Tark, the rifles receiver is stamped Springfield Armory. It came with a Springfield C7 marked straight handled bolt. Since I already had an original RB Rock Island polished bolt, I went ahead and put it on the RB rifle. Not being able to locate an original Springfield RB bolt with original polish, I'm pretty happy to have the Rock Island bolt for the rifle. Its extractor and handle are nitered and the extractor ring is still originally polished. When I got the rifle, it was missing a correct solid RB rear band (it had a split band). I mounted a correct RB stacking swivel, "early" seriffed safety, all thread cut off screw, the follower and spring were from an 03A3 so I replaced those. It had a later butt plate with the larger trap so I put on a correct butt plate with the small trap and assembly numbers, replaced the late trigger guard with an original rod bayonet one, put on a correct early trigger and sear, added the missing stock bushing for the rear guard screw (the original unissued stock had never yet been fitted with one), put a correct RB rear sight leaf with 25 yd. increments on, put a correctly knurled RB cocking piece on, added an early and correct type 1 oiler with correct RB brush and thong, and "correctly" mounted the front sight on the barrel. The barrel was off of an original unaltered 30-03 chambered rifles with the 05 type rear sight.
My guess is that long, long ago somebody cannibalized an early and unaltered 03 in 30-03 to use the barrel. The rifle is all correct now for a RB rifle.
I've read that the figure of 100 or so Rod Bayonet rifles in existence today includes about 50 or so "unaltered" rifles and about 50 or so rifles built up from original and once much more common Rod Bayonet parts. Mine is one of those.
Yes, I too have seen rebuilt rifles with several incorrect parts sell for between $7,500.00 and $13,000.00. Some of these had shorter 30-06 barrels on them.
I think my rifle is one of the better ones in existence. Although it isn't currently valued in the $35,000.00 to $60,000.00 range of an unaltered Rod Bayonet rifle, it's value is still increasing all the while and I'm fortunate indeed to not have to come up with all of the correct parts today from scratch. Such a search for correct parts today would take many years to compile and would be extremely expensive. For $2,300.00, I got into this one pretty cheap. I recently saw a purported RB front band sell on eBay. However it appears to be made up with welding and is incorrectly contoured and is buggered up where the screw fits at the base. It was going for $100.00 at the time but I don't know what the final bid on it was.
As far as anybody knows for sure, Rock Island No. 1 Rod Bayonet rifle is the only such R.I. Rifle to be all original. Although Rock Island continued to produce parts, it's thought that the later starting time for Rock Island Arsenal to be up and ready for full production resulted in possibly just the one rifle being fully assembled before the decision was made to halt production in January of 1905 pending a decision on the bayonet problem. Then of course, the decision to change from 30-03 to 30-06 held things up some more. Rock Island Arsenal had their racks full of almost assembled rifles waiting for the final word on how they were going to be finished.
Oh, the serial number is in the 6,000 range.