1290 wrote:Warrigul wrote:No but I do have a South African marked P13 with a bore far less than .303...
Wasn't the pattern 13 the 276... that never was?
They trialled about a thousand(I think), I know how this one made its way across. It is quite a story how I got it, it was sent over in a container filled with the personal effects belonging to a skilled migrant in the 1980's, he subsequentially sold all his fierarms to a dealer who sold this particular one to a local. We were all having a beer in the 1990's and on seeing some of my firearms he mentioned selling a few of his grandfathers WW1 firearms to a certain dealer. When I went and asked who bought such and such's .303 and pump action 44/40(that is another story again and I wish I could track that down) it was a bloke I knew of. He subsequentially had never tried to fire it as it wouldn't chamber a .303 or .30/06 and it was just hanging around, so I bought it(at that time for $200 which was a hideous price for a .303- i was sure it was something simple why it wouldn't chamber, it wasn't) but still didn't know what it was for another decade.
I bought mine as a P14 that wasn't quite right, ironically I still haven't found a P14 I am happy with- yet.
A bloke down here has made a set of dies and converted a P14 but it is nothing fantastic as far as cartridges go and I think that is probably 50% of the reason why they stayed with the .303. It is curiosity value only.