I recently purchased an early Winchester M1. It had mostly WRA parts except stock and barrel which were rebuilt. Under further inspection though, I noticed it had a 7 digit number hand electro penned into the top of the WRA bolt. This number matches a serial number for an HRA Garand he claimed to own. Basically I'm looking to shed some light on this mystery.
I'm assuming you are saying the guy you bought the M1 from also had an HRA with the serial number of that bolt. A few yesrs ago the CMP sold some rifles that had been in Greece, many of them had the serial number of the rifle electropenciled on the bolts. So if this guy has an HRA with that number it is probably because he switched bolts between the two. he probably did it because it is a WRA bolt and the one that came in it wasn't.
No, I bought this M1 from a local shop. It came from the the original owner who had bought it from the CMP, and never taken it out of the packaging it came to him in in 1999. So the rifle left the CMP with this WRA bolt (marked with an HRA serial).
The theory is that the HRA in question, had its bolt replaced at some point with this WRA unit, then perhaps both rifles crossed paths at some future rebuild facility (this WRA has an Overton birch stock with quite a bit of wear which suggests it likely saw some NG service in the 60's). According to that Garand serial registry site I checked, and cross referenced with another listing on the old battlerifles board, it came up that the HRA with this serial belonged to ardog1.
Why you'd take an HRA bolt out of an HRA rifle, then put a WRA bolt in, then mark it, then take that bolt out, then put that bolt back in another WRA rifle is beyond me. But parts is parts I guess.
He certainly was never a "major poster" around here, I barely remembered the name. Did you bother to do a Google search on "Ardog1?" You may be surprised.
I was able to track him down. Thanks. The whole first page of google results was posts of his on this board. I extrapolated from that.
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