How do I find out about my P14?

[cropcirclewalker]

So I got this Eddystone P14 (in .303, naturally) numbered 2120XX. I love it. It's a peach. 300 yds, 8 outa ten rounds through a man sized silouette with iron sights. (Hadda rack up the ladder sight, naturally)

Anyway, stamped on the side of the receiver it's got an arrow looking toward the muzzle, above a crown, above a capital G. R. above a set of crossed flags which is above a P. It's got the goofy looking disk on the left side with bunches of numbers on it starting at 1500 and running up to 26.

On the right side of the butt is another brass disk upon which is stamped 5E, rivet, SR and below that is stamped 630. There is other stuff stamped here and there, circles with letters inside and with a crown on top, stuff like that.

Does anybody know what all this means? Is there a source on the net that I can look it up?

When I google "Enfield P14" It seems like I can find lots of sites where they talk about their M1917s and Alvin York and like that and sometimes they talk about the P14.

Help?

 

[Jim K]

Here is a forum you can try, but I will try to answer some of your questions.

http://www.jouster.com/cgi-bin/1917enfield/

The crossed pennants and P are the British Army proof mark (not the commercial proof seen on guns that were brought from England). The broad arrow is the British property mark, equivalent to our "US PROPERTY". The GR stands for Georgius Rex, Latin for "King George", the British ownership mark indicating that the rifle was the property of the crown. (The George was George V, who was king during WWI.

The 5E and SR are a unit mark, though I don't have a list of the British army units so I can't say what unit they represent. Could be something like Fifth Engineers, Staffordshire Regiment, but I just made that up to show the idea of unit marks. The 630 is the rifle number.

The disc on the front left of the stock is the long range sight, sometimes called a volley sight. It is used in conjunction with the peep sight that folds down on top of the bolt stop but can be raised to a vertical position. When the long range sights are used that peep aligns with the round little knob on the arrow on the front dial; the arrow points to the range. (Your rifle may not have the front sight since you don't describe it. Most were taken off at some point in service.) The long range sight on the left side is the reason the sling and stacking swivels are offset to be out of the way of the sight line.

(Just to explain a bit, before the days of machineguns, volume fire against a distant place, like a crossroads or railroad station, was delivered by lining up a company or even more of riflemen and having them aim at some point in the distance. They might not even be able to see the actual target. The long range sights were set to the appropriate range up to 2600 yards, and firing was commenced by "volley" on command, hence the term "volley sights".)

The other marks are probably inspector's marks of various kinds; the exact meanings have long been lost.

If all goes right, I have attached a pic of the front volley sight and dial from a P-14.

If you don't see it, check http://www.xecu.net/keenanj/volleysight1.JPG

Jim

 

[cropcirclewalker]

Thanks Mr. Keenan

I clicked on the link and got an "Access Forbidden" message. Anyway, I googled volley sights and found out about them. Yes, mine has been removed. I found another site where they talk about enfields (the c&r forum) but still not much talk about P14s.

I am thinking about putting it up for auction so I just wanted to find out some things about it. Now, all of a sudden, I got interested in it again.

Thanks again.

 

[Jim K]

I have no idea why you can't use the link, although it is the same picture as the thumbnail, which should expand when you click on it. If you can't see the thumbnail, you may not have the software to process a JPG file.

Has anyone else had trouble with the thumbnail or the link?

Jim

 

[cropcirclewalker]

the thumbnail worked fine. The jouster.com link rejected me.

 

[Jim K]

THR may block going to a rival site. Try going to www.jouster.com with your normal browser, and go to the Model 1917 forum.

Edited to add: OK, that worked from here. Don't know what was wrong before.

Jim