I bought this rifle quite awhile ago. It sat for years as I was told by an FFL "basement gunsmith" who supposedly gauged it that it had excessive headspace and would be dangerous to fire. Long story short, I bought a field gauge after learning that the bolt needs to be taken down to test it and it passed with flying colors. I still haven't shot it, but that's another story.
As you can see it's an Eddystone receiver and everything I can find with a marking is Eddystone except for the barrel which is a Remington. The only marking I can find on the stock is "1C" which the Ferris book indicates as an Eddystone sub-inspector mark. From the same book I learned that the receiver was manufacture between Sep. and Oct., 1918. Since it has a Remington barrel (11/18) and was parkerized, I presume it was an arsenal rebuild. What I'm wondering is why it doesn't have any rebuild marks on the stock? I saw on another recent thread here that sometimes they were not so stamped on the stock after an arsenal rebuild, so is that a reasonable presumption with this one too? Is it common too see so little in the way of markings on an M1917 stock?
The bore is dark and does appear rough. I've cleaned it a few times but haven't gotten too aggressive in that regard, so maybe it's better than I think, IDK. The most unfortunate thing to my eye is that somebody took a brush or steel wool to some of the barrel and receiver, which you might be able to see in the pics. A fair amount of parkerizing is still present and there is no rust or pitting anywhere. The stock seems in really good shape to me. I don't think it was sanded though don't know that either. The only thing I have done was replace the rear sight as some bubba (probably the same one who took the wire brush to it) cut the battle sight peep into a v-notch. I found a replacement "E" sight for a buck or so at a gun show. Oh, the hand guard had a cosmetic crack but wood glue did a pretty good job with that and it's not very noticeable.
I'm not looking for the actual history of this rifle, just wondering what those of you here think its probable evolution to this point was? I don't think it has any real collector value, so I'm not worried about that. I think I paid ~ $125 - $150 back in the mid-latter 90s and I'm sure for parts alone it's worth more than that.