Define "All Original"

[BarryinIN]

Just a thought after reading about someone looking at an "all original" M-1 Carbine on another forum.

What the meaning of "all original" is to me might be something else to you or the next person. To me, it usually means nothing has been changed on it since it was bought or issued the very first time. To another, it might mean a military rifle with every single part coming from the same supplier and, if numbered, those numbers match. Another might consider modifications OK as long as they are from the time period. Or they might just mean it was made by the original maker of a design (Sig P226 rather than a Turkish copy).

As a Garand fan, I see discrepancies in the definition of "all original" a lot. There are a lot less "all original" Garands out there than their owners think, if you define all original in the purest sense. The receiver, barrel, bolt, and other major parts might have the same manufacturer markings on them, but that doesn't mean they started that way or that the smaller parts came from the right place. A lot of IHC-made Garands left the factory with Springfield barrels or bolts. People have got their hands on such a rifle and hunted down an IHC bolt for it. That might have pleased the owner and most other people, but by doing that, they may have actually made the rifle less original.

Likewise, people see an early version of some rifle with small parts like the safety that are later types. They might want to hunt down early style parts, but the "incorrect" parts on the gun might be what it came with originally.

Rifles got built using the parts that came out of the parts bins, whether the bin was refilled regularly with the latest parts or not. If a change came, they didn't go through the factory and dump all the old type part out and replace them with the latest; they used up what was there first. If it was a small part, it might take a while to empty that bin. And even then, new parts got dumped in on top of old parts, so the new ones often got used up first. This is the FILO principle- First In, Last Out.

An M-1 Carbine got me thinking about this, and it is one of the better examples of "all-original" meaning different things to different people. The main thing with the M-1 Carbine is that none of the ten makers of M-1 Carbines made all of the parts to build a complete rifle. Since none of them made all the parts, they had to use some of their parts and some of other makers' parts to make their rifles. The obvious exception here being the Winchester prototypes.

So when someone says an M-1 Carbine is all original, what do they mean? If the buyer is thinking that means all-matching (same maker marked) parts, they won't get that unless it's a Winchester test rifle. Without knowing what parts were used when new, you can't know what was original for that particular gun. If the buyer is hoping for a GI carbine in wartime condition rather than a new Kahr/Auto-Ordnance Carbine, they might get that.

It's not just military guns either. Winchester was well known for using up parts long after they made a change. They might have dropped a variation like "Extra Lightweight" one year but you might see that barrel contour on a gun whose serial number shows the gun was made five years or more later. It's original, but it doesn't match with what Winchester says they made.

Sometimes what people really mean is they never changed anything since they have owned the gun. A surprising number of people admit that is what they really meant when pressed a little, and usually it's an honest error. Maybe they've owned it and left it unchanged for 50 years, but if someone else owned it first, the fact they left it alone tells us nothing about what else may have happened.

This all gets touchy with guns that are handed down. The family heirloom might not be what everybody thought it was. Just because Uncle Joe bought it used from a co-worker at the mill in 1920 or brought it home from Europe in that same condition, it doesn't mean it started out that way long before. Old and from far away does not mean original.

At a gun show one time, I witnessed a "discussion" heat up where a guy had "his father's M-1 Carbine he carried in WWII". The gun was made by Universal, which told me right away it was probably made at least twenty years after WWII. The dealer tried to let him down easy, but he was very offended anyway because of what he saw as his dad being called a liar. Maybe one day long ago, the father told the son it was "like what he carried in WWII" and if that was misunderstood, the damage was done. If he had tried to sell it to someone who didn't know better, he could have unknowingly sold it as a WWII-era carbine that saw action across Europe although it was made in 1970...and the buyer would go away thinking the same thing, telling his buddies about the war relic he just bought.

Then there is another example of what some consider original. It doesn't meet the definition in my mind, but I have seen this happen.

I have a nice bolt action .22 made in the late 1940s. It was also modified in the late 40s or early 50s. A late 40s era scope was mounted after the gun was drilled and tapped. I would consider this non-original, as would most people. I might call them period-correct changes, but not original. I don't agree with it, but I have seen some guns with similar changes referred to as original, because some modification might have been commonly done at the time.

One more. I was shooting a customized Browning HiPower at a match, when someone started asking me about it (they aren't overly common in matches, so sometimes people are curious). I thought it was obvious the gun had been modified, even if one didn't know a whole lot about HiPowers. His first question was: "Is that an original?".

I wasn't sure what he meant, so I asked. I thought he either meant was it stock, or was it an old pre-WWII gun, although again I thought it was apparent it was neither. No, he wanted to know if it was made by FN/Browning or a Charles Daly. Good question, but that's not how I would have asked it.

It got me thinking though. I realized I had heard people describe a military gun as original when it clearly wasn't. A good example being an ex-GI 1911 that had been converted to a Bullseye gun in the 60s. Yes, it was an original Colt, made for the military, but is not in original condition.

I think this happens a lot too. They know what they mean, but that may not be what you are thinking by "original". I've been handed an "original" Mauser-actioned hunting rifle that was obviously not original. His meaning was that it was not a Mark X Mauser, which was common and being made at the time. Unintended, but not quite right in my opinion.

I just gave several examples of guns described as "all original". The definitions have little or nothing in common, so when someone calls a gun "all original" or you call one "all original", it might be helpful to be a bit more specific because the two of you might have different definitions of "all original" .

[BarryinIN]

I just read this on a forum about an M1941 Johnson:

"I have one...it is in mint, original, condition...the rear sight has been modified by having a V-notch cut in it."

So it's in mint, original, condition except for what's changed.