Restoration or replica?

[Member-Deleted]

In the latest edition of Sporting Shooter magazine, there was an interesting article on Southern Cross Militia, which as the name suggests, deals with Military rifles and surplus. While it is great to see a local company doing well, there were a couple of things that didn't sit right. It appears that this dealership is into restoring SMLE's back to original condition, as there has been a lot of interest shown by "collectors". After further reading, it seems that they are importing stocks from India, and fitting up cut down rifles back to original specs. While this looks to be a good source of income for them, the rifles that are being re-fitted would hardly fall into the collectable category. Collectors range from the casual to the fanatic, and refurbishing ( for want of a better term) old rifles with non original parts basically makes them worthless as a collectors item. Sure, its your money, so spend it how you want, but all you will have is basically a replica, not a collectable.
With original equipment, such as Australian made coachwood or Qld maple stocks, they would still be a sum of parts, and often these are sold off as the real thing, and not a composite rifles i.e, non matching numbers etc. If a rifle left the Lithgow factory in 1915 and was not in any way altered apart from possible armourers repairs ( threaded brass into splits and such), then you have the real thing. Ishapore rifles have Indian stocks, and that would be perfectly OK.
Another thing not stated was how well the rifles shot. The bedding on SMLE's is critical to accuracy, and I suspect few people these days are aware on how to properly set them up. Its not like a mauser or P14, and there are a lot of variables to consider, which is totally outside the scope of this post.

Still, if you want something that looks complete to the casual observer, I guess you could do worse.......

[bladeracer]

In the latest edition of Sporting Shooter magazine, there was an interesting article on Southern Cross Militia, which as the name suggests, deals with Military rifles and surplus. While it is great to see a local company doing well, there were a couple of things that didn't sit right. It appears that this dealership is into restoring SMLE's back to original condition, as there has been a lot of interest shown by "collectors". After further reading, it seems that they are importing stocks from India, and fitting up cut down rifles back to original specs. While this looks to be a good source of income for them, the rifles that are being re-fitted would hardly fall into the collectable category. Collectors range from the casual to the fanatic, and refurbishing ( for want of a better term) old rifles with non original parts basically makes them worthless as a collectors item. Sure, its your money, so spend it how you want, but all you will have is basically a replica, not a collectable.
With original equipment, such as Australian made coachwood or Qld maple stocks, they would still be a sum of parts, and often these are sold off as the real thing, and not a composite rifles i.e, non matching numbers etc. If a rifle left the Lithgow factory in 1915 and was not in any way altered apart from possible armourers repairs ( threaded brass into splits and such), then you have the real thing. Ishapore rifles have Indian stocks, and that would be perfectly OK.
Another thing not stated was how well the rifles shot. The bedding on SMLE's is critical to accuracy, and I suspect few people these days are aware on how to properly set them up. Its not like a mauser or P14, and there are a lot of variables to consider, which is totally outside the scope of this post.

Still, if you want something that looks complete to the casual observer, I guess you could do worse.......

I would consider myself to be a "collector", in quotes
I like Milsurps for the enjoyment of shooting historically-relevant rifles, so I "collect" them - seven so far with several dozen more to come. But I have no view of them being a financial or historical investment. I won't buy a true collector's piece as I'd rather a true collector have it. I don't thrash my rifles and am perfectly content shooting reduced loads, often with cast bullets, so they'll probably remain forever as good as they are when I get them, but they will get fired as often as possible. I'm not a fan boy that needs to have more than one of any model like some US "collectors" that buy Mosins by the crate

On the other hand, I would consider "replica" to mean no original parts were used, which is obviously not correct here. These would be "rebuilds" or "refurbs" to me, and perfectly adequate for those of us that merely want to experience them for what they are, and what they meant to people years before they came to my hands.

I don't consider any milsurps you're likely to find in the market to have seen actual battlefield use though, especially anything with "matching numbers". Anything that saw true action is unlikely to remain viable for sale to the public, without at least some level of refurbishment. Anything that was captured or recovered by enemy action still in useful condition, was probably the result of successful ambush causing a massed retreat and leaving hundreds of unfired rifles in the wake of the panic, and in the hands of the dead and wounded. Much of the materiel found after battle would likely be damaged in some way by artillery fire. A functional Kar98 recovered in Stalingrad for example would likely have the rifling completely shot out of it, a stock full of grenade splinters, and probably burnt. More likely they'd be found buried under tons of burning rubble, or buried in the bottom of shellholes full of snow, months or years after the battle. And anything useable that was recovered was probably tossed into a truck and dumped in a huge pile and burned, or dumped behind the lines, out in the weather for months, while some bureaucrat decided what to do with them. Anything from the Pacific theatre would most likely be pretty rusty by the time somebody bothered to set aside a freighter to ship them home from a wharf where they probably sat in the salt air for months.

Anything still in good service most likely came home in the hands of the same soldier that went out with it and managed to avoid any significant action.

Does anybody know of any good accounts of the logistical side of battlefield materiel recovery from the world wars?
I've read lots of accounts from the more modern wars, where usually they just pile it all together and burn it and/or blow it up. The logistics and concurrent IED risks usually aren't worth trying to extract large amounts of captured weaponry these days, unless they can simply turn it over to local military units already in the area.

To go off on a tangent:
One thing I've wondered about most of my life is the recovery of lead balls from the battlefields during the War of Independence and the US Civil War. Lead is a heavy component to transport over many miles and distribute to army units in the front lines. I've read that bullets were usually manufactured well behind the lines, boxed, and sent up to the front. But I've wondered if efforts were made to recover such lead from the fields of battle rather than having to source it all from factories? They had units for battlefield recovery of materiel and the dead and injured. There is a quote from somebody that it took a man's weight of lead to kill one enemy soldier during the US Civil War. Thus, a battle that took a thousand lives could potentially result in a haul of as much as a hundred tons of lead in the near vicinity of the battle lines, probably in addition to all the unfired balls still in the pockets of the dead, and their supply wagons. As a very large amount of the ammunition expended would be at fairly specific areas of the battle, it would seem pretty easy to have troops search those areas to recover bullets. A significant amount of lead would wind up at casualty clearing stations and surgeries as well, enough that it would be very militarily wasteful to simply dump it.

[SCJ429]

I agree that you could do worse, as long as the rifles are not misrepresented as factory original. I think it is great that these rifles are getting a new lease in life. I remember when the Australian Army was selling off unused Lee Enfield still in their grease for $50 to servicemen. I should have bought a few.