

If I was more computer savvy it would be worth my time to re scour the internet and put a pick or two of each rifle with its detailed feature description that is recorded with the numbers. That would be the ultimate way to record this for future research.

 

[flying pig]

This month’s purchases, two SDSs. Both have seen bubba’s hand. The scoped one shoots really well, the one with the Lyman 50 is a work in progress. The bore is a bit rough but there’s tons of rifling there.